It would be wrong to say that Blacks or Jews are "genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor" But you can make similar
claims about Russians – no problems. Sociopathic Carthago
delenda est (Carthage must be destroyed) is the leitmotiv
of US foreign policy toward Russia and is dictated by "Full spectrum Dominance" doctrine: nothing personal only business. In reality,
this is gaslighting the US population for pretty nefarious purposes.
They told Gorbachev, 'We promise if you agree to a reunited Germany in NATO, NATO will not move-this was Secretary of State
James Baker-one inch to the east. In other words, NATO would not move from Germany toward Russia. And it did.
The
degradation of mainstream
American press coverage of Russia,
a country still vital to US
national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and
politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines - particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and,
unfailingly, President
Vladimir Putin - is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm. The
Nation (February 12, 2014)
What Putin came to power to do was to modernize Russia, and that does not involve a cold war with the West. Period. End
of story. That's his mission. He wants to go down in history as the man who did this. Cold war, not to mention hot war, is
spoiling what he sees as his mission.
When Putin began talking about Russia's sovereignty, Russia's independent course in world affairs, they're (the
Washington elites) aghast... This is not what they expected... Putin was kind of the right person for the right time, both for
Russia and for Russian world affairs.
The people who created Russiagate are literally saying, and have been for almost three years, that the president of the
United States is a Russian agent, or he has been compromised by the Kremlin. I don't know if there has ever been anything like
this in American history... That accusation does such damage to our own institutions, to the presidency, to our electoral
system, to Congress, to the American mainstream media, not to mention the damage it's done to American-Russian relations, the
damage it has done to the way Russians, both elite Russians and young Russians, look at America today. This whole Russiagate
has not only been fraudulent, it's been a catastrophe.
Professor Stephen F. Cohen (Nov
25, 1938 – Sep 18, 2020)
The current US policy of simultaneously antagonizing both China and Russia
will likely go down as one of the 21st century's more significant strategic miscalculations.
Assuming of course that it is a part of some strategy and not just bumbling incompetence. Is Russia Being Driven Into
the Arms of China
This page is written in hope to help Russian language students to understand the country they are studying despite the level of brainwashing
typical for MSM in the West. My own views on the problem were influenced by late Professor Stephen
F. Cohen whom I really admire and follow. The US neoliberal elite became unhinged and adopted "Full Spectrum
Domination" doctrine after the collapse of the USSR. That did not play well nether for the US national security nor the world, to
say nothing about Russia. The real 101 on this topic are two his presentations:
Russophobia is not actually only about Russia. Actually it is more about American exceptionalism and imperialism (and for of all
Full spectrum Dominance doctrine). That's why neocons, who are well paid prostitutes of MIC, are such rabid Russophobes. In more way
then one it is a modern politically correct version of anti-Semitism practiced by the USA neoliberal elite.
Like anti-Semitism it is
a wedge issues, which enhances the level social control of US population and suppression of dissent, which now can be framed as "Russian
agents" in best McCarthyism traditions (NeoMcCartyism ).
Amy scapegoating of the particular nations/ethnicity is very similar, almost identical in sprit to anti-Semitism. In the definition
below I just replaced terms in Wikipedia definition of Anti-Semitism:
Russophobia is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Russians. A person who holds such positions is called an Russophobe.
Russophobia is generally considered to be a form of racism. It has also been characterized as a political ideology which serves
as an organizing principle and unites disparate groups which are opposed to liberalism.
Russophobia may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions of hatred of or discrimination against individual Russians...
"Russophobia is a certain perception of Russians, which may be expressed as hatred toward Russians. Rhetorical and physical manifestations
of Russophobia are directed toward Russian or non-Russian individuals and/or their property, toward Russian community institutions
and religious facilities."
The uncontroversial "illustrations" of Russophobia:
Advocating the killing or harming of Russians for ideological or religious reasons;
Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Russians as such;
Holding Russians as a people responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Russian person or group;
Using the symbols and images associated with classic McCarthyism (e.g., equating Russians with Soviets and Russians
with communists);
Holding Russians collectively responsible for actions of the Russian state or the USSR;
Scapegoating is an important part of the neoliberal Propaganda machine, especially war propaganda.
Brainwashing people this way artificially (and temporary) increases social cohesion (as any enemy would) and was evoked as a defensive
tool when the neoliberal elite experienced the loss of legitimacy as happened in 2016. As
ROB
URIE noted in his Russiagate, Nazis, and
the CIA (Jul 31, 2020) CIA was Russophobic organization from the very beginning and it infects the USA political establishment
with Russophobia more effectively then COVID-19 infects US population:
The first Cold War was an imperial business enterprise to keep the Generals, bureaucrats,
and war materiel suppliers in power and their bank accounts flush after WWII. Likewise, the
American side of the nuclear arms race left former
Gestapo and SS officers employed by the CIA to put their paranoid fantasies forward as
assessments of Russian military capabilities. Why, of all people, would former Nazi officers be
put in charge military intelligence if accurate assessments were the goal? The Nazis hated the
Soviets more than the Americans did.
The ideological binaries of Russiagate -- for or against Donald Trump, for or against
neoliberal, petrostate Russia, define the boundaries of acceptable discourse to the benefit of
deeply nefarious interests. The U.S. has spent a century or more
trying to install a U.S.-friendly government in Moscow. Following the dissolution of the USSR
in 1991, the U.S. sent neoliberal economists to
loot the country as the Clinton administration, and later the Obama administration, placed
NATO troops and armaments on the Russian border after a
negotiated agreement not to do so . Subsequent claims of realpolitik are cover for a
reckless disregard for geopolitical consequences.
...Russiagate is the nationalist party line in the American
fight against communism, without the communism. Charges of treason have been lodged every time
that military budgets have come under attack since 1945. In 1958 the senior leadership of the
Air Force was charging the other branches of the military with treason for doubting its utterly
fantastical (and later disproven) estimate of Soviet ICBMs. Treason is good for business.
Shortly after WWII ended, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi military officers,
including former
Gestapo and SS officers responsible for murdering tens and hundreds of thousands of human
beings , to run a spy operation known as the Gehlen Organization from Berlin,
Germany. Given its central role in assessing the military intentions and capabilities of the
Soviet Union, the Gehlen Organization was more likely than not responsible for the CIA's
overstatement of Soviet nuclear capabilities in the 1950s used to support the U.S. nuclear
weapons program. Former Nazis were also integrated
into CIA efforts to install right wing governments around the world.
...To understand the political space that military production came to occupy, from 1948 onward
the U.S. military became a well-funded bureaucracy where charges of treason were regularly
traded between the branches. Internecine battles for funding and strategic dominance were (and
are) regularly fought. The tactic that this bureaucracy -- the 'military industrial complex,'
adopted was to exaggerate foreign threats in a contest for bureaucratic dominance. The nuclear
arms race was made a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the U.S. produced world-ending weapons
non-stop for decades on end, the Soviets responded in kind.
...The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 was met with a promised reduction in U.S. military
spending and an end to the Cold War, neither of which ultimately materialized. Following the
election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the Cold War entered a new phase. Cold War logic was
repurposed to support the oxymoronic 'humanitarian wars' -- liberating people by bombing them.
In 1995 'Russian meddling' meant the Clinton administration rigging
the election of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian presidential election. Mr. Clinton then
unilaterally reneged on the American agreement to keep NATO from Russia's border when former
Baltic
states were brought under NATO's control .
The Obama administration's 2014 incitement in Ukraine , by way of
fostering and supporting the Maidan uprising and the ousting of Ukraine's democratically
elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, ties to the U.S. strategy of containing and overthrowing
the Soviet (Russian) government that was first codified by the National Security Council (NSC)
in 1945. The NSC's directives can be found here and here .
The economic and military
annexation of Ukraine by the U.S. (NATO didn't exist in 1945) comes under NSC10/2
. The alliance between the CIA and Ukrainian fascists ties to directive NSC20 ....
The recent example of Russophobia in the USA was neo-McCarthyism campaign which was nicknamed "Russiagate", which represents classic
gaslighting of the population strategy. A common tactic used to promote the Russiagate narrative was unnamed officials
making statements to the press without providing evidence or any factual basis to their claims. Another common tactic was frequent
media appearances by former intelligence officials, like
James
Clapper and John Brennan, usually making wild accusations about Trump
and Russia. These tactics are being repeated to promote an anti-China narrative.
The loss of legitimacy of neoliberal elite which resulted in political fiasco of the establishments candidate -- Hillary Clinton
-- is why McCarthyism was dusted off and launched into mainstream with all major neoliberal MSM promoting it with the level of
coordination that might cause some envy of stalwarts of Bolsheviks press.
Overextending this trick has negative consequences as Soviet Politburo discovered in 70th. It's like boy who cried wolf: people just
stop trust neoliberal media and this process already started in 2019 with Rachel MadCow being one of the first victim: she
lost half a million viewers (may be temporary, as she is a talented demagogue, but still).
The current crisis of neoliberalism and discreditation of neoliberal ideology (2008 and then defeat of Hillary Clinton
in 2016 are two stages of the same process) created conditions in which reinventing "Red Scare" again became important, as a tool of
controlling US (and in general, Western) population and crushing the dissent.
It is also important to understand that Russophobia in many Western countries and first of all in the USA, is an official policy.
Much like in Carthago delenda est(Carthage
must be destroyed) was during certain period official policy in Rome. USA elite inherited it from British elite. In this sense
the current US neoliberal empire can be called the Western British Empire (the term which creates several interesting historical
analogies, including its possible length of existence ;-)
American neoliberal elite like the British elite before now badly need an enemy to unite nation as well as a smoke screen that hides
their own corruption. Russophobia definitely helps to suppress internal discontent caused by growing inequality, unemployment, shrinking
of the middle class and justifies the conversion of the country into National Security State after Islamic threat became less potent.
Another goal is to prevent the alliance of Germany and Russia -- which was the goal of British foreign policy for two centuries.
The mass production of faux news demonizing Russians invokes depictions of Orwell's nefarious Eurasians from whom the populace needed
Big Brother for protection. Reincarnation of Ministry of Truth by Barack Obama is just another stage of the same process -- now like
Soviet Politburo, the US government is afraid that the US people will be informed about the real events in the world. And that
like BBC and Voice of America in the past were used by Soviet population, at least some segments of US population started using RT the
same way -- to understand where MSM lie to them. Like with Voice of America in the past, it is not necessary to buy Russian propaganda
to see where neoliberal MSM completely distort the world event and hide important information. For those purposes RT can serve
perfectly well.
In a similar vain, in the current international situation, I would also consider Russophobia to be some kind of Freudian projection,
a politically correct way of replacing anti-Semitism. Kind of subconscious substitution of Jews to a different, "more acceptable"
(aka politically correct) nationality, with all related consequences and moral repercussions that entail this equivalency.
There is tragic irony here as Russians in the past were guilty of anti-Semitism (like most European nations). Now they probably
might understand better what it means to be the target of anti-Semitism. As Arkadiy Rukh observed (cited from
dr-piliulkin.livejournal.com ):
"Today, in the era of the total political correctness in the Western world there is only one object for unpunished hatred,
for realization of the inevitable phobias and other psychopathologies. This is Russia. Today Russians occupy in the world that
niche, which for many centuries was occupied by the Jews: the object instinctive, illogical, animal hatred."
While in many respects Russophobia as a social phenomenon is somewhat similar to anti-Semitism it is also a natural by-product of
American Exeptionalism as Russia refuses to accept the role of a complete
vassal of the USA, the role that the US elite designated to them after the collapse of the USSR. And the role which was temporary Russia
performed under drunk Yeltsin.
In this sense if it a condemnation of the revolt against "inevitable" in the eyes of the US elite world order -- the global
neoliberal empire led by the USA. That also explains the level of bitterness involved. Russophobia became fashionable in Western
neoliberal MSM when Russia under Putin became an obstacle on the creation of the global, dominated by the USA neoliberal empire. That
resistance to global "neoliberal project" -- neoliberal World Revolution (although weak and inconsistent -- under Putin Russia
became a member of WTO and Medvedev in general is a 'soft" neoliberal, almost a pro-Western comprador) also generates considerable amount
of hate.
Pages of European and American newspapers and their comments columns, are packed with expressions such as
"Putin is the new Hitler";
The "Russia is a primitive country that should be contained at all costs";
"All Russian are mobsters";
"Russians must pay the price for support of the Putin regime",
Putin is Stalin, Jr.
Let's restart the Cold War"
and other similar cliché that clearly remind cliché used by German propaganda against Jews. This anti-Russian hysteria also helps
to erase Snowden revelations from Western collective memory as well as WikiLeaks depiction of the USA war crimes.
The hatred of Russia now is "a new normal" for the US neoliberal establishment and controlled by this establishment MSM.
It actually seves as a pretty good smokescreen for the loss of legitimacy of neoliberal elite. How and for what reasons did this happen? The first thing to understand is that this is not a new phenomenon. British elite were adamantly
Russophobic for a long time, several centuries as Btitish empire considers Russia as a threat to British interwsts in India and the
region :
The historian J. H. Gleason, in his 1950 book The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain, characterized the nineteenth-century
English public's "antipathy toward Russia" as the "most pronounced and enduring element in the national outlook on the world abroad."
The sentiment, Gleason concluded, was concocted by a manipulative, imperial-minded elite-and was off base, anyway, since
Britain's foreign policy was actually "more provocative than Russia's" in this period. Others concur. "The world champion imperialists
of modern history, the British, were in a permanent state of hysteria about the chimera of Russia advancing over the Himalayas to
India,"
While observations of Arkadiy Rukh are, in my opinion, absolutely correct (the article I cited above is pretty interesting too and
contains a valuable discussion) I would add a more recent neoliberal edge of this problem (The
Vineyard of the Saker):
The historical roots of the Russophobia of the American elites
Having said all of the above, its actually pretty simple to understand why Russia in general, and Putin in particular, elicits
such a deep hatred from the Western plutocracy: having convinced themselves that they won the Cold War they are now facing the
double disappointment of a rapidly recovering Russia and a Western economic and political decline turning into what seems to be a
slow and painful agony.
In their bitterness and spite, Western leaders overlook the fact that Russia has nothing to do with the West's current problems.
Quite to the contrary, in fact: the main impact the collapse of the Soviet Union on the US-run international economic system
was to prolong its existence by creating a new demand for US dollars in Eastern Europe and Russia (some economists - such as
Nikolai Starikov - estimate that the collapse of the USSR gave an extra 10+ years of life to the US dollar).
In the past, Russia has been the historical arch-enemy of the British Empire. As for Jews - they have always harbored many grievances
towards pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia. The Revolution of 1917 brought a great deal of hope for many East-European Jews, but it
was short lived as Stalin defeated Trotsky and the Communist Party was purged from many of its Jewish members. Over and over again
Russia has played a tragic role in the history of the Ashkenazi Jews and this, of course, has left a deep mark on the worldview of
the Neocons who are all deeply Russophobic, even today. Somebody might object that many Jews are deeply grateful for the Soviet Army's
liberation of Jews from the Nazi concentration camps or for the fact that the Soviet Union was the first country to recognize Israel.
But in both cases, the country which is credited with these actions is the Soviet Union and not Russia which most Ashkenazi
Jews still typically associate anti-Jewish policies and values.
It is thus not surprising that both the Anglo and the Jewish elites in the US would harbor an almost instinctive dislike for,
and fear of, Russia, especially one perceived as resurgent or anti-American. And the fact is that they are not wrong in this perception:
Russia is most definitely resurgent, and the vast majority of the Russian public opinion is vehemently anti-American, at least if
by "America" we refer to the civilizational model or economic system.
... ... ...
Considering the never ending barrage of anti-Russian propaganda in the western corporate media one could wonder how strong anti-Russian
feelings are in the West. This is really hard to measure objectively, but as somebody born in Western Europe and who has lived a
total of 15 years in the USA I would say that anti-Russian sentiment in the West is very rare, almost non-existent. In the USA there
have always been strong anti-Communist feelings - there still are today - but somehow most Americans do make the difference between
a political ideology that they don't really understand, but that they dislike anyway, and the people which in the past used to be
associated with it.
US *politicians*, of course, mostly hate Russia, but most Americans seem to harbor very little bad feelings or apprehension
about Russia or the Russian people. I explain that by a combination of factors.
First, since more and more people in the West realize that they are not living in a democracy, but in a plutocracy of the 1%,
they tend to take the official propaganda line with more than a grain of salt (which, by the way, is exactly what was happening to
most Soviet people in the 1980s). Furthermore, more and more people in the West who oppose the plutocratic imperial order which impoverishes
and disenfranchises them into corporate serfs are quite sympathetic to Russia and Putin for "standing up to the bastards in Washington".
But even more fundamentally, there is the fact that in a bizarre twist of history Russia today stands for the values of the West
of yesterday: international law, pluralism, freedom of speech, social rights, anti-imperialism, opposition to intervention inside
sovereign states, rejection of wars as a means to settle disputes, etc.
In the case of the war in Syria, Russia's absolutely consistent stance in defense of international law has impressed many people
in the USA and Europe and one can hear more and more praise for Putin from people who in the past has deep suspicions about him.
Russia, of course, is hardly a utopia or some kind of perfect society, far from it, but it has taken the fundamental decision
to become a *normal* country, as opposed to being a global empire, and any normal country will agree to uphold the principles
of the "West of yesterday", not only Russia. In fact, Russia is very un-exceptional in its pragmatic realization that to uphold these
principles is not a matter of naive idealism, but a sound realistic policy goal. People in the West are told by their rulers and
the corporate media that Putin in an evil ex-KGB dictator who is a danger for the US and its allies, but as soon as these people
actually read or listen to what Putin actually says they find themselves in a great deal of agreement with him.
In another funny twist of history, while the Soviet population used to turn to the BBC, Voice of America or Radio Liberty
for news and information, more and more people in the West are turning to Russia Today, Press TV, or Telesur to get their information.
Hence the panicked reaction of Walter Isaacson, Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the US outfit overseeing US media
directed at foreign audiences, who declared that "we can't allow ourselves to be out-communicated by our enemies. You've got Russia
Today, Iran's Press TV, Venezuela's TeleSUR, and of course, China is launching an international broadcasting 24-hour news channel
with correspondents around the world". Folks like Isaacson know that they are slowly but surely loosing the informational battle
for the control of the minds of the general public.
And now, with the entire Snowden affair, Russia is becoming the safe harbor for those political activists who are fleeing Uncle
Sam's wrath. A quick search on the Internet will show you that more and more people are referring to Putin as the "leader of the
Free World" while other are collecting signatures to have Obama give his Nobel Prize to Putin. Truly, for those like myself who have
actually fought against the Soviet system it is absolutely amazing to see the 180 degree turn the world has taken since the 1980s.
Western elites - still stuck in the Cold War
If the world has radically changed in the last 20 years, the Western elites did not. Faced with a very frustrating reality they
are desperately trying to re-fight the Cold War with the hope of re-winning it again. Hence the never ending cycle of Russia-bashing
campaigns I mentioned at the beginning of this post. They try to re-brand Russia as the new Soviet Union, with oppressed minorities,
jailed or murdered dissidents, little or no freedom of speech, a monolithic state controlled media and an all seeing security apparatus
overseeing it all. The problem, of course, is that they are 20 years late and that these accusations don't stick very well with the
western public opinion and get exactly *zero* traction inside Russia. In fact, every attempt at interfering inside Russian political
affairs has been so inept and clumsy that it backfired every single time. From the absolutely futile attempts of the West to organize
a color-coded revolution in the streets of Moscow to the totally counter-productive attempts to create some kind of crisis around
homosexual human rights in Russia - every step taken by the western propaganda machine has only strengthened Vladimir Putin and his
the "Eurasian Sovereignists" at the expense of the "Atlantic Integrationist" faction inside the Kremlin.
There was a deep and poignant symbolism in the latest meeting of the 21
APEC countries in Bali. Obama had to
cancel his trip because of the US budget crisis while Putin was treated to a musically horrible but politically deeply significant
rendition of "Happy birthday to you!" by a spontaneous choir composed of the leaders of the Pacific Rim countries. I can just
imagine the rage of the White House when they saw "their" Pacific allies serenading Putin for his birthday!
... ... ...
On one side we have the 1%, the Anglo imperialists and the Ziocons, while on the other we have the rest of the planet, including
potentially 99% of the American people. If it is true that at this moment in time Putin and his Eurasian Sovereignists are the most
powerful and best organized faction of the worldwide resistance to the Empire, they are far from being central, or even less so,
crucial, to it. Yes, Russia can, and will, play its role, but only as a normal country amongst many other normal countries,
some small and economically weak like Ecuador, other huge and powerful like China. But even small Ecuador was "big enough" to grand
refuge to Julian Assange while China seems to have asked Snowden to please leave. So Ecuador is not that small after all?
It would be naive to hope that this "de-imperialization" process of the USA could happen without violence. The French and British
Empires collapsed against the bloody backdrop of WWII, while did the Nazi and Japanese Empires were crushed under a carpet of bombs.
The Soviet Empire collapsed with comparatively less victims, and most of the violence which did take place during that process happened
on the Soviet periphery. In Russia itself, the number of death of the mini civil war of 1993 was counted in the thousands and not
in the millions. And by God's great mercy, not a single nuclear weapon was detonated anywhere.
So what will likely happen when the US-Ziocon Empire finally collapses under its own weight? Nobody can tell for sure, but we
can at least hope that just as no major force appeared to rescue the Soviet Empire in 1991-1993, no major force will attempt to save
the US Empire either. As David Rovic's puts it so well, the big weakness of the 1% which rule the US-Ziocon Empire is that "they
are a tiny minority and we are everywhere".
In the past 20 years the US and Russia have followed diametrically opposed courses and their roles appears to have been reversed.
That "pas de deux" is coming to some kind of end now. Objective circumstances have now again placed these two countries in opposition
to each other, but this is solely due to the nature of the regime in Washington DC. Russian leaders could repeat the words of the
English rapper Lowkey and declare "I'm not anti-America, America is anti-me!" and they could potentially be joined by 99%
of Americans who, whether they already realize it or not, are also the victims of the US-Ziocon Empire.
In the meantime, the barrage of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns will continue unabated simply because this seems to have
become a form of psychotherapy for a panicked and clueless western plutocracy. And just as in all the previous cases, this propaganda
campaign will have no effect at all.
It is my hope that next time we hear about whatever comes next after the current "Greenpeace" campaign you will keep all this
in mind.
During the "cold War" the "old" US elite behaved more or less reasonably and tried to avoid unnecessary confrontation. Several moments
were clear exception (Korea War, Cuban crisis, Vietnam war and support of radical political Islam in Afghanistan), but all-in-all it
was kind of policy of "peaceful coexistence" (live and give other chance to live), not of an outright "all out" confrontation.
Intelligence agencies behaves more provocatively, especially CIA in Europe, which organized and trained Nazi collaborators for the
resistance to the possible Soviet invasion, and subsequent guerilla movement against Soviet occupation. Also in case of JFK assassination,
the patsy was chosen by the CIA in a way that makes it easy to implicate Russia. But those were exception, rather then the rule.
Probably the memory of the WWII and the level of cooperation of two countries in this war as allies still played some role in such restrain.
But eventually a new generation of US elite, the elite did not have WWII experience come to power. This new US elite
tried hard to colonize Russia instead of making it a valuable partner after dissolution of the USSR. Bill Clinton and Larry Summers
are two good example of this behaviour.
This adventurism backfired. This was probably the first blunder, the blunder make by Clinton administration -- the first administration
with a lot of neocons onboard (we all remember unforgettable female neocon
Madeleine Albright). they failed to utilize pro-USA
fe4elings of the Russian population after the dissolution of the USA. Should the USA adopt the Marshall plan for Russia those feelings
would be preserved. But the Clinton administration decided to loot Russia and concert it into a vassal state. That was a strategic
mistake, although looting succeeded on a really grand stale (several trillions were stolen) with the help of
Harvard mafia and Russian compradors. The instituted shock therapy for
the Russian economics which plunged it into depression which was worse thatn the one which was coursed by the Germany aggression in
WWII. Many important enterprises went bankrupts, other were bought by foreign investors for pennies on the dollar (Browder
was one notable example of this "looting gang" that descended on Russia at the time; Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky and other Jewish oligarchs
were another important players in this looting)
Subsequent administration also demonstrated strong neocon influence (actually neocons, such as
Paul Wolfowitz dominated Bush II administration foreign policy) and due to it
made several strategic blunders such as invasions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. And that despite the fact the Russia provided
great help in Afghan operation, as it essentially controlled (and armed) the North Alliance against Taliban.
Obama administration essentially continued Bush II foreign policy without major changes. The only change was that is did was more
double-dealing. It did get Russia into a trap, when Medvedev government abstained in UN Security council votes for Libyan resolution
(which was a disguised justification of NATO military intervention), which opened the way to the occupation of Libya and killing of
colonel Kaddafi ("We came, we saw, he died"). Obama administration also masterfully played Iran card against Russia, crashing
oil prices three times (from $120 to $30) from the second half of 2014 to January 2016 and keeping oil prices below $50 per barrel (on
average) all 2016 (Russia needs approximately $50-$55 just to balance the state budget).
It also outplayed Russia in Ukraine tuning this county into nationalistic enclave extremely hostile to Russia (see
"Fuck the EU": neocons show EU its real place ). And then to add insult to injury introduced
sanctions against Russia. Obama might be not a great president, but he for sure is one
of the greatest hypocrites in world history.
But those attacks as well as a clear attempt to encircle Russia in Europe backfired: if you pursue containment of China and at the
same time introduce sanctions against Russia it is only natural that these countries will become closer political partners. From the
point of view of traditional American and any other political logic, actions that contribute to the rapprochement between Moscow and
Beijing, are, to put it mildly, unwise. And that what Obama administration archived. This is the main legacy of Obama administration
in foreign policy, which was dutifully continued by Trump administration (actually the USA foreign policy does not depend of who is
in power as the President and who is the Secretary of State; it is controlled by the Deep State -- forces outside elected executive
branch and which consist of MIC, intelligence agencies and the Wall Street (financial oligarchy) as well as created by then think tanks
such and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)).
Russian elite for too long was trying to please the Western colleagues. They swallowed completely unacceptable things. Gorbachov
is generally considered in Russia as a traitor of the nation. They resigned to NATO expansion. Even after the bombing of Yugoslavia,
which was a clear violation of international law, they still viewed the USA a friendly nation and hoped for the best. Another
problem was that Russia was too weak at the moment, kind of semi-colony of the USA (and Yeltsin regime was clearly a comprador regime,
no question about it).
But at this point attitude to the USA start changing to negative. After Ukrainian coup d'état of February 2014 (Maydan Revolution,
as it is called in the West) this change only accelerated and "Athlantists" group enough Russian neoliberal elite lost a lot of influence
and became politically ostracized. . In other words huge amount of political goodwill that existed in Russia after dissolution of the
USSR was completely squandered in less then 30 years. That's an amazing art of making enemies from friends.
But at the end of Obama administration Russia just stopped to trust the USA. At all. They view Obama as treacherous and extremely
dangerous imperialist, who will not stop at anything by promoting the US domination. That means that they now view the USA as
a geopolitical gangster, which is violating any laws in impunity using classic "might makes right" principle. That's a dangerous view
and dangerous situation for the USA. This is another geopolitical blunder of the US elite. This view only became stronger
under Trump administration.
I never was a Russian citizen, but I was and still am interested in Russian politics and, especially, culture. I think that it is
a European culture in its essence. Very interesting and very rich. Which was able to survive years of Soviet rule. So attempt of isolate
Russia from Europe attempted by Obama neocons (see Nulandgate), following classic "device
and conquer" strategy of British Empire, might be a geopolitical mistake despite short term dividends this action brought
to the USA geopolitical position in the region. It also increase the changes of WWIII, which definitely would mean end of
the USA as the global empire and probably as a country (the same is true for Russia -- both countries will be completely devastated)
Neocons defined Russia as the main threat. In other words deterrence of Moscow became the strategic goal of the USA foreign policy,
which is essentially a neocon foreign policy, the policy of obtaining
and maintaining the world domination at all costs.
That means that the efforts to explicitly shape the USA public opinion to see Russia as the key geopolitical enemy are dictated by
priorities of the USA foreign policy, which is defined by neocons.
This "Anaconda strategy" of encircling Russia got a significant boost after the victory of far right in EuroMaidan. This event has
become for a great geopolitical victory for the USA and humbling defeat for Russia. Russia was in bad shape to prevent it, as the logic
of development of new state immanently produces anti-Russian sentiments as the mean to create their own identity. But still weakness
of Russia in Ukraine was real and signify a serious problems ahead. Also the USA is way to strong to go into open confontation with
the US neocons, which dominates the US foreign policy.
The reaction of Russia on far right victory at EuroMaydan gave rise in in the US establishment, to even more active implementation
of the strategy of confrontation, and propaganda campaign against "the Russian threat". Like Bolsheviks before them (and neocons
are just turncoat Trotskyites, so there are a lot of common between two), they hate any obstacle on the path to creation of global neoliberal
empire led by the USA. This strategy involves increasing the military presence on the European continent and military power of NATO.
Much tougher stance toward Russian projects in Western and Eastern Europe and in attacks on the level of international organizations.
Along with the anti-Russian operations in Europe, the US and its satellites are active in the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
A good example is the recent attempt to organize a Maidan in Armenia.
My negative attitude to distortions and clearly orchestrated by White house anti-Russian campaign in the USA press reflects
my natural skepticism. I am not content with typical coverage of Russia in the USA press which reminds me the caricature on the USA
coverage by Soviet press (which at the time had higher standard of living the people of the USSR and low level of unemployment).
I consider hysteric Russophobia that is now practiced to be simplistic and counterproductive policy which serves to promote equally
shortsighted global imperial policy that benefits only the US financial oligarchy. Policy that has considerable cold-war inertia and
that is damaging to the USA long term interests. Most journalists are simply behave like paid attack dogs (a good example here is Mr.
Wallace: his interview of Putin was an insult to the American people;
Wallace actually tried to lecture Vladimir Putin).
Here I collected some of the authors who try to see more long term approach and try to present their own understanding of the complex
problems related to previous US attempt to colonize Russia after the dissolution of the USSR. Or at least advice a more realistic
US foreign policy toward Russia. Of course it is nice to squash the old geo-political enemy like a bug and I would be the first
to admit that under Yeltsin West came close to this scenario. Criminal privatization of Russian companies was hugely successful attempt
to put an end to the Russia as an independent country. Similar strategy was by-and-large successful in other USSR republics like Ukraine,
Georgia and especially Baltic countries creating what can be called New Latin America.
But after Putin came to power, the attempts to convert Russia into yet another Latin American country became gradually reversed (although
this process is some areas went too far and to reverse it completely is very difficult). As Ira Straus aptly put it in her letter
Russia, U.S. Media:
Nowadays attacking Russia has a politically correct tinge to it, since Russia is a white Christian country. By contrast, attacking
China still suffers from being susceptible to counter-charges of racism and anti-Communism. Perhaps this is the source of the strange
double standard in which Russia is attacked just about any day for just about anything while China is virtually ignored day after
day, month after month for the same and far worse.
Attacking Russia is especially "correct" when it is a matter attacking a Republican Administration for being soft on a Russia
that is beating up on Muslims. One doubts that much of the American public shares the media's sensibilities on this. Picture bubba
listening as Dan Rather launches into Russia for beating up on Muslim Chechens; he'll probably be telling himself, "there the liberal
media go again, standing up for our enemies and blaming our allies the Russians for fighting back". Among Americans who write about
politics, only Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter dare to say such things, but many more think it, in whole or in part.
The importance of adversarial culture for the media can be seen from the Bush I administration, which truly was anti-Russian.
The media bashed Bush I for this; it became ambivalent on Russia, taking on a more pro-Russian hue than any time before or since.
As soon as Clinton got a pro-Russian reputation, the media switched back to Russia-bashing mode. It was Clinton-bashing that was
the real point.
In other words, the media should not be taken as a barometer of U.S. government policies on Russia. It is more often an indicator
of the opposite.
What does it matter? A lot. The media drumbeat against Russia has an enormous impact on public policy, not only in the US
but in every Western country, and in Russia itself. It makes it hard to think clearly, or even to see clearly. It fosters and fans
conflict. It promotes a tit for every tat.
First, the effects on Russians. The media play an enormous role in convincing them that we're an enemy. They can see CNN, BBC
and other Western media daily, at length; they hear from our government only rarely, and practically never from the American people.
They can see the Western media's implicit premises far more clearly than the media themselves do. Mistakenly assuming these premises
to represent Western policy, they draw what would be the logical conclusion: that we are their enemy. If Russia does in turn become
an enemy again, the media will have been a major cause of it.
Second, effects on Western policy-making are just as damaging. Instead of helping the Western governments do their thinking,
the media block out most of the space for it. They make it harder for the West to think out loud about such matters as how
to build active alliance relations with Russia, or how to overcome the remaining Cold War standoffs. They make it harder to follow
a steady course where cooperation has been agreed, They have done much to cause the West to be an unreliable partner for Russia,
an unreliability that democrats in Russia noted with profound regret throughout the 1990s. They prioritize conflicting interests
over shared interests, encouraging every minor divergence of interest to grow into a major opposition. Their audience ratings flourish
on conflict; and no longer fearing it as risking war or nuclear incineration, they promote it shamelessly.
If we end up with a new Cold War -- and the risk is becoming a real one -- it won't be a small thing. It would mean a nuclear
superpower once again ranged against us and the world plunged back into a bipolar disorder, only in more unstable conditions. In
that case, the media will no doubt turn around and denounce as "reckless" those who carry out their painful duties in the conflict.
The truly reckless ones, however, will have been those in this era who so freely did so much to bring it on.
My personal views are close to views expressed by Anatoly Karlin in About
Da Russophile
As regards Russian politics, I make no secret that I'm a pro-Putin conservative. That said, my views are moderate – while
Western media coverage of Russia may be woefully biased and frequently malicious, there are certainly plenty of things
to criticize about Russia and Russians.
However, they must be grounded in in statistics, an appreciation of the viewpoints of ordinary Russians, and a judicious comparative
perspective (which is NOT equivalent to "moral relativism" or "whataboutism" as many of the more hardcore Russophobe propagandists
claim).
I think that the Western MSM fails on all three counts:
Their journalists tend to obfuscate facts and concrete numbers with rumors and assumptions;
they share their biases with those of the liberal opposition who are their most frequent interlocutors, and reflect an ignorance
of the broad ideological diversity across Russian politics and media;
and they frequently condemn Russia for things that just as prevalent or even more so in countries considered Western and democratic.
This blog concerns with calling them out on their lies. As the one-time Guardian chief editor C.P. Scott once said, "Comment
is free but facts are sacred." While his newspaper has retreated from this vision in practice, I maintain that it's the most elegant
encapsulation of what real journalism (and punditry, blogging, etc) should all be about.
...I consider Charles de Gaulle to have done a great job, and consider Putin to be a comparable figure in vision and stature.
Outside obvious "Lebensraum" motives, it looks like western
hate towards Russia rests on some deep inadequacy syndrome. Russia is supposed to be some has-been power that is now of no consequence,
yet it gets way more attention than such a worthless state would merit. The amount of negative coverage since
Sochi Olympics is bordering on war hysteria. That's
dangerous pass as ideas became material things when they penetrate deep into conscience of nation. Hate eventually tends to materialize.
The amount of negative coverage since
Sochi Olympics is bordering on war hysteria. That's dangerous pass as ideas became material things when they penetrate deep
into conscience of nation. Hate eventually tends to materialize.
Russophobia as persistent policy of the US government and US media. And all this talk about Russia aggressiveness, and carefully
orchestrated related war hysteria in MSM is pure projection. It is the USA which is the most aggressive international player on the
world stage.
Russophobia is the unofficial but persistent set of behavioral patterns of the US government and US media. It is clear that US tried
to weaken and possibly dismember Russia out of geopolitical considerations which represents a real threat to the US world hegemony.
This idea on which the US elite is hell bent since end of WWII and there were even plans to bomb Russia just after end of WWII.
It is the only military power that can annihilate large part of the continental USA, But there is something deeper here. It is also
an attempt to unify nation, which under neoliberalism became much less coherent whole and in which 99% of the population hates the top
1% and the level of this hate is increasing, especially in minorities and inner cities.
Russophobia is a crucial part of the US foreign policy. In this respect the US foreign policy is so
messianic that it reminds me Soviet
foreign policy (with the substitution of "triumph of democracy" for "triumph of communism") and I wonder if the USSR really was a defeated
party in the Cold War. This mentality of "export of revolution" is the integral part of mentality of the US elite. The difference with
Trotskyism, if exists, is minor, and the key difference between Trotskyism and the US flavor of messianism probably is connected with
the smell of oil which radically increases the urge to democratize a particular country. In any case attempt to export democracy in
Russia never stopped since 1991 and under Yeltsin were so successful that the country lost more in industrial production then during
the second World War and poverty became a norm for more then 50% of the population.
Carthago delenda est(Carthage
must be destroyed) attitude exists partially because the Western elites hate resource nationalists independently whether those
nationalists are leftist or conservative. Fighting resource nationalists tooth-and-nail is an important, may be even critical part of
neoliberal doctrine. The latter is a
civic religion in the USA. That means the Russophobia in the
USA has strong religious component, and is supported by 500 pound gorilla of the US elite propaganda machine. In other words there is
a strong, consistent tendency of demonization of Russia (Paul Starobin,
The National Interest Blog,
August 28, 2014):
In any case, our taste for a country-favorable or unfavorable-shouldn't dictate our foreign policy, which is properly shaped by
a cool calculation of our national interest. On these terms, America is right to resist Russia if Putin seems truly bent on bullying
his way to a redrawn map of Europe, but also right to try to keep working with Russia on matters of mutual concern such as Islamic
militancy. And that same calculation will hold when Putin, as must happen eventually, exits the Kremlin, willingly or unwillingly,
whether replaced by a new autocrat or a more democratic figure. Today's heightened tension between the United States and Russia,
conceivably the first chapter of a new cold war, with Europe as ambivalent as ever about its role, underscores that Russia is likely
to remain one of America's most vexing and formidable diplomatic challenges for a long time to come.
So the future of the presentation of Russia as a hodgepodge of unflattering stereotypes seems bright. The naive liberal notion
that the world has a teleological disposition toward a progressive end-if only holdouts like Russia would get with the program-is
deeply entrenched. Headlines datelined in Russia-on corrupt oligarchs, or on control-freak KGB-generation political operators-will
continue to nourish sweeping criticism of Russians, from their leaders on down, as primitive and psychologically ill. Probably
no other nation is so easy (or so safe) to caricature.
And the "Russia Is Doomed" syndrome is bound to survive because Russia, alas, still matters. The object of such concentrated anxiety
over the centuries, far from heading down a path to obscurity, remains a global force and impossible to ignore. So the worries will
live on, too, as will the sublimated wish to efface Russia. But perhaps the good news for the critics is precisely that Russia is
not about to go away. They will have plenty of grist for their mill for decades to come.
The issue is whether comprador elites subservient to the US are in power, or more nationalistic "national sovereignty" guys. It is
true that a nationalist elite can be as predatory as a comprador elite, but a reasonable degree of national sovereignty is a prerequisite
for social justice and it is difficult to raise standard of living if your resources are owned by transnationals. The latter automatically
became above the law and do what they want with impunity.
The Russophobic views on Russia can be summed up in three words: "There is no life there !" This simple formula invoke the whole
complex system of "corrupt journalism patterns" and
powerful propaganda mechanisms polished during 45 years of Cold War. Those journalistic patterns
causes most western journalists (not without help of their political handlers as independent journalism in the USA is a joke) treat
Russia as a failed state. Not simply a country that temporary dropped out of the world civilization, but the country is doomed to such
a drop by the several immanent features such as "national character", climate, landmass, religion, history, etc.
From Dr. MacFaul quotes above it is clear that in the American media and among American politicians Russia occupies a marginal position.
After the Soviet Union is gone, they mostly cares about getting assets on pennies per dollar (behaviour of criminals like Mr. Browder,
whom McFaul loves so much, exemplifies such an attitude) and to lesser extent about Russia military capabilities, which are still a
risk. Although I doubt that.
From the typical US behavior it looks like American politicians are not really interested in any other aspect of Russian situation,
other then energy resources (Khodorkovsky
is a new saint in the USA, probably for his failed attempt to sell Russia oil resources to US companies). And he is new puppet in the
show of finding the possibilities of regime change and installing a puppet regime as they
unsuccessfully tried in 2011-2012. They still
miss Yeltsin drunk regime and Gaidar-Chubais neoliberal gang, which almost converted Russia into
kleptocracy from which Putin tried gradually to extract it with
great and not always successful efforts.
It all comes down to a set of cliché: Russia is corrupt (while in reality this is a immanent feature of all neoliberal regimes and
first of all the USA, the most corrupt
neoliberal regime in existence) , does not respect human rights (unlike Saudis) and does not play by the rules (unlike Libya rebels),
is not democratic (unlike Qatar). Russia seems to them so weak and uninteresting, not worthy of a real partnership dialogue. And is
arrogant enough not to agree with the status of vassal so she needs to be taken care of:
"To promote liberty requires first the containment and then the elimination of those forces opposed to liberty, be they individuals,
movements, or regimes. " - M. McFaul, The Liberty Doctrine: Reclaiming the purpose of American power. Policy Review April
& May 2002 The Liberty Doctrine Hoover Institution
Such an ungrateful jerks, who jailed Dick Cheney best friend Khodorkovsky, squeezed this perfectly honest guy, exemplary "the
largest portfolio investor in Russia, British citizen William Browder" (Who, BTW, was the USA citizen until recently, but suddenly
changed his mind) and so on and so forth. They should be "regime changed". It is like the relationship between schoolchildren, when
a bully see a threat on the school yard and acts preemptively.
The first thing that surprise me is a very well "coordinated" level of Russophobia demonstrated by Western MSM. The degree of Russophobia
in Western press varies very little be it Guardian, or NYT, or BBC or WashPost. As financial oligarchy controls the MSM you can't expect
anything different. They act as a pack of dogs. Typical level is treating Russian as forever damned barbarians. Slightly more advanced
is treating Russia a legitimate playground for testing the controversial socio-economic doctrines like shock therapy and a land were
any foreign crook is entitled to get rich fast (like
Browder did ).
But the essence is the same, no right for "national sovereignty", no right for any "special way". Those concepts are simply outside
a typical Western press journalists "template" that their editors enforce.
Ridiculous comments populate the blogs, the op eds and the comment sections of most sites. But what unsettles me more is the
rabid Russian phobia (call it "Russophobia") which populates the American press (liberal/conservative).
We never see things from the Russian side. It is always Putin who is up to no good, Vladimir, the monster, the balding fool
with no shirt flexing his muscles. This is not the Cold War, yet we have not shed our Cold War biases.
Russophobia is a form of racism and studies of other forms of racism such as anti-Semitism are applicable here.
It is a prejudice against, hatred of, or discrimination against Russian people as an ethnic, religious, or racial group. In Baltic
states it is close to regime of Apartheid. In Ukraine it has a form of
suppression of Russian language and culture
I have an impression on the personal level sincere and acute Russophobia (not to be mixed with Russophobia as a official line ) can
be a compensation mechanism (classic Adorno). I am not talking here about ideological prostitution typical for MSM journalists. But
on individual level it looks like projection not that different from other national bigotry and the undisputable and provable fact is
that the USA and, especially, Great Britain MSM serves as an "Incubator of hatred" toward Russia. Of course this also tells something
very important about the US/GB governments.
I suspect that those who adopt Russophobia position not for money (let's call them "sincere Russophobes") have a personality of sectants/fanatics
in a very deep sense of this word. Or like Eric Hoffer called them "True Believers" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer).
For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both
by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it
is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.
In a way sincere Russophobe's are almost extinct minority (but still can be found among Ukrainian nationalists ;-).
There a legion of "Russophobes for money". People who are profiting personally from Russophobia nonsense they spew. This is common
among all those people who are far from the sharpest tools form the box. As a result they try to occupy a niche that is still available
and earn living in such a disgusting way. At best they are average with very few exceptions (Belkovski might be one exception).
In a way we can view it as a survival tactic of people with mediocre talent in conditions of high competition. Similar displacement
into obscure niches can be observed for mediocre people in other professions.
This "Russophobia for money" is common among all those people who are far from the sharpest tools form the box. As a result they
try to occupy a niche that is still available and earn living in such a disgusting way.
"Russophobia for money" is common among all those people who are far from the sharpest tools form the box. As a result
they try to occupy a niche that is still available and earn living in such a disgusting way.
Cold War II is rooted not in Ukrainian event (The EuroMaydan coup d'état was organized
by the USA and Western powers; Crimea was only a pretext) but is closely connected with the neocon attempts to slow down the pace of
Russia modernization and secure Russia status as resource vassal of the USA. Here is a part of discussion from Kremlin Stooge that touch
this theme in relation to Skolkovo techno-park.
This is a very apt comment and I wish that your observation comes true. But the problem is that as you :
"The forces arrayed against Russia are sufficiently formidable and sufficiently unrelenting "
First of all the West is rich enough to finance substantial fifth column, especially fifth column media (official $70 millions
for support of NGO and "alternative" press is just a tip of iceberg). That's the essence of neo-colonialism do nothing
new here. Also a large part of elite is already linked to the West and is not interested in any confrontation. Nothing new here
too.
So the discussion about what level of state capitalism is beneficial (or where Medvedev should stop with his "second liberalization")
is complex and far from purely technical one. External forces should be taken into account and once in a while liberalization
companies to placate the West are not completely bad idea no matter how you view neoliberalism: state capitalism requires periodic
"purges" (Stalin well understood that) and "liberalization" and, especially "fight with corruption" provides perfect
pretext for purges. If one looks at some Medvedev's actions from this angle and you might well come to conclusion that it might
be not complete sell-off but a more complex game.
In situation when you need to purge excesses of state capitalism West can serve as a natural ally and in such situation slogan
of cat Leopold "Rebyata davayte zhit' druzhno" (Let's be friends) suddenly became politically viable at least among the
pro-Western part of the elite. And the idea of periodic moving the pendulum from "higher statism" to "higher
private enterprise support" in order to avoid stagnation, say, each seven-ten year period is not completely absurd. The
main question is whether the process runs out of control or not.
Another possible contention point is that sooner of later oil flow will start diminishing and with it revenues will also start
dropping. Currently there are too few industries that can replace the flow the oil dollars. Attempt to revitalize some of the
existing heavy industries under the flag of liberalization, if done clever is not a bad idea.
And as much as everybody here hates neoliberalism it is very clear about who should be the victim and provides an ideological
justification for cruel actions against own population. Like Bolshevism, it proved to be an extremely potent weapon of convincing
population to act against their own economic interests (see
What's the matter with Kansas for details).
Perfect tool for the brainwashing "peasants" if you wish, very important when "Pryanikov sladkih vsegna ne hvataet na vseh"
(Okudzhava ).
April 13, 2011 at 8:50 pm I believe the oil money will go on for some time yet. Current practices are sloppy and inefficient,
and more oil could be realized with better, more modern techniques, as well as new discoveries coming online. However, an early
start on overhauling general business practices would be time and money well spent.
Medvedev should draw a lesson from Skolkovo. This is a project he has personally sponsored and touted as Russia's official
debut in the high-tech sector. Western response, overall, has been withering and contemptuous, although some major
commercial figures (such as Microsoft) have offered early investment optimism. Collective opinion seems to be that Russia
will use the new tech city as a base from which to steal foreign technology secrets from investors, or that it will be a dismal
failure because Russians have no real ideas of their own. The west is likely to greet other initiatives by Medvedev in
the same manner – hearty laughter, followed by offers to come in and make western-style changes for him, in exchange for certain
considerations.
You are right: Skolkovo is fuzzy (what exactly is "high-tech") initiative as first of all Medvedev can't abolish brain-drain
and that what will happens with the most talented researchers. The only realistic bait he has is blocking the companies from entering
Russian market unless they provide considerable degree of localization and require that some fraction of research be performed
in such parks. That's a variant of policy that China successfully used. But if Russia joins WTO, tariff barriers to protect domestic
producers in vital sectors will be more difficult to erect.
At the same time autarky does not work either. So maneuvering between those Scylla of globalization and Charybdis of autarky
requires top political skills from the captain of the ship.
Some sectors of Russian heavy industry already are proved abroad and products already have some competitive advantage and export
markets. That's where this comparative advantage needs to be preserved and enhanced with help of techno-parks. State subsidized
R&D is really important here and can be provided via small university based local techno parks. This would an excellent employment
opportunity for most talented students who otherwise might emigrate and such parks not necessary need any foreign participation.
This is especially important if company is partially state owned, as this along with having reps at the board that protects the
investment. OK, I would agree, that it's not necessary need to be people on minister level. It would be sad if he really wants
not to reform or improve, but to dismantle state capitalism.
The real problem here that without oil revenue Russia gets into zugzwang. Hopefully, as you noted, that will not be soon.
Yes, you're right about Skolkovo; I did a piece on it awhile back (here)
and Chinese tech parks were cited as an example. It's funny how the west is all gaga over China, and just brushes off the fact
that China has a considerably more predatory business model than does Russia; China shamelessly raids the west for business
information and constantly tests them for weaknesses which might be exploited. But, obtusely, it's Russia that's held
up as the consummate corporate raider.
I believe if Russia were allowed to join the WTO, fewer barriers would be necessary. There's no reason foreign companies shouldn't
have to contribute to the local economy, but they should receive tradeoffs as well such as low corporate tax rates, and that was
one of the considerations. Medvedev seems determined that Skolkovo will succeed, while some elements in the west are just as determined
it will be a failure. We'll see. Russia is a world leader in medical research, and I understand that will be a big part of Skolkovo
as well.
It is difficult to say where Putin's brand of mixture of neoliberal and state capitalism get him and Russian people. I would say
that the answer is "reserved no". Currently Russia, while opposing the US hegemony does not provide an alternative economic model. And
that's the weakness of "Putinism".
Un amable lector de este blog ha realizado un resumen en inglés de nuestro artículo Las catedrales del kremlin y el capitalismo
multipolar; es un resumen diferente al que nosotros hubiéramos hecho, pero de interés sin duda alguna. Ha sido publicado como apoyo
a una pregunta en un coloquio con el economista ruso Mikhail Khazin organizado por The vineyard of the saker. Publicaremos aquí la
respuesta.
Question: Does Russia represent an alternative to the current western economic/social model? Or is this view an illusion based
only on the conflict between some traditional vs. post-modern values? / Arturo
For context to the question I will provide a translation / paraphrase / summary of some key points in the following article Las
catedrales del kremlin y el capitalismo multipolar
The article contains and numbers many more points (36 in total) but I have translated/summarized only the first 14 (the
rest is provided is a very raw translation --NNB)
Moscow cannot defeat the American plans – i.e. the Anglo Zionist world elite – without contradicting the class interests
of its own elites (Russian oligarchs): This is impossible because the system of sanctions and the blocking of access to their
accounts and assets in the West generates such contradictions in the Russian power elites that, in practice, it prevents them
from reacting adequately; it puts them on their knees before the America.
Russia *could* resist those plans, since it possesses the strength, sense of identity, historical memory and material
resources to do so. But in order to do so, its ruling elites would have to take measures that would affect their own class status
within both the Russian system and the international system. And we can see that these are measures they are not willing
to take. On the other hand, the Anglo Zionists suffer no such internal contradiction. Quite the opposite, in fact: Their own
interest as the supporting base of the globalist hyperclass necessarily forces them to maintain the challenge to the end.
By the term Anglo Zionists, in this analysis, we mean the dominant power group whose territorial and military base resides
in the United States, and whose center originates in the historical and social links of the Anglo-American oligarchies, branching
off to other historical central metropolis in Europe or other power centers in different parts of the world.
The concept is made up of two elements that must be explained: the first, the "anglo" reference, has to do with the North
American British connection [...] the second, the "zionist" reference, has to do with the interconnection among the economic and
financial power groups that maintain various kinds of links with Israel. It is not so much a reference to ethnic origin, but rather
to orientations as groups or lobbies of political and economic interests. A good part of this Zionist component consists of people
who are neither Israelis nor Jews, but who feel identified with the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, Britain and other countries.
Thus the term "zionist" referees here to an ideology, not to an ethnic origin.
The Anglo elites on both sides of the Atlantic have evolved from being national elites to being the executive base of
a world Hyperclass made up of individuals capable of exerting a determining influence in the most powerful nation, the United
States.
The result of the Anglo Zionist line of attack is that the contradiction and internal struggle is now occurring in Moscow
between those who have already chosen to sell out and those who have not yet found the time to realize that a multipolar global
capitalism is not viable.
In this context, recovering Crimea was a mirage, an illusion.
If we compare the implications of the Maidan coup in Kiev with the liberation of Crimea, we see that the strategic defeat
implicit in losing Ukraine as an ally is of such magnitude that everything else pales by co s (all of them) in Kiev was so gigantic
that its implications are frightening. It was either a failure or something even worse. In any case, the Crimea affair was merely
a small episode in a confrontation that Russia is losing.
Russia arrived very late at modern capitalism, and that is why its current elite will be unable to occupy a space among
the globalist elite without paying the necessary toll, which is none other than renouncing its territorial power base – its
country and its access to and control of its energy resources and raw materials.
Stubbornly maintaining the dispute in trying to obtain a multi-polar capitalism, leads necessarily to a intra-capitalist confrontation,
as it did in 1914-1918. And because of the nature of the current actors, nuclear powers … it brings the conflict to 2.0 war versions
(color revolutions)
All attempts by Russia to develop a hypothetical line of response based on similar strategies (i.e. mobilizing a social response
based on discontent) have no future, because Russia does not represent an alternative social model, not even in the realm
of Illusion of Hope. It can only elicit some empathy from those who reject the American domination, but here the class contradictions
come into play again, because it is not enough to oppose Washington merely on political-military grounds, since the key to
global power resides in the financial and military structures that enable global control and plunder: World Trade Organization,
IMF, Free Trade agreements, World Bank, NATO… these are entities in relation to which Russia only shows its displeasure at
not being invited to the table as an equal, not accepting that because it arrived late at modern capitalism, it must play a secondary
role. On the other hand, Russia is ignoring the deep contempt, bordering on racism, that things Slavic generate among Anglo Zionist
elites.
In order to be able to fight the 2.0 versions of war that are engineered today, an alternative social model is needed.
Alternative not only in regard to the postmodern vs. traditional sets of values, but fundamentally in regard to the social model
that stems from the modes of production. In the postmodern vs. traditional conflict, Russia tends to align with the most reactionary
values. And in regard to the social struggle, they don't want to enter that fray because they renounced it long ago. They renounced
the entire Soviet Union, which they destroyed from within.
The contradictions and the dialectical nature of reality have their own logic, however. Thus, a coup in Kiev and the widespread
appearance of Nazi symbols in the streets of Ukraine was all that it took to induce a spontaneous reaction in the Slavic world.
The popular resistance in the Donbass took strong root thanks to the historic memory of the people's of the old USSR and its war
against fascism.
If Russia were to abandon Novorossia to the oligarchs and their mafias, the world's "left" – or whatever remains of it - would
come to scorn post-Soviet Russia even more than it already does. In the months following the brave action in Crimea and the heroic
resistance in the Donbass, many people around the world looked to Moscow in search of some sign that it would support the anti-fascist
and anti-oligarchic resistance, even if only as an act of self-defense by Moscow against the globalist challenge. If it finally
abandons Novorossia, the price in terms of loss of moral prestige will be absolute.
A support of the left has not been sought, but that is a collateral consequence of the character of class struggle open that
has been given in the Donbas, where Russia has been forced to provide some assistance that would prevent the genocide at the hands
of the fascist Ukrainian.
Cuando say left, we refer logically to the one who has expressed their support to the struggle of people in the Donbas, as
it is very difficult to consider the "left" to those who have preferred to remain silent or to have directly been complicit in
the assault, and the coup in Kiev.
The degradation of the left as politically active social force is very intense, their structures are embroiled in the collapse,
or in the confusion, when not literally corrupt. Then related to both socialist parties since 1914 and the communists, at least
from the time of fracture of 1956. The social changes experienced in Europe with the systems of welfare state, based on the elevation
of the standard of living of the working population and the obtaining of social peace by sharing the power with the trade unions
are at the base of the post-industrial society and the resulting profound changes of values.
The suicide of the USSR in 1989-93 marked a brutal global change , in which the balance which was preserved during the cold
war was broken. That led to the capitalist elite in the west, which we are calling the Anglo-Zionists, to the suspension of the
social pact (forced abandonment of New Deal), that gave rise to the welfare state and the emergence stark reality of a global
power of capitalists without systemic opposition . Today the whole neoliberal globalization system of capitalism is in danger
by the depletion of the natural resources. And to sustain this mode of production, they need to speed up territorial domination
in the form of control and access to resources of other countries. Now there no space in the global system for spaces, which are
managed autonomously even to a certain level.
The system of global domination, capitalism, ruling elites with a territorial basis in the area of Anglo-American, global
parasitic Hyperclass and depletion of resources, as well as cannibalization of the other nations, in the midst of troika of crisis
of climate change, peak of the energy and raw materials shortages. those three factors that challenge the current globalization
framework ... And the crisis of Novorossia, been demonstrated both impotence and the lack of real political autonomy of Russian
elite with the respect to the dominant power in neoliberal worlds order..
The new citizen movements in the western world are not so much resistance movements as samples of the discontent of the middle
classes in precarious position of marginalization and/or social trance. This protest led to a "Maidans" which are not permanent
and does not question the basis of the system. The participants seems to believe that it is possible to restore the old good world
of the welfare state.
The western movements are brainwashed by messages emanating from the headquarters of Democratic party of North America, the
propaganda anarcho-capitalist and the various networks of ideological interference, are managing to break the bonds of historical
memory that unite the struggles of the past with the present, de-ideologize the struggles and conflicts and to deny the tension
left and right, isolating the militants -- or simple citizens who feel identified with the values of the left - of the masses
who are suffering in the first place casualisation. At the heart of this new "left" are leaders that are co-opted voices, pseudo-intellectuals
who destroy the words and empty of content of key concepts in a way that the alienation of the masses demonstrate at the language
itself, thus preventing putting a real name to social process and things, and to identify the social phenomena.
Viva to Russia, which the only country which eve in a weak form decided to fight neoliberal world order and position itself
as an anti-imperialist force... It is interesting to observe the current great moral confusion in political landscape of the societies
in decay. Confusion which have been stimulated by Moscow actions. As the result some the far-right groups that are simultaneously
anti-US that anti-Russian now support Moscow. Also some part of Russia far-right political groups got the sympathy and support
of factions of the anti EU far right forces in France, the Nazis of the MSR in Spain, and from small groups of euro-asianists.
This line of political affiliation will allow them to simply join the Russia failure [to find alternative to monopolar neoliberal
capitalism] and might well discredit then more profoundly in the future.
The euro-asianists forces technically speaking are reactionary forces, neoliberal forces which is comparable to the worst
of the worst in the western world. Moreover, they do not have any way to solve the main contradictions that arise in the current
neoliberal model in the terms of class and dominance of Anglo Zionist global elite.
Euro-Asianism is just a suitable ideology for the construction of Russian national idea for those who seeks to achieve lease
to life for Russia sovereignty on the world stage. It is the actual proof that Russia has come too late to globalised capitalism
and fascism...
Huttington and his war of civilizations cynically exploit this confrontation on Anglo Zionist elite and newcomers, redefining
it along the idea of the clash of civilizations which avoid using the notion of class and thus is ideologically false. Alexander
Duguin who promote similar ideas quite seriously just shows the degree of degeneration of the Russian intelligentsia, which oscillates
between serving as comprador class to the global Anglo Zionist elite and the repetition (as a farce, and with 75 years of delay
) of fascist reactionary revolutions in Western Europe, which were phenomenon of the interwar period (rexistas in Belgium, Croix
de feu in France, CruzFlechados in Hungary, Requetés and Falangistas in Spain).
The globalist elite offered a solution formulated in class terms, as it could not be another way: in the best cases, they
proposes the co-optation to a handful of members of the Russian elite as deserving members of the new global Hyperclass, but this
path is opened only the very very rich, and the pre-condition is the delivery of the country to plunder, where the global elite
certainly would have need of some compradors which will be more or less adequately compensated depending on their achievements
and sacrifices in the name of global neoliberal domination.
The part of the power elite of Russia, which managed to expel the western compradors of the Yeltsin era, and rein in the oligarchs
then, had tried with some success to regain control of the territory of the country. The illusion of the members of this part
of the power elite -- basically the security services, both civil and military, and various synergies of those with the military-industrial
lobby -- is that it would be enough to neutralize the Russian fifth column of the Anglo Zionists to take back control of their
territorial base of power. this idea is going to be shredded into pieces when it enter into contradiction with the reality of
the class struggle and interests of the elite at the global level. Russia is, for its size, influence, and resources, so huge
that a line of action based on the defense of its sovereignty strategic enters in collision with the global power of neoliberalism.
And that why it attracts disproportional reaction of the Anglo Zionists
Supporters of Anglo Zionists that are ready to consent to a German-Russian alliance or Russia-EU alliance that give the viability
of a idea of mutually beneficial co-development of both Russia and Europe are forgetting that such an action would require European
sovereignty. Which is was non-existent iether on the level of the EU, or on the level of member states. The penetration of the
Atlantism in Europe is already systemic. In the old European states there are still ancient national traditions, which were based
on the basis of cultural, industrial, economic, and political identity. And they still run strong. But in the current situation
for such states there no space for the sovereignty as the dominant power bloc in the national elite as well as in EU elite are
Atlantists. Where this situation takes the Russian elite and the Russian state without confrontation? A confrontation that they,
on the other hand are not willing and are not able to pursue.
The multi-polar capitalist world had its lifespan which come to an end (exploded) in 1914. In 2014, the globalization of the
elites and the capital is of such magnitude that no serious resistance is possible on the basis of some capitalist model. In those
conditions the idea of Russian elite ability to enforce change to multipolar version of the currently monopolar neoliberal world
is doomed to be a failure.
Zbigniew Brezinsky has raised things crudely and openly, unlike the ("fake") supporters of perestroika, and their current
heirs in Russia. Brezinsky know how to think in terms of the class contradiction and knows perfectly well that the Russian
oligarchy has directed its monetary flows abroad, moved families abroad, and moved their investments abroad. That means that
Anglo Zionistscan disrupt any claim of sovereignty over the territory and resources by simply pressing the local neoliberal
elite, giving them to choose between their interests as a class and their illusionary desire for sovereignty. Because in a globalized
world, with its brutal fight for the natural resources there is no possibility of maintaining both, except what can be achieved
in terms of direct anti-imperialist struggle. There is no space for the national bourgeoisies in the XXI century. You can only
have sovereignty if it is posed in terms of a rupture with the actually existing neoliberal order of global capitalism, which,
in its core is Anglo Zionistsglobalization. This break does not have to be forced, but in terms of scientific analysis
of the social processes is a logical consequence of following this path one way or the other. To claim sovereignty over their
own resources and territory inevitably leads to confrontation, and logical needs a break up and confront the Anglo Zionist empire.
If you really want to achieve the goal. And that fact imposes the logic of the relationships and balance of power in the world
today.
The claims of the BRIC countries -- to the extent that you do not question them -- is that they have an alternative model
to the dominant neoliberal capitalism model (Ango Zionist globalization with the center in the USA) are doomed to be a failure.
The efforts of the BRIC countries can generate a lot of noise and discomfort for the West, but they can not break the global neoliberal
system. Those countries are rightfully fearful of their budget balances -- which are very fragile. It can be even said that they
are on their way to implosion sooner or later, due to the unbalanced structure of their internal classes, including first of all
their own elite.
The claim that it is possible to achieve the multipolar capitalist world (which Russia defends) and which led to current Ukrainian
crisis without confrontation is false. As soon as Russia wanted to return to the global chessboard. as an independent player,
they instantly saw opponents attacking weak elements of their defense at the borders. Ukraine has been a defeat for Russia and
the Crimea is not a adequate compensation for loss of Ukraine. Now Novorossia is being sacrificed precisely because the class
contradictions that have emerged in Moscow and lack of desire of Russian elite to go the bitter end.
The situation in the Donbas / Novorossia clearly shows the resignation of Moscow to the victory, and their desire to avoid
the clash with neoliberal world order. The fact is that Royal Dutch Shell has already begun the fracking in the Donbas, the coup
regime in Kiev are already internationally accepted without reservations, the truce imposed in Novorossia has brought to its knees
the armed resistance to junta. All this leads way to deliver Novorossia to the hands of mafias sponsored by the local oligarchs
with friends in Kiev and Moscow.
Statement that the destiny of Russia was played in the Donbas is something more than a phrase, It is a claim based on a reality,
as the defeat of Novorossia would be the proof that Moscow had not the will to struggle. The betrayal of the fighters and the
hopes of Novorossia is the acceptance of the defeat and might lead in the future to the victory to the Moscow Maidan, the same
alliance of compradors and nationalists using which as storm troopers the globalist elite achieved their goal in Ukraine. If Novorossia
is defeated, they can expect being able to push a puppet into the Kremlin the same way. And not without reason. This summer, the
heroic struggle of the militia of the Donbas was the key element that forced the changes of the script designed for Kiev as well
as diminished chances of successful application of the same methods in Moscow. The Minsk Agreements and the truce imposed by them
are putting Novorossia on its knees, allowing for its destruction, but this time at the hands of their allies. Sad spectacle for
the Russian security services, which were effective enough to organize the Donbas resistance, but now are useless and powerless
before the neofascist Kiev junta.
The struggle of the Donbas does not correspond to the strategic interests of the Russian elite. They have been forced to intervene
to prevent the horror of the mass murder of the population of the Donbas at the hands of the extreme right. But the dream of a
Donbas free of oligarchs and with a sovereign state, committed to social justice for workers on this Slavic land are completely
incompatible with the post-soviet status quo. Only to the extent that there is a significant faction of Russian elite aware of
the contradictions of the global neoliberal game and who put their sense of patriotism first can lead them to face the challenge
that they face. Only in this case there would be any possibility of resistance; I would say patriotic resistance, because we already
know no one at the top is able to think in terms of class.
While very unlikely - there can be a move from February to October in Novorossia. You would say impossible. But he insurrection
of the Donbas in March, logically was "February". In order to achieve victory, to take full control over the territory of Donetsk
and Lugansk needs creation of the Revolutionary Military Council and suspension of the upcoming elections. which looking to be
a smokescreen for capitulation to junta. They need to declare that they are ready to resist to the end. This output would be desperate
move, without a doubt, and would represent the equivalent of a new "October". The event which of it occurs would force Moscow
to show their cards to their own population. And perhaps it can help to generate a pulse necessary for the organization of the
fight with Anglo Zionists empire between the towers of the Kremlin. That would move the fight toward more patriotic and popular
goals, But this presuppose a lot of assumptions and first of all that such a "Kremlin tower", which is capable of emitted such
a pulse, exists. Only in this case we can talk about achieving a real sovereignty. As Vasily Záitsev in Stalingrad suggested:
"Maybe we're doomed, but for the moment we are still the masters and lords of our land." In Novorossia there are plenty of fighters
who would agree with Záitsev, but they certainly lack political direction and, now the lack the support of Kremlin.
The Russian objective is achieving a multipolar capitalism with a Russia united under a nationalist ideology based on the
manipulation of patriotic sentiment, Orthodoxy and various Slavic myths. This objective is being challenged by the reality of
the conflict, which should be defined in terms of geopolitical goals. The reality is that the Russian elite would be allowed
to control their population as they wish, provided they renounce its sovereignty over territory and resources, renounce their
physical power base, i.e. homeland. This is the nature of the challenge. Putin is mistaken if he thinks that the Grand Patriarch
has the answer in their holy books. There is not enough incense in the Kremlin cathedrals to mask that reality."
Now let's discuss attempts to demonize Putin by Western MSM. They can be understood only in context of rabid Russophobia of US neocons
and their poodles in GB and other Western countries (especially in Germany).
Being tactful of Putin is one thing that I would not criticize the US press for ;-). If only because the track record disqualify
them from lecturing, but because one simple fact: I remember how they covered the Chechen disaster and how they covered Iraq invasion
by the USA. I strongly dislike Chechen war, as do most Russians. However, it is true that Chechen fundamentalists financed by Saudis
have killed hundreds of Caucasian and Russian civilians and were a real threat to the Russian society, whereas the Iraqis were no practical
threat to the USA.
Another problem with demonizing Putin is that no one in the US political system is willing to criticize the policies of Boris Yeltsin,
which ruined the majority of Russian people, falsified elections and included criminals in his inner circle under close guidance of
the USA. Sometime it looks to me that the real Axis of Evil runs somewhere between K Street and Constitution Avenue.
And in addition most of US neocons who dominated the USA foreign policy establishment sincerely consider themselves the only game
in town. While understanding very little, or absolutely nothing about other countries. And that is statement is equally applicable to
neocons dominated MSM such as NYT and Wash Post. American exeptionalism is uniquely blinding phenomenon.
It is actually pretty sad to read the infinite low of articles written without any desire to understand the complex situation in
modern Russia. Neocons analytics in regard to Russia is nauseating propaganda. The logic behind such articles is invariably hostile.
Moscow either weak or repressive or both. If Moscow sees some processes as a threat, it is racist, if it just lets it happen, it is
weak.
No good solution for Russia ever exists according to these people. And it would be better for Russia and the rest of the world if
it disappears from the face of Earth as quickly as possible.
Another influential part of world Russophobic community are Apartheid regimes established in Baltic countries with the direct help
of the USA government and, especially, USA emigrant organizations. Western Ukraine also fit this scenario (after EuroMaidan putsch Western
Ukrainian when far right nationalists came to power).
Baltic countries refuse to provide citizenship to people of different ethnicity who lawfully lived in them during the USSR period
(which lasted half a century or so). Here is an insightful take on Russophobia from veteran Novosty journalist by Pyotr Romanov
Ability to write about Russophobia dispassionately is similar to the ability to maintain dignity when somebody unexpectedly poor
a dirty water all over your head. However, as far as possible, try to talk about this phenomenon, no offense. We will not resent
the fact that the "Russian, according to British press - the most stupid in the world." Smile at the argument that the "war against
Napoleon won the non-Russian, and lice." We will not discuss with the Japanese man in the street, which feels an antipathy to us,
among other things because all the cold storms come on the street it from Russia.
Forget about the Finns, who, according to Western opinion polls, do not love us more than any foreigners. And this at a time when,
according to domestic opinion polls, that the Finns have the highest Russian sympathies.
What to do: love evil. In short, keep yourself in hand. It is better to remember the words of George Nathaniel Curzon Marquis,
Viceroy of India and at the time the British Foreign Minister: "Every Englishman comes to Russia as Russophobe, and left as a Russophile"
This means that in the basis of antipathy towards the Russian lies ignorance and myths. Partly born of life itself, partly by skillful
professionals employed by our political opponents: there is such a thing as information warfare. And this is not limited to the Soviet
period, but can be traced since ancient times. The disappearance of the Soviet Union did not affect Russophobia much. "New Thinking",
which Gorbachev dreamed about never materialized. There is also historical memory. If we talk about ethnophobias, this is an inexhaustible
source of poisoned water.
We can present many additional examples, but even from what has been said above, it is clear that the problem is multifaceted
and so deeply ingrained in the mind of a typical Western person (to say nothing about establishment -- NNB) that for Russians it
is better to forget about an illusion that it can be cured or even drastically changed. Each countermeasure is only a palliative
solution.
Thus we should not deceive ourselves - any countermeasure is only palliative. Russophobia glow can be reduced, but to end it might
be impossible as is the case with other ethnophoibias.
However, even to lower the level of Russophobia is a difficult undertaking which requires considerable intellectual efforts and
financial investments. In addition, the Russian professionals in the field of foreign media (or propaganda, sorry for such old-fashioned
word) are long time already listed in the "red book". After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new government decided that the
professionals who know how to work with foreign media are no longer needed, everything will be done automatically: our friends Bill
and Helmut will help. In extreme cases, retired professionals can be without problems replaced by the young and energetic sneakers
merchants. It did not happen. Meanwhile, the bad image of Russia means for the country significant economic and political losses.
When it comes to Russophobia, the questions usually turns out to be a surplus, but the answers, even the most sophisticated, almost
always may be subject to reasoned criticism. This is further evidence of the complexity and ambiguity of the problem. For example,
surveys carried out by foreigners, record that in recent years the attitude to the Russian in almost all countries around the world
deteriorated. It would seem that there is nothing to rejoice, meanwhile, history has repeatedly argued that a weakened Russia is
far less negative feelings abroad than Russia on the path to recovery, when she, like Phoenix, once again rises from the ashes. Thus,
the sharp deterioration of perceptions of Russia by foreigners can simultaneously be a sign that Moscow is perusing a wrong policy,
and, conversely, that is peruse absolutely correct policy. It is difficult to sort out.
By the way, if we were talking about the West here, it is curious to see how the West steps for many centuries on the same rake.
Whenever Russia is experiencing the most difficult times, Western politicians, believing Russia is close to death, begin to seriously
talk about her vivisection, and, conversely, when the "deceased" Russia suddenly opens his eyes, the West falls into mortal fear
and hysteria. So it was during the Troubled Times, when the Poles, Swedes and British tried to split Russian lands apart. Under Tsar
Alexei Mikhailovich, when Russia was still weakened Western Europe for the sake of preserving peace in its own backyard identified
zones of expansion of the major European powers: our motherland, according to this "peace plan", was granted to the Swedes. The only
thing that did not consider the German philosopher, mathematician, lawyer and theologian, Gottfried Leibniz -- the author of this
ingenious plan -- the birth of Peter the Great. By the end of the reign of Peter Sweden ceased to be a great power, Russia become
an empire, and a Russian soldier, frightened Europe to such hiccups, from which it can not escape for a long time.
Then there was the defeat in the Crimean War, which, as it seemed to many European politicians, forever cemented lag Russian from
the outside world, but came to the liberal reforms of Alexander II, who once again raised Russia from its knees. Later there was
a First World, revolution, civil war, and those event immediately generated Churchill plan to put an end to Russia once and forever,
dismembering her to pieces. And this project also ended in failure, but instead came back scared the West Europeans almost to death,
the Soviet Union.
Finally, the collapse of the USSR has created new hopes, and the emergence of a Russian helm of Putin produced a new disappointment:
hatred intermixed with fear. Here are typical in the West, the view expressed by one of the Italian journalists: "The USSR is considered
a country, lost forever. The recent emergence of Russia as a nation state was a bolt from the sky. " And that's madam did not know
yet what order book of Russian defense enterprises in the past year increased by 61%, as recently reported by Russian President.
Thunder would be simply deafening.
In short, we are dealing with a déjà vu all over gain: the same way foreign press treated Russia in Europe and after the Troubled
Times and after the Crimean War, and after the Revolution of 1917 .
Of course, the fact that due to the fear of Russian bear whose jaws are in Europe, and the tail is located in the Far East, simultaneously
flourish Russophobia, does not make Russians happy. But I personally, if we have to choose, prefer to have a strong Russia with a
undesirable side effect in the form of Russophobia, than the Russian bear's skin over the fireplace in some western office, which
the owner, proudly showing visitors, affectionately scratching behind his ear. Without experiencing any of Russophobia!
Are there any tools that would provide the West at least a middle ground between a pathological fear of Russian and not less pathological
contempt for her? I think it is. All I will not enumerate them all. But one thing worth mentioning is mandatory. Necessary, finally,
once and for all clear the historic debris, which is really to blame Russian. We can remember, say, Russian-Polish friction because
of Katyn. The fact that Stalin's regime committed a crime, we know the whole world, but Russia, including the modern Russia, could
not find the courage to tell the whole truth about the Polish tragedy. If you want to, once again apologize, and most importantly
to pass, finally, Warsaw, all at our disposal documents. In the end, there are still living relatives of the victims, who have every
right to know how their relatives died. Why this is not done until now, I can not understand, especially because the crime is committed
not this generation, but fundamentally different, the Stalinist regime.
At the same time, giving the necessary debt, in my opinion, in any case we can not forget about our own claims. Unlike its neighbors,
we all too easy to forgive, but it does not promote respect for Russia. Yes, there was Katyn. But until it was no less terrible fate
of the Russian prisoners who fell into the hands of the Poles after the failure of the famous Tukhachevsky offensive of Warsaw. There
are undeniable evidence how they treated those prisoners, both in Russia and the West. Division of assistance to POW in Poland of
the American Union of Christian youth on October 20, 1920 noted that the Russian prisoners were kept in deplorable conditions: indoors,
totally unsuitable for housing, with no furniture, sleeping aids, and most importantly - no glass in the windows, despite the cold.
In the prisoners had no shoes, clothing, medicines, not enough medical personnel, food. All of the above, conclude U.S. observers,
leads "to the rapid extinction of prisoners of war." Really dying by the thousands. No wonder the Lviv newspaper "Forward" December
22, 1920 calls Tuchola camp a "death camp". Thus, Katyn and Tuchola stand side by side. And it is necessary to treat
this and ask the Poles of repentance for the brutal treatment of Russian. By the way, we should not have any illusion. About the
same barbaric way the Red Army prisoners of war were treated, Baltic states treated the White Army Yudenich forces which retreat
to their land. They allowed to passed then through the border in small groups, then confiscated all the weapon, after another mile
all the valuables, and then clothes. So they beat is on the based on ideology but simply because they were Russians. Defending our
ancestors who were subjected to abuse, we are seeking not only justice but also of self-respect. Man, do not mindful of kinship,
respect is not deserved.
However, even if it has been said above about Russophobia, only a small drop in the cap or a smallest piece of a huge iceberg.
In addition, there is still the main problem, without deal with which all the fighting Russophobia is meaningless. This problem
is ourselves: our standard of living, our culture, the development of our civil society, our internal and foreign policy, our military
and economic power. Weak are always subject to humiliation: that is, unfortunately, human nature.
Any countermeasures -- although without them it situation might get worse -- no matter how sophisticated and skilled as they are,
still no substitute for that, I'm talking about. So, first of all, to deal with all of us Russophobia requires a healthy and strong
Russia. The fact that in this country and to live pleasantly, of course.
The old wisdom says, to be respected around, start to start to respect himself - a thing that you have created with their own
hands.
And there, staring, reconsider their views on the Russian, even touchy Finns.
The Western media even before the Ukrainian Maidan was broadcast events in Russia exclusively in a negative way. Attempts are being
made to discredit almost all Russian initiatives and projects, ranging from the Olympics to the elections of the President, etc. For
the implementation of anti-Russian propaganda standard techniques of "projection" polished in color revolutions were used. That includes
activization via NGOs of the opposition media and opposition figures within the country. The set of "prisoners of conscience"
was created from academics, businessmen and politicians, who, for various reasons, wished to leave Russia for the West.
Corrupt businessmen, who escaped to the West to avoid prosecution in Russia became prisoner of conscience and political oppositionist
on the moment they cross the border. Anti-Russian propaganda aims in stressing civilizational, cultural, intellectual backwardness of
Russia compared "advanced and enlightened" West.
The purpose of this propaganda "strangulation" of Russia is instituting "regime change" and bring to power the second generation
of compradors. As well as further dismemberment of its territory. Some forms on internal conflict are supported as a part of destabilization
strategy. With the ultimate goal of second partitioning of Russia and the emergence of new quasi-independent States.
To understand the coverage of Russia in western MSM one needs to understand the mechanisms of war propaganda. The latter is guided
by the following postulates well known since the WWI (Falsehood
in War-Time):
1. We do not want war.
2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
3. The enemy is the face of the devil.
4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interest.
5. The enemy systematically commits cruelties; our mishaps are involuntary.
6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8. Artists and intellectuals back our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred. "The ages-old 'God bless America' is playing once more."
10. All who doubt our propaganda, are traitors.
This topic is discussed in more details elsewhere, but a good starting point is the book
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965/1973) by French philosopher, theologian, legal scholar, and sociologist Jacques
Ellul. This book was one the first attempt to study propaganda from a sociological approach as well as a psychological one. It presents
a taxonomy for propaganda methods, including such paired opposites as
political–sociological,
vertical–horizontal,
rational–irrational,
agitation–integration.
During World War II, Ellul was a leader in the French resistance after being discharged as a professor from French universities by
the Vichy regime. After France's liberation, he became professor at the University of Bordeaux. He authored 58 books and numerous articles
over his lifetime, the dominant theme of which has been the threat to human freedom created by modern technology. In 1947, Ellul was
appointed chair of law and social history at the Institut d'études politiques that increased his reputation as a social and political
philosopher which led to the publication of his works in the United States. Here is an abridged Wikipedia summary:
...."The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, inspired by Harold Lasswell" defined propaganda as "the expression of opinions or
actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals
or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations".[3]
This definition seemed more accurate and was supported by others such as Goebbels, a German propagandist, who stated, "We
do not talk to say something, but to obtain a certain effect."[ Similarly F.C. Bartlett holds an accurate interpretation of
the goal of propaganda as not merely as an instrument to increase political understanding of events, but to obtain results through
action. Ellul supports the idea that propaganda is made primarily because of a will to action for the purpose of effectively arming
policy made by the State. Leonard Doob, an American specialist, defined propaganda in 1948 as "the attempt to affect the personalities
and to control the behavior of individuals towards desired ends."
Unending definitions show the uncertainty among specialists and the inability of definitions to encompass all that is propaganda.
Just because the term propaganda cannot be defined with any degree of precision does not mean that attempts to define it should be
abandoned.
"Very frequently propaganda is describe as a manipulation for the purpose of changing idea or opinions of making individuals
'believe' some idea or fact, and finally of making them adhere to some doctrine-all matters of the mind. It tries to convince,
to bring about a decision, to create a firm adherence to some truth. This is a completely wrong line of thinking: to view propaganda
as still being what it was in 1850 is to cling to an obsolete concept of man and of the means to influence him; it is to condemn
oneself to understand nothing about propaganda. The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke
action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action.
It is no longer to transform an opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief."
...He holds that the main concern of propaganda through psychological influence is sparking action to a desired response by
developing learned attitudes. ....
Summary of chapters
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes is divided into five substantive chapters discussing Ellul's analysis. Introduction
Regardless of the State, propaganda should be viewed as situated at the center of the growing powers of governmental and administrative
techniques.
"Differences in political regimes matter little; differences in social levels are more important; and most important is national
self-awareness. Propaganda is a good deal less the political weapon of a regime (it is that also) than the effect of a technological
society that embraces the entire man and tends to be a completely integrated society. Propaganda stops man from feeling that
things in society are oppressive and persuades him to submit with good grace."[7] Chapter One: Characteristics of Propaganda
Modern propaganda is a technique that requires an analysis of both environment and individual to be subjected to propaganda therefore
it is based on scientific analyses of psychology and sociology. Sufficient understanding of these two areas creates the most effective
propaganda and without the scientific research of modern psychology and sociology there would be no propaganda. "Step by step the
propagandist builds the techniques on the basis of his knowledge of man, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms,
his conditioning, and as much on social psychology as on depth psychology."[8] 1.Part One: External Characteristics
Propaganda is first and foremost concerned with influencing an individual psychologically by creating convictions and compliance
through imperceptible techniques that are effective only by continuous repetition. Propaganda employs encirclement on the individual
by trying to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or his needs
through his conscious and his unconscious, and by assailing him in both his private and his public life.[9] The propagandist also
acknowledges the most favorable moment to influence man is when an individual is caught up in the masses. Propaganda must be
total in that utilizes all forms of media to draw the individual into the net of propaganda. Propaganda is designed to be continuous
within the individual's life by filling the citizen's entire day. It is based on slow constant impregnation that functions over a
long period of time exceeding the individual's capacities for attention or adaptation and thus his capabilities of resistance. In
order for propaganda to maintain encirclement, it must be exerted by an organization capable of influencing psychological channels
that reach the individual. Psychological and physical actions are inseparable elements to propaganda, however, if no influence is
exerted by an organization than there can be no propaganda because it cannot operate in a vacuum. The necessity for a physical organization
limits propaganda enterprises and in order to be effective propaganda must work inside a group, principally inside a nation. Propaganda
must first organize the masses in order to propagandize within the masses. In general, propaganda is a set of methods employed by
an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically
unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated into an organization.[10] Propaganda should no longer be viewed in terms
of an orthodoxy but rather modern propaganda should be seen as an orthopraxy because it aims for participation not adherence. Participation
can be active or passive: active if propaganda has been able to mobilize the individual for action; passive if the individual does
not act directly but psychologically supports that action. 2. Part Two: Internal Characteristics The second major element that a
propagandist must understand is the environment in which the individual operates, mainly the foci of interest of the public. An understanding
of the conventional patterns and stereotypes that pre-exist in a milieu provide the propagandist with material from which to build
off. Propaganda is not able to create something out of nothing and is confined to developing pre-existing material thereby expressing
the fundamental currents of the society it seeks to influence. These currents include accepted structures such as collective sociological
presuppositions and myths that are fundamental to society.
"The Four Great Collective Sociological Presuppositions in the Modern World: 1.That an individual's
aim in life is happiness. 2.That man is naturally good. 3.That history develops in endless progress. 4.That everything is matter.
The Collective Myths: 1.of Work 2.of Happiness 3.of the Nation 4.of Youth 5.of the Hero"[11]
These currents reinforce socieand hold man's mjor convictions and propa
ganda must voice this reality. Propaganda is concerned with timeliness since an individual is only moved to action if he is pushed
towards a timely one by propaganda. Once it becomes history it inevitably becomes neutral and indifferent to the individual who is
sensitive primarily to current news. "Operational words" are used to penetrate an individual's indifference. However they lose their
value as immediacy passes as old facts are replaced by new ones. The "current events man" is carried along the current of news and
caught in the events of today, losing interest in the events of yesterday. The indifferent are apolitical and without opinion, therefore
they are outside of propaganda's grasp. Incidentally, there are also the undecided, people whose opinions are vague, who form the
majority of citizens within the collective. These citizens are the most susceptible to control of public opinion that is dictated
by propaganda. Lastly, this part discusses propaganda and truth or the ability of propaganda to relay something as true based not
on the accuracy of facts but of reality. Propaganda veils the truth with falsehoods even though lying is generally to be avoided.
3. Part Three: Categories of Propaganda Presented in this chapter is a sophisticated taxonomy for propaganda, including such paired
opposites as political-sociological, vertical-horizontal, rational-irrational, and agitation-integration.
Political vs. Sociological Propaganda:
Political Propaganda involves techniques of influence employed by a government, a party, an administration, or a pressure group
with the intention of changing the behavior of the public. The themes and objectives of this type of propaganda are of a political
nature. The goals are determined by the government, party, administration, or pressure group. The methods of political propaganda
are calculated in a precise manner and its main criteria is to disseminate an ideology for the very purpose of making various political
acts acceptable to the people.[12] There are two forms of political propaganda, tactical and strategic. Tactical political propaganda
seeks to obtain immediate results within a given framework. Strategic political propaganda is not concerned with speed but rather
it establishes the general line, the array of arguments, and the staging of campaigns.
Political propaganda reversed is sociological propaganda because the ideology is penetrated by means of its sociological
context. Propaganda, as it is traditionally known, implies an attempt to spread an ideology through the mass media of communication
in order to lead the public to a desired action. In sociological propaganda even media that are not controllable such as individual
art work, films, and writing reflect the ideology allowing for an accelerated penetration of the masses and the individuals within
them.[13]
Sociological propaganda is a phenomenon where a society seeks to integrate the maximum number of individuals into itself
by unifying its members' behavior according to a pattern, spreading its style of life abroad, and thus imposing itself on other
groups. Essentially sociological propaganda aims to increase conformity with the environment that is of a collective nature
by developing compliance with or defense of the established order through long term penetration and progressive adaptation by using
all social currents. The propaganda element is the way of life with which the individual is permeated and then the individual begins
to express it in film, writing, or art without realizing it. This involuntary behavior creates an expansion of society through advertising,
the movies, education, and magazines. "The entire group, consciously or not, expresses itself in this fashion; and to indicate, secondly
that its influence aims much more at an entire style of life."[14] This type of propaganda is not deliberate but springs up spontaneously
or unwittingly within a culture or nation. This propaganda reinforces the individual's way of life and represents this way of life
as best. Sociological propaganda creates an indisputable criterion for the individual to make judgments of good and evil according
to the order of the individual's way of life. Sociological propaganda does not result in action, however, it can prepare the ground
for direct propaganda. From then on, the individual in the clutches of such sociological propaganda believes that those who live
this way are on the side of the angels, and those who don't are bad.[15]
Vertical vs. Horizontal Propaganda: Vertical propaganda is similar to direct propaganda that aims at the individual in
the mass and is renewed constantly. However, in horizontal propaganda there is no top down structure but rather it springs up from
within the group. It involves meticulous encirclement that traps an individual involuntarily in dialectic. The individual is led
unfailingly to its adherence by talking about the dialectic until the individual discovers the answer that was set up unconsciously
for him to find. Schools are a primary mechanism for integrating the individual into the way of life.
Rational vs. Irrational Propaganda:
Propaganda is addressed to the individual on the foundation of feelings and passions which are irrational, however, the content
of propaganda does address reason and experience when it presents information and furnishes facts making it rational as well. It
is important for propaganda to be rational because modern man needs relation to facts. Modern man wants to be convinced that by acting
in a certain way he is obeying reason in order to have self justification. The challenge is creating an irrational response on the
basis of rational and factual elements by leaving an impression on an individual that remains long after the facts have faded away.
Individuals are not compelled to act based facts but rather on emotional pressure, the vision of the future, or the myth.
Agitation vs. Integration propaganda:Propaganda of agitation seeks to mobilize people in order to destroy the established
order and/or government. It seeks rebellion by provoking a crisis or unleashing explosive movements during one. It momentarily
subverts the habits, customs, and beliefs that were obstacles to making great leap forward by addressing the internal elements in
each of us. It eradicates the individual out of his normal framework and then proceeds to plunge him into enthusiasm by suggesting
extraordinary goals which nevertheless seem to him completely within reach. However, this enthusiasm can only last a short duration
so the objective must be achieved quickly followed by a period of rest. People cannot be kept at in a "state of perpetual enthusiasm
and insecurity". Rebellion is incited by the propagandist who knows that hate is one of the most profitable resources when drawn
out of an individual. Agitation propaganda is usually thought of as propaganda in that it aims to influence people to act. Integration
propaganda, on the other hand, is a more subtle form that aims to reinforce cultural norms. This is sociological in nature because
it provides stability to society by supporting the "way of life" and the myths within a culture. It is propaganda of conformity that
requires participation in the social body. This type of propaganda is more prominent and permanent, yet it is not as recognized as
agitation propaganda because it is more permanent manner. Basically, agitation propaganda provides the motive force when needed and
when not needed integration propaganda provides the context and backdrop. Chapter Two: The Condition for the Existence of Propaganda
The nature of propaganda has changed over the course of time and yet it is evident that propaganda cannot exist without a milieu.
The emergence of propaganda is interconnected with technology and scientific discoveries yet it can only appear and grow under certain
conditions. Several events have occurred that have furthered propaganda by increasing its ability in depth and discovering new methods.
Modern propaganda could not exist without the mass media or modern means of transportation which permit crowds of diverse individuals
from all over to assemble easily and frequently. 1.Part One: The Sociological Conditions
Society must contain elements of both an individualist society and a mass society. Propaganda aims to capture both the mass and
the individual at the same time through this dual type of society. A mass society is based on individuals that are reduced to ciphers
based on what they have in common to others. First conditions for growth and development of modern propaganda: it emerged in Western
Europe in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth precisely because that was when society was becoming increasingly
individualistic and its organic structures were breaking down. Individuals without natural organic local groups are defenseless and
more likely to be caught up in a social current. On the other hand, a mass society has considerable population density in which local
structures and organizations are weak, currents of opinion are strongly felt creating a certain psychological unity, and individuals
are organized into large and influential collectives. Mass society is characterized by uniformity and material life despite differences
of environment. Once a mass society is created, public opinion will begin to play a role to help individuals form their own personal
opinion. Public opinion can only express itself through channels which are provided by the mass media of communication without which
there could be no propaganda. Yet it is important that mass media be subject to centralized control in order to successfully form
public opinion without any opposition. Again Ellul mentions that the individual must be caught in wide net of media through all channels.
Once opinion has been formed, propaganda is able to reinforce it and transform opinion into action. 2. Part Two: Objective Conditions
of Total Propaganda Propaganda thrives off of what individuals have in common with others to develop patterns of behavior and modify
cultural opinions. Total propaganda recognizes that within a nation individuals should all have in common a standard of living, a
culture, and an ideology. The need of an average standard of living is that people must be able to afford to buy a radio, TV, a newspaper,
or go to the movies. It is mostly concerned with the densest mass which is made up of average men and not the very rich or very poor.
Poor cannot do this therefore they cannot be subjected to integration propaganda because the immediate concerns of daily life absorb
all their capacities and efforts. The poor can only be subjected to agitation propaganda, excited to the point of theft and murder.
But they cannot be trained by propaganda, kept in hand, channeled, and oriented. More advanced propaganda can influence only a man
who is not completely haunted by poverty, a man who can view things from a certain distance and be reasonably unconcerned about his
daily bread, who therefore can take an interest in more general matters.
"For propaganda to be effective the propagandee must have a certain store of ideas and a number of conditioned reflexes that can
only be acquired through peace of mind springing from relative security. The establishment of a mode of common life- all this leads
to the creation of a type of normal man conveniently leads all men toward that norm via a multitude of paths. Propaganda's intent
is to integrate people into the normal pattern prevailing in society bring about conformance to way of life. To sum up: The creation
of normalcy in our society can take one of two shapes. It can be the result of scientific, psycho-sociological analysis based on
statistics- that is the American type of normalcy. It can be ideological and doctrinaire- that is the Communist type. But the results
are identical: such normalcy necessarily gives rise to propaganda that can reduce the individual to the pattern most useful to society."[16]
"Information" Is an essential element of propaganda, which must "have reference to political or economic reality" to be credible.
In fact, no propaganda can work until the moment when a set of facts has become a problem in the eyes of those who constitute public
opinion." Education permits the dissemination of propaganda in that it enables people to consume information. Information is indistinguishable
from propaganda in that information is an essential element of propaganda because for propaganda to succeed it must have reference
to political or economic reality. Propaganda grafts itself onto an already existing reality through "informed opinion". Where no
informed opinion with regard to political or economic affairs propaganda cannot exist making it an indispensable aspect. Propaganda
means nothing without preliminary information that provides the basis for propaganda, gives propaganda the means to operate, and
generates the problems that propaganda exploits by pretending to offer solutions. It is through information that the individual is
placed in a social context and learns to understand the reality of his own situation. Information allows us to evaluate our situation
feel our own personal problems are a general social problem thus enabling propaganda to entice us into social and political action.
Information is most effective when it is objective and broad because it creates a general picture. With information quantity is better
than quality, the more political or economic facts believed to be mastered by an individual, the more sensitive their judgment is
to propaganda. In fact, only in and through propaganda do the masses have access to political economy, politics, art, or literature.
The more stereotypes in a culture, the easier it is to form public opinion, and the more an individual participates in that culture,
the more susceptible he becomes to the manipulation of these symbols. Chapter Three: The Necessity for Propaganda
All propaganda is based on a need, a dual need, first there is the need of state to make it and second there is the need of propagandee
to receive it. These two needs compliment and correspond to each other in the development of propaganda. Propaganda is an expression
of modern society as a whole. 1.Part One: The State's Necessity
The State has the need to make propaganda to integrate citizens into its society, to disseminate information, and to increase
participation and involvement of members of society. Sometimes the people want to take part in government affairs. However, the official
leaders cannot disconnect themselves from what the people want. Being that the people in charge cant escape the people , bait must
be presented to them. This acts as a disguise that must be there to hide what is really happening behind the scenes in the government
. Citizens are aware that political decisions affect everybody and governments cannot govern without the support, presence, pressure,
or knowledge of the people. Yet the people are incapable of making long term policy so opinion must be created to follow the government
because the government cannot be led by opinion. All of this describes the "Mass-Government" relationship characterized by people
demanding what has already been decided, in order to appear as though the government is actually caring about what the people need.
The next part that the book discuss is psychological warfare. It is believed to be a peace policy that is used between nations as
a form of aggression. This type of propaganda changes the public opinion of an opposing regime so that it can be in favor of there
regime. 2. Part Two: The Individual's Necessity The individual needs propaganda to gain satisfaction as a member of society. Individuals
want to be informed and to participate in the decisions of the state. Propaganda is the outlet through which individuals obtain the
satisfaction of having contributed to the state. It is a necessary instrument of a state or institution to spread information to
members of the group or society. But for propaganda to succeed it must respond to a need on the individual's part as well. The individual
is by no means just an innocent victim of propaganda when in fact he provokes the psychological action of propaganda by not merely
lending himself to it, but also from deriving satisfaction from it. It is strictly a sociological phenomenon, in the sense that it
has its roots and reasons in the need of the group that will sustain it. The great role performed by propaganda is in its ability
to give the people the involvement they crave or the illusion of it in order for the masses to be artificially satisfied. Individuals
are faced with decisions which require a range of information that the individual does not and cannot have without propaganda. Thus,
the individual is unable to accept that he cannot form opinion on his own and is caught between his desire and his inability. People
are willing and likely to accept propaganda that allows them to artificially satisfy their desire to have an opinion by hiding their
incompetence. The individual does not mind being given preconceived positions because otherwise he would realize that he does not
understand the problems of the modern world. The individual would then realize that he "depends on situations of which he has no
control" and have to face this reality. The individual cannot live in the state of this harsh reality so he derives satisfaction
from the veil created by the ideology and the sense of values it provides. The individual need psychological and ideological reasons
why he needs to be where he is and propaganda is the mechanism that the state uses for this very purpose. Chapter Four: Psychological
Effects of Propaganda
The psychological effects of propaganda on an individual cannot be ignored. The individual undergoes profound changes while being
propagandized mainly the diminishment of personal activity. "Propaganda furnishes objectives, organizes the traits of an individual
into a system, and freezes them into a mold by standardizing current ideas, hardening the prevailing stereotypes, and furnishing
thought patterns in all areas."[17] The individual is traumatized by the overwhelming force of propaganda that intensifies the prejudices
and beliefs until eventually the individual has no control over his own impulses. It seeks to push the individual into the mass until
his will fades entirely into that of the mass. Individuality is sacrificed for the greater cause of the nation by uniting him and
blending him with others. Critical and personal judgment are subdued and replaced with ready-made attitudes and opinions. Discernment
is made nearly impossible for the individual whose ability to judge is destroyed making him dependent on propaganda's ready-made
opinions from then on. The individual can no longer exercise his own judgment and becomes honed into what propaganda tells him. He
no longer expresses himself but his group once he accepts public opinion as his own. The artificial, impersonal public opinion created
by propaganda is absorbed by the individual and he becomes filled with its conviction. When he is fully integrated in the social
group and can no longer distinguish between himself and society than he has reached total alienation. In this process, the individual's
personal inclinations lead to participation in the collective where he loses control and submits to external impulses. The individual
is suppressed psychologically so that he can continue to live under the conditions in which society places him by providing an artificial
and unreal reality that is the result of powerful propaganda. Chapter Five: The Socio-Political Effects
"In the nineteenth century, the problem of opinion formation through the expression of thought was essentially a problem of contacts
between the State and the individual, and a problem of acquisition of freedom. But today, thanks to the mass media, the individual
finds himself outside the battle that is now between the State and powerful groups. The freedom to express ideas is no longer at
stake in this debate but it has been replaced by mastery and domination by the State or some powerful groups over the formation of
opinion. The individual is not in the battle because he is the stake and the battle will determine what voice he will be permitted
to hear and which words will have the power to obsess him."[18] 1.Part One: Propaganda and Ideology
An ideology provides society certain beliefs and no social group can exist without the foundation of these beliefs. Propaganda
is the means by which an ideology can expand without force. An ideology is either fortified within a group or expanded beyond the
borders of a group through propaganda. However, propaganda is less and less concerned with spreading the ideology nowadays as it
is with becoming autonomous. The ideology is no longer the decisive factor of propaganda that must be obeyed by the propagandist.
The propagandist cannot be constrained by the ideology of his State but must operate in service of the state and be able to manipulate
the ideology as if it were an object. The ideology merely provides the content for the propagandist to build off since he is limited
to what already is present within the group, nation, or society. The fundamental ideologies are nationalism, socialism, communism,
and democracy. 2. Part Two: Effects on the Structure of Public Opinion Public opinion is an instrument of propaganda that is disseminated
through the mass media of communication to the masses. While most people view the formation of public opinion as being shaped itself
by interaction between different viewpoints on controversial questions, this is incorrect because public opinion is delineated by
propaganda as a "truth" which is either believed or not believed. Public opinion ceases to be controversial and can no longer form
itself except through channels of mass media. No opinion can be held until it is communicated to the masses through mass media. Propaganda
uses public opinion to externalize inner opinions of the organization to the masses that eventually produces conformity.[19] 3. Part
Three: Propaganda and Grouping In regards to propaganda, there are two groups: the groups that make propaganda and the groups that
are subjected to propaganda. In Ellul's view, there is a "double foray on the part of propaganda that proves the excellence of one
group and the evilness of another at the same time to create partitioning". This creates isolation between groups by promoting allegiance
to the group one is in and suppressing conversation between groups. The more they listen to their propaganda the stronger their beliefs
and the greater their justifications for their actions. Partitioning takes place on many different levels including class, religious,
political, national and blocs of nations. A superior group is able to affect the lesser groups, however, groups that have an equal
amount of influence will only separate further from one another in that a members allegiance to a group develops closed mindedness.
Well-organized propaganda is able to work with different elements that exist within a nation such as religion, political parties,
and labor groups. 4. Part Four: Propaganda and Democracy Since democracy depends on public opinion, it is clear that propaganda must
be involved. The relationship between democracy and propaganda evidently presents a conflict between the principles of democracy
and the processes of propaganda. The individual is viewed as the cornerstone of a democracy which is a form of government that is
made "for the people and by the people". However, as discussed in early chapters Ellul described the masses are incapable of making
long-term foreign policy and the government needs to make these decisions in a timely manner. This is where propaganda comes into
play and projects an artificial reality to the masses to satisfy their need to participate in government while the decisions are
really made behind the scenes. This was also describe earlier as the "mass-government" relationship. Democratic regimes develop propaganda
in line with its myths and prejudices. Propaganda stresses the superiority of a democratic society while intensifying the prejudices
between democratic and oppressive.
Major themes
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes builds on prior notions of propaganda to demonstrate that while propaganda is psychological
in nature it is just as much sociological in nature as well. Propaganda is not just embedded into the individual's psyche but also
the cultural psyche. Propaganda works off the inner characteristics of both the individual and the society that the individual belongs.
This thorough analysis made by Ellul illustrates that to downplay the importance of the sociological influences of propaganda to
psychological ones is a dreadful error. Propaganda is more threatening when it begins to be recognized as sociological as well psychological
in nature. Below are two major themes the first stressing the psychological aims of propaganda the second the sociological aims.
"The Lonely Crowd"
The term "lonely crowd" is used by Ellul to distinguish the two inseparable elements of propaganda, the individual and the masses,
which must be addressed by the propagandist at the same time. As an isolated unit, the individual is of no interest to the propagandist
unless he is reduced to an average. It is crucial that the individual is never considered as an individual but always in terms of
what he has in common with others. The individual is included and integrated into the mass because the propagandist profits from
the process of diffusion of emotions through the mass, and at the same time, from the pressures felt by an individual when in a group.[20]
In this setting, "the individual caught up in the mass", the individual's reactions are easier to provoke and psychic defenses
are weakened. The individual must always be considered as a participant in a mass and similarly the mass must only be viewed as a
crowd composed of individuals. When propaganda is addressed to the crowd, it must touch each individual in that crowd which is in
fact nothing but assembled individuals. Conversely, the individual should not be viewed as alone as a listener, watcher, or reader
because the individual is nevertheless part of an invisible crowd though he is actually alone. The most favorable moment to influence
an individual is when he is alone in the mass, the structure of the mass is extremely profitable to the propagandist concerned with
being effective.
Fundamental currents in society
"One cannot make just any propaganda any place for anybody."[21] While propaganda is focused on reaching the individual, it cannot
only rely on building off what already exists in the individual. Propaganda must also attach itself to the pre-existing fundamental
currents of the society it seeks to influence. The propagandist must know the current tendencies and the stereotypes among the public
he is trying to reach. These are indicated by principal symbols of the culture the propagandist wishes to attack since these symbols
express the attitudes of a particular culture. Individuals are part of a culture and are therefore psychologically shaped by that
culture. The main task of propaganda is to utilize the conditioned symbols as transmitters of that culture to serve its purpose.
Propaganda must be a reflection of the fundamental structures of society to be successful and not contradictory of existing opinions.
A skillful propagandist does not try to change mass opinion or go against an accepted structure. Only a bad propagandist would make
a direct attack on an established, reasoned, durable opinion, accepted cliché, or fixed pattern. "Each individual harbors a large
number of stereotypes and established tendencies; from this arsenal the propagandist must select those easiest to mobilize, those
which will give the greatest strength to the action he wants to precipitate."[22]
While propaganda cannot create something out of nothing, it does have the ability to build on the foundation already established.
More importantly even though it does not create new material and is confined to what already exists, it is not necessarily powerless.
"It can attack from the rear, war own slowly, provide new centers of interest, which cause the neglect of previously acquired positions;
it can divert a prejudice; or it can elicit an action contrary to an opinion held by the individual without his being clearly aware
of it."[23]
Propaganda can gradually undermine prejudices and images in order to weaken them. These fundamental currents in society create
the perfect atmosphere for sociological propaganda which influences the individual through his customs and unconscious habits. Sociological
propaganda is a phenomenon where a society tries to unify its members' behavior according to a pattern. Essentially sociological
propaganda is to increase conformity with the environment that is of a collective nature by developing compliance with or defense
of the established order through long term penetration and progressive adaptation by using all social currents. The propaganda element
is the way of life with which the individual is permeated and then the individual begins to express it in film, writing, or art without
realizing it. This involuntary behavior creates an expansion of society through advertising, the movies, education, and magazines.
"The entire group, consciously or not, expresses itself in this fashion; and to indicate, secondly that its influence aims much more
at an entire style of life."[24] This type of propaganda is not deliberate but springs up spontaneously or unwittingly within a culture
or nation. This propaganda reinforces the individual's way of life and represents this way of life as best.
See also [edit] Brainwashing Conformity Ideology Indoctrination Media manipulation Mind control Propaganda Psychological manipulation
Psychological warfare Social Influence Socially constructed reality
The USA administration, and especially neocons, entrenched in State Department, organized putsch in Kiev with the help of their European
satellites. When the civil war started as the result of the putsch the USA introduced sanctions against Russia. See
"Fuck the EU": State Department neocons show EU its real place
Tremendous pressure exerted on Russia by the West, largely intended to show the subjects of world politics undesirability of implementing
an independent foreign policy. Washington and its satellites in Europe through sanctions are trying to demonstrate their ability to
isolate the "offending" countries from the global economy and technical progress by controlling supplies of high technology equipment.
However, analysis of the accusations against Russia suggests that both the USA Europe are dominated by neoliberals/neocons who themselves
are divorced from the realities of the current processes and looks at the world through the eyes of the early 90th then neoliberalism
enjoyed its triumphal march in Eastern Europe and xUSSR space.
After 2008 neoliberalism entered so called zombie stage. It is still very powerful and very dangerous, but ideology of neoliberalism,
like ideology of Marxism before is now looks like perishable goods with expired date of consumption. In no way it is not attractive
anymore. Events like enforcing Greece debt slavery by Germany and France only increase the reaction of rejection.
And that's despite all economic power the USA definitely possesses and success in implementing economic sanctions which drove the
Russia GDP growth into negative rages presents huge challenge for the USA. One of the best option the USA elites are pushing is the
limited war in Europe that can weaken both EU and Russia. So in a way the putsch in Kiev was anti-EU measure, as Victoria Nuland famous
quote suggests.
Sanctions, as damaging as they are, suggest that the empire lost diplomatic skills. And there is no question that economic
weapons are as close to the act of war as you can get. See Cold War II. As Patrick
Buchanan notes (ecnomicpolicyjournal.com,
April 28, 2014):
"Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putin's Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the
outside world ... and effectively making it a pariah state."
So wrote Peter Baker in Sunday's New York Times. Yet if history is any guide, this "pariah policy," even if adopted, will not
long endure.
Three years after Khrushchev sent tanks into Hungary, he
was touring the USA and celebrating with Ike the new "Spirit of Camp David."
Half a year after Khrushchev moved missiles into Cuba, JFK was talking detente is his famous speech at American University.
Three weeks after Moscow incited the Arabs in the Six-Day War, Lyndon Johnson was meeting with Premier Alexei Kosygin in New Jersey,
where the "Spirit of Glassboro," was born.
So it went through the Cold War. Post-crises, U.S. presidents reached out to Soviet leaders. For they saw Russia as too large
and too powerful to be isolated and ostracized like North Korea.
The sustained expansion of economic sanctions, especially against the oil and gas sector and specific companies as well as
limited access to credit resources indicate the seriousness of the Western establishment to deprive Russia of the economic growth and
the ability to protect its own economic interests.
A pipe bearing the Nord Stream 2 logo at a plant in Chelyabinsk, Russia, Feb. 26, 2020. PHOTO: MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS Listen to this article 5 minutes 00:00 / 05:07 1x Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma found himself in the company of a political titan, France's President François Mitterrand, on a gloomy day in December 1994. "Young man, you will be tricked, one way or another," Mitterrand told Mr. Kuchma, who was then the leader of a newly independent nation. Unsettled as he felt, Mr. Kuchma accepted the security assurances of the U.S., U.K. and Russia and signed the Budapest Memorandum. In exchange, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal, then the third-largest in the world. Little did we know that two decades later one of the signatories -- Russia -- would attack Ukraine and occupy its sovereign territory. Now, after many years of wooing and cajoling, Russia's attitude toward Ukraine is again growing belligerent. The Minsk process to resolve the conflict is stalled, and foreign troops have yet to leave the Donbas, the Ukrainian region where fighting rages on. Despite the supposed cessation of hostilities agreed to in September 2014, when the Minsk protocol was signed, little progress has been made. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma found himself in the company of a political titan, France's President François Mitterrand, on a gloomy day in December 1994. "Young man, you will be tricked, one way or another," Mitterrand told Mr. Kuchma, who was then the leader of a newly independent nation. Unsettled as he felt, Mr. Kuchma accepted the security assurances of the U.S., U.K. and Russia and signed the Budapest Memorandum. In exchange, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal, then the third-largest in the world. Little did we know that two decades later one of the signatories -- Russia -- would attack Ukraine and occupy its sovereign territory. Now, after many years of wooing and cajoling, Russia's attitude toward Ukraine is again growing belligerent. The Minsk process to resolve the conflict is stalled, and foreign troops have yet to leave the Donbas, the Ukrainian region where fighting rages on. Despite the supposed cessation of hostilities agreed to in September 2014, when the Minsk protocol was signed, little progress has been made. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Now, after many years of wooing and cajoling, Russia's attitude toward Ukraine is again growing belligerent. The Minsk process to resolve the conflict is stalled, and foreign troops have yet to leave the Donbas, the Ukrainian region where fighting rages on. Despite the supposed cessation of hostilities agreed to in September 2014, when the Minsk protocol was signed, little progress has been made. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Now, after many years of wooing and cajoling, Russia's attitude toward Ukraine is again growing belligerent. The Minsk process to resolve the conflict is stalled, and foreign troops have yet to leave the Donbas, the Ukrainian region where fighting rages on. Despite the supposed cessation of hostilities agreed to in September 2014, when the Minsk protocol was signed, little progress has been made. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. With the Nord Stream 1 and Turk Stream pipelines already operational, Nord Stream 2 will complete the encirclement of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, decoupling our energy security from Western Europe. Russia has tried to bully Ukraine by threatening gas cutoffs, most recently in June 2014. But Moscow has always had to be careful -- a large percentage of Russia's gas reaches Europe through Ukraine. If Nord Stream 2 is built, this consideration will be null and void. With the Nord Stream 1 and Turk Stream pipelines already operational, Nord Stream 2 will complete the encirclement of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, decoupling our energy security from Western Europe. Russia has tried to bully Ukraine by threatening gas cutoffs, most recently in June 2014. But Moscow has always had to be careful -- a large percentage of Russia's gas reaches Europe through Ukraine. If Nord Stream 2 is built, this consideration will be null and void. me title= NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP ( Apr 11, 2021 , www.wsj.com )
Five years ago, it seemed to many observers that something called "nationalism" had returned to U.S. politics and culture. After a
period stretching from the end of the Cold War to the election of
Donald
Trump
when Americans, or at least the elite, had been confident about economic globalization, internationalist foreign policy,
and mass immigration, it appeared that much of the Right was now rejecting that consensus. Crucial to this perceived shift was the
revival of the idea of America as a "nation," a specific place and distinct people whose values and political projects are not
necessarily addressed to the rights and needs of humanity as a whole.
After
Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division
, by Samuel Goldman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 208 pp., $24.95.
Half a decade later, it is much harder to believe that nationalism is, or ever was, resurgent, or that it offers a way forward for
conservatives. Many Republican voters and politicians continue to support Trump, who has largely taken leave of his earlier
nationalist orientation in favor of railing against the 2020 election. A handful of think tanks and small magazines, such as
American
Affairs
, have separated themselves from the former president while persisting in efforts to sketch the possibilities for a
conservative nationalism after Trump. Other intellectuals on the Right are trying to imagine what comes, as political theorist
Samuel Goldman puts it, "after nationalism."
In his short new book,
After Nationalism
:
Being American in
an Age of Division
, Goldman argues that a renewal of nationalism is neither possible nor desirable. He supports this argument
with a historical account that distinguishes among three different understandings of "nation" that have shaped politics over the
past four centuries. The one closest in time to us -- and closest to the values of the centrist, anti-Trump conservative intellectual
class -- is "creedal nationalism," in which American identity is based on agreement with a "creed," a set of values derived from
founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
Creedal nationalism, which flourished in the mid-20th century, emphasized legal equality and some degree of economic equality. Its
adherents connected this egalitarianism to an interpretation of American history according to which our founding values, at first
applied only partially or even hypocritically, were over the course of many political struggles wrested from the control of white
land-owning elites and extended to all. As Goldman observes, that creedal account of identity as both a philosophical commitment to
certain ideas and the historical process of their realization was a powerful force for collective action. It told people that who
they were depended on what they believed and assured them that their beliefs had been, and therefore could continue to be, not
merely an abstract ideal or a vision of the past but a program for political change. They had an identity, an ideology, a history,
and a program for the future.
Goldman claims that the creedal form of nationalism was a "failure" and disappeared during the crisis of the 1960s and 1970s.
According to him, activists from racial, sexual, and other minorities contested its interpretation of American history, which they
came to see not as the gradual expansion of the democratic promise of our founding but as a series of conflicts between oppressors
and oppressed. Undermining faith in America's basic goodness, understood as its capacity to integrate an ever-widening circle of
people into an ever-expanding notion of freedom and equality, these activists also overloaded narratives of national history with
demands for inclusion of "their" perspectives. Histories written in the aftermath of this cultural revolution tended to be either
polemically "anti-American," a confusing muddle of multicultural perspectives, or both. But conservatives and old-fashioned liberals
have failed to produce a cohesive new narrative, resorting instead to unconvincing arguments about the need for politically useful,
if historically false, national myths that can generate consensus.
Creedal nationalism, however, may neither be as obsolete nor as opposed to multiculturalism and activist politics as Goldman
suggests. We seem, in fact, to be witnessing the emergence of a new form of woke creedalism: a historical account of American
identity organized around the efforts of minorities to overcome white supremacy, patriarchy, and other evils. Unlike the earlier
form of creedalism, this new iteration does not present America's founding ideals as essentially good -- it is more likely to see
them as irredeemably tainted by the original sins of slavery and colonialism. It does, however, have the same structure and purpose
as the earlier creedalism. It offers adherents a sense of who they are (victims of America), what they believe (a particularly
strident sort of American egalitarianism), where they have been (oppression), and what they must do (defeat, rule over, and
eventually assimilate or annihilate their oppressors). The identitarian Left does not operate in an era "after nationalism." Rather,
it promotes a form of creedal nationalism that defines itself against a certain understanding of America.
If the Left has not moved beyond nationalism, one may doubt that the Right will. Goldman calls on readers to imagine a new kind of
American identity divorced from any "coherent and enduring sense of shared identity and purpose." Such commitments, he insists, can
only fuel the culture wars by stoking debates about who Americans are and what they value. He urges us instead to move toward a
minimal loyalty to the liberal democratic process, which we should appreciate as a means of diffusing our political, cultural, and
ethical divisions and allowing us to live decently together.
This proposal, which amounts to an appeal to fellow conservative intellectuals to distance themselves further from nationalism, has
at least two problems. First, Goldman hopes people will stop looking to politics to express their cultural identities and turn
instead toward "associational" life: unions, churches, etc. But the associational life of much of working- and middle-class America
has been hollowed out in the last two generations, largely because of economic policies that have left average people facing lives
that are ever more isolated, precarious, and brief. Second, although he briefly acknowledges in his introduction the "impulses" and
"grievances" that lead the Republican Party to shift away from "globalism," Goldman seems by his conclusion to have forgotten that
Americans face serious material problems that cannot be solved without collective action through the state. Pursuing this collective
action will require a long and intense process of political mobilization that seems implausible if people are not united by a shared
belief similar in intensity to the creedal nationalism of the past -- and counter to the creedal nationalism of the contemporary
Left.
Blake Smith is a historian of modern France and a literary translator.
From Peter the Great to Catherine the Great to Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II,
Alexander III and Nicholas II in 1917, Romanov czars ruled Russia. After 1917 came Vladimir
Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin
and Vladimir Putin.
Pat was doing so well up until this set of sentences... when Pat Buchanan horribly erred
in including the shifty and ne'er-do-well Boris Yeltsin as such person was an idiot & a
crook so much more so than an autocrat... He was too dumb, crooked, naive, drunken, and out
of touch with reality to be an autocrat... Yeltsin was just a fool, a lost fool, a forlorn
fool, and a weakling... Much like the Czar that came under the spell of Rasputin... Yeltsin
bought into all the Western Elites malarkey and foolishness about economic reforms that came
close to ruining Russian civilization and destroying Russia as a society and a nation...
Thereafter God upon feeling guilty for having allowed the worthless Yeltsin onto power...
then God sent the Angel St. Vladimir to save Russian civilization from destruction and to
save the Russian people... and the Holy Putin worked his magic and Russia was not destroyed,
the Russians were saved, and Russian civilization preserved for the future and spared its
demise...
CovidBannedTard 12 hours ago (Edited) remove link
The CCP loving corporate western bankers who sold American manufacturing to the CCP almost
had Russia on its knees with Yeltsin.They were asset stripping it.
Then Putin slammed their tally whackers in a door.
And booted them out.
The same CCP loving corporate bankers are still asset stripping America 21 years and
counting since Putin kicked them out.
Don't worry, US gov't...you can always sell your LNG to Poland...hahahah!
LA_Goldbug 11 hours ago
I wonder what the price is for this LNG from all the way across the Atlantic.
rosalinda 10 hours ago
I read it is triple the price of the Russian gas. The Russians have all the advantages
here. Putin probably would not weaponize the gas, but who is to say some Russian leader in
the future might not take the opportunity? Europe is more dependant on Russian gas then
Russia is dependant on European money
XJ033858JH 10 hours ago
It's more like 3.3 times...10% for the big guy
BannedCamp 8 hours ago
Likewise, Russia could nuke the whole world, but they never used a nuke on any country
before, but the US has. Saying that Russia might do something that the accusing party (The
U.S) is actually doing right now (to Germany) is blatant hypocrisy.
After much arm-twisting, bullying and foghorn diplomacy towards its European allies, the
United States appears to have finally given up on trying to block the giant Nord Stream 2
project with Russia. What an epic saga it has been, revealing much about American relations
with Europe and Washington's geopolitical objectives, as well as, ultimately, the historic
decline in U.S. global power.
In the end, sanity and natural justice seem to have prevailed. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline
under the Baltic Sea will double the existing flow of Russia's prodigious natural gas to
Germany and the rest of Europe. The fuel is economical and environmentally clean compared with
coal, oil and the shale gas that the Americans were vying with Russia to export.
Russia's vast energy resources will ensure Europe's economies and households are reliably
and efficiently fueled for the future. Germany, the economic engine of the European Union, has
a particular vital interest in securing the Nord Stream 2 project which augments an existing
Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Both follow the same Baltic Sea route of approximately 1,222 kilometers
– the longest pipeline in the world – taking Russian natural gas from its arctic
region to the northern shores of Germany. For Germany's export-led economy, Russian fuel is
essential for future growth, and hence benefiting the rest of Europe.
It was always a natural fit between Russia and the European Union. Geographically and
economically, the two parties are compatible traders and Nord Stream 2 is merely the
culmination of decades of efficient energy relations.
Enter the Americans. Washington has been seething over the strategic energy trade between
Russia and Europe. The opposition escalated under the Trump administration (so much for Trump
being an alleged Russian stooge!) when his ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, fired off
threatening letters to German and other European companies arrogantly warning that they would
be hit with sanctions if they dared proceed with Nord Stream 2. Pipe-laying work was indeed
interrupted last year by U.S. sanctions. (So much for European sovereignty and alleged meddling
in internal affairs by Russia!)
The ostensible American rationale was always absurd. Washington claimed that Russia would
exploit its strategic role as gas supplier by extracting malicious concessions from Europe. It
was also claimed that Russia would "weaponize" energy trade to enable alleged aggression
towards Ukraine and other Eastern European states. The rationale reflects the twisted
Machiavellian mentality of the Americans and their supporters in Europe – Poland and the
Baltic states, as well as the Kiev regime in Ukraine. Such mentality is shot-through with
irrational Russophobia.
The ridiculous paranoid claims against Russia are of course an inversion of reality. It is
the Americans and their European surrogates who are weaponizing a mundane matter of commercial
trade that in reality offers a win-win relationship. Part of the real objective is to distort
market economics by demonizing Russia in order for the United States to export their own vastly
more expensive and environmentally dirty liquefied natural gas to Europe. (So much for American
free-market capitalism!)
Another vital objective for Washington is to thwart any normal relations developing between
Russia and the rest of Europe. American hegemony and its hyper-militaristic economy depend on
dividing and ruling other nations as so-called "allies" and "adversaries". This has been a
long-time necessity ever since the Second World War and during the subsequent Cold War decades,
the latter constantly revived by Washington against Russia. (So much for American claims that
Russia is a "revisionist power"!)
However, there is a fundamental objective problem for the Americans. The empirical decline
of U.S. global power means that Washington can no longer bully other nations in the way it has
been accustomed to doing for decades. The old Cold War caricatures of demonizing others have
lost their allure and potency because the objective world we live in today simply does not make
them plausible or credible. The Russian gas trade with the European Union is a consummate case
in point. In short, Germany and the EU are not going to shoot themselves in the foot,
economically speaking, simply on the orders of Uncle Sam.
President Joe Biden had enough common sense – unlike the egotistical Trump – to
realize that American opposition to Nord Stream 2 was futile. Biden is more in tune with the
Washington establishment than his maverick predecessor. Hence Biden began waiving sanctions
imposed under Trump. Finally this week, the White House announced that it had come to an
agreement with Germany to permit Nord Stream 2 to go ahead. The Financial Times called it a
"truce" while the Wall Street Journal referred to a "deal" between Washington and Berlin.
(Ironically, American non-interference is presented as a "deal"!)
The implication is that the United States was magnanimously giving a "concession" to Europe.
The reality is the Americans were tacitly admitting they can't stop the strategic convergence
between Russia and the rest of Europe on a vital matter of energy supply.
In spinning the eventuality, Washington has continued to accuse Russia of "weaponizing"
trade. It warns that if Russia is perceived to be abusing relations with Ukraine and Europe
then the United States will slap more sanctions on Moscow. This amounts to the defeated bully
hyperventilating.
Another geopolitical factor is China. The Biden administration has prioritized confrontation
with China as the main long-term concern for repairing U.S. decline. Again, Biden is more in
tune with the imperial planners in Washington than Trump was. They know that in order for the
United States to have a chance of undermining China as a geopolitical rival the Europeans must
be aligned with U.S. policy. Trump's boorish browbeating of Europeans and Germany in particular
over NATO budgets and other petty issues resulted in an unprecedented rift in the
"transatlantic alliance" – the euphemism for American dominance over Europe. By appearing
to concede to Germany over Nord Stream 2, Washington is really aiming to shore up its
anti-China policy. This too is an admission of defeat whereby American power is unable to
confront China alone. The bully needs European lackeys to align, and so is obliged to offer a
"deal" over Russia's energy trade.
All in all, Washington's virtue-signaling is one helluva gas!
21 play_arrow 2
Peter Pan 12 hours ago
What the USA accuses Russia of planning to do down the track is actually what the USA is
doing now. In other words it is the USA that is weaponusing the gas issue with threats and
sanctions.
_ConanTheLibertarian_ 12 hours ago remove link
The US had no business interfering. Bye.
buzzsaw99 12 hours ago
the usa should ask russia to teach them how to keep natural gas flowing when it gets
cold outside. lol
RedSeaPedestrian 11 hours ago
How to keep a windmill spinning comes first.
two hoots 11 hours ago
Well we did interfere and the results exposed our decline in multifarious ways, mainly
power in all things that matter in the international arena: diplomacy, defense, economic,
trust. We yet have great influence with our scientific and industrial capabilities but even
there others are reaching parity. Internally our unsupportable debt will hinder even that.
Basically it is the US Government (domestic/foreign affairs) that has led the charge of our
decline. "Government is dead" .... (we need a new and improved one to worship)
Max21c 11 hours ago
The Washingtonians & Londoners are just upset because now their buddies and puppets
in the Ukraine aren't going to be able to use control over the transit of Russian gas
through the Ukraine to hold Europe hostage and get their way. So everything that they're
accusing the Russians of doing in the future is what Washingtonians, Londoners, and the
Ukraine were doing in the past. They're just upset since their Ukrainian vassals can no
longer do their bidding's against Moscow and Eastern Europe.
MR166 9 hours ago
I am a USA loving conservative but I really never understood the objections to the
pipeline. Since energy = standard of living the pipeline does nothing but help mankind. The
US has no problem becoming totally dependent on China for drugs, medical supplies, chips
and manufacturing but is afraid of Russia shipping gas to Europe. How does that make any
sense at all???!!!
ar8 9 hours ago (Edited) remove link
I will explain it for you:
US companies wanted to sell their gas to Europe.
The US companies attempted to use the US to bully European countries, companies,
projects and people through sanctions and threatening fines.
It worked, a bit: numerous companies ceased working on it.
But the US, as usual, with its bullyboy tactics had been less effective and created more
self-damage than it expected. It has created many enemies as a result, which will hasten
the demise of the US government.
Despite its age, the following is still relevant to Nord Stream II: "War Is a Racket" is
a speech and a 1935 short book, by Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps
Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient.
Rudolph 2 hours ago
One more reason. We control Ukraine, Ukraine control gas to Germany. = We control
Germany.
Vivekwhu 9 hours ago
What is the point of having a financial/military/market empire if you don't have a
finger in every pie enriching your elite?
Chief Joesph 11 hours ago
It was simply a war of hate about anything Russian. The U.S. really had nothing to offer
Germany anyway. From the German perspective, they had to protect their own interests, and
since Russia was offering to sell them natural gas and the U.S. wasn't, the choice was
rather simple. Perhaps it might make better relationships between eastern block countries
and the west too.
The U.S. spends a great amount of time and resources "hating" other countries for no
reason at all. It's bigotry by any other definition. The U.S. practices a systematic and
especially politically exploited expression of hatred and hostilities. Not only do they
practice this against other countries, but among their own kind too. The U.S. ranks as one
of the more hateful countries in the world, only surpassed by the Middle East. Add that to
the reasons why Germany doesn't want to go along with U.S. temper tantrums.
LA_Goldbug 10 hours ago
Not "hating" but "bombing" is the right description of the US foreign policy
practice.
porco rosso 11 hours ago
Mr Putin is way too clever for these yankster clowns and makes them look like the fools
they are time and time again. That is why they hate him so much.
Max21c 11 hours ago remove link
Putin didn't have to outsmart them. The Europeans need the gas. Water does not usually
flow uphill.
porco rosso 11 hours ago
True. But in Germany there are a lot of treacherous transatlantic elements that wanted
to sabotage the pipeline at any cost.
These elements are Germans but they dont give a **** about Germany. Treacherous
scumbags.
wootendw PREMIUM 11 hours ago (Edited)
" The ostensible American rationale was always absurd. Washington claimed that Russia
would exploit its strategic role as gas supplier by extracting malicious concessions from
Europe. It was also claimed that Russia would "weaponize" energy trade to enable alleged
aggression towards Ukraine and other Eastern European states. "
The absurdity lies with the existence of NATO or the US being in NATO. It no more makes
sense for US to commit ourselves to Europe's defense against Russia than it does for Europe
to buy American NG for three times the price it can get Russia's for.
williambanzai7 PREMIUM 10 hours ago (Edited)
Well apparently some tard thinks it makes perfect sense for other readily imagined
strategic reasons none of which have anything to do with accountable governance.
Someone thinks NATO is a dog leash. An expensive dog leash.
yerfej 11 hours ago
The washington idiot cabal needs something to focus on to justify their existence so
they wander the globe telling everyone how to live and who they can trade with when they're
not busy starting or expanding wars. The reality is the US federal government is a
completely useless parasite who's ONLY function is to domestically terrorize its own
citizens and the other nations of the world.
known unknown 10 hours ago remove link
Nordstream II was built to a stop Ukraine from blocking gas to Europe which they already
did once, stealing gas which they have always done. Germany asked Russia to build it. The
dummy Bulgarians stopped a similar pipeline yielding to the US. Then they cried about it
when they realized they lost billions. No matter what's promised Ukraine will be cut out in
5 years if they continue hostilities towards Russians.
LA_Goldbug 10 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Most people conveniently forget or don't know about Ukraine's siphoning of the gas while
in transit to European countries.
Germany is as bad as the US. Thanks to Germany Yugoslavia was decapitated with help from
US and UK.
Greed is King 11 hours ago
Nordstream 2 is a trade deal between the EU (primarily Germany) and Russia.
Russia sells gas to the EU; and the EU buys gas from Russia.
2. Who the feck does America think it is that it thinks it can interfere with and make
demands of free and sovereign nations ?.
When the bully is beaten, nobody ever feels sympathy for him; America would do well to
think about that.
Samual Vimes 11 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Surroguts /proxies, what ever.
Unelected policy makers in all their purple clad glory.
Max21c 12 hours ago (Edited)
After much arm-twisting, bullying and foghorn diplomacy towards its European allies,
the United States appears to have finally given up on trying to block the giant Nord
Stream 2 project with Russia. What an epic saga it has been, revealing much about
American relations with Europe and Washington's geopolitical objectives, as well as,
ultimately, the historic decline in U.S. global power.
It may show a decline in US global power or it may just show a rise in Washingtonian
amateurishness, arrogance, obnoxiousness, naivete and stupidity...
all it does is show out in the open that certain people are quacks, flakes, and
screwballs. Why would anyone in their right mind waste time & efforts or political
capital or diplomatic capital/bonnafides on trying to do something so silly as block Nord
Stream 2... It just makes Washingtonians look ridiculous, silly, and absurd...
It's almost as crazy as making a horse into a Roman Senator or declaring a war on the
Neptune or attacking the sea... It appears as if right after the Berlin Wall came down
American elites and Washingtonians all joined the Mad King Ludwig cult and became
worshipers of everything crazy...
RedSeaPedestrian 11 hours ago remove link
Or even as crazy as making a Dementia patient a Roman Emperor. (Or is that a United
States President? I forget sometimes.)
hugin-o-munin 12 hours ago remove link
Whatever political games are being played there is no getting around the fact that
Europe and Russia will eventually start to get along and expand trade and industrial
cooperation. Most people know that both the US and UK want to prevent this because it will
diminish their current top dog positions wrt global trade and financial control. Few things
compare to trade and mutual beneficial cooperation when it comes to lowering the risk for
conflict.
Just like Europe should promote development and trade with northern Africa so should the
US with central and southern America. This would also put an end to the endless migrant
caravans that are putting a huge strain on both the EU and US today. It's actually a non
brainer and says more about these satanic globalists' true motive than anything else.
ReichstagFireDept. 9 hours ago remove link
Nord Stream 2 is your best indicator that Governments are realizing that Renewable
Energy is NOT the replacement for Conventional Energy.
Nat. Gas IS the clean Energy source that everyone was screaming for...now it's finally
worldwide and they don't want it?!
Sorry, your Green Marxist dream is ending.
geno-econ 9 hours ago remove link
U.S. should be grateful Russia is sharing its natural resources with West rather than
aligning with China. There is much more than natural gas---ferro manganese, ferro chrome,
uranium, enrichment, titanium, aluminum, fertilizer, wheat, timber products, etc. U.S.
trade with China essentially imports only two major resources---cheap labor and synthetic
opioids !
williambanzai7 PREMIUM 9 hours ago
Well, there's some plastic junk and red refugees in there as well.
geno-econ 9 hours ago
only wealthy red capitalists disguised as refugees from China
ar8 9 hours ago
You are assuming the US government thinks rationally.
The Kremlin said on Thursday it disagreed with some statements in an agreement between the
United States and Germany on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, insisting that Russia had never
used energy as a tool of political pressure.
The pact aims to mitigate what critics see as the strategic dangers of the $11 billion Nord
Stream 2 pipeline, now 98% complete, being built under the Baltic Sea to carry gas from
Russia's Arctic region to Germany.
"Russia has always been and remains a responsible guarantor of energy security on the
European continent, or I would even say on a wider, global scale," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov told reporters.
Arby's Just Quietly Discontinued These 6 Menu Items See Dolly Parton Recreate Her Iconic
"Playboy" Cover 43 Years Later
WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - Germany has committed to take action on its own and back
action at the European Union level should Russia seek to use energy as a weapon or take
aggressive action against Ukraine, U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said on
Wednesday.
"Should Russia attempt to use energy as a weapon or commit further aggressive actions
against Ukraine, Germany will take actions at the national level and press for effective
measures at the European level, including sanctions, to limit Russian export capabilities in
the energy sector," Nuland told lawmakers, adding that Germany would support an extension of
the Russia-Ukraine transit agreement that expires in 2024. (Reporting By Arshad Mohammed and
Jonathan Landay)
"... Two world wars were fought to keep Germany down. The stated purpose of NATO is to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. ..."
"... IMO US didn't cause NS2 friction because it thinks it benefits Russia, but exactly because it benefits Germany too much. ..."
"... You know, NATO, "Keep the Germans down..." and all that. US must not permit it's vassals to become too economically stronger than their master. They want to drag everyone they can down with them (and in shitter US goes) so they can still be king of the hill (or ad least shitter bottom). ..."
"... The most important point to know is that US hegemony in Europe is predicated on fear and hostility between Germany and Russia. ..."
"... There are many limitations to European strategic autonomy -- and the EU embodies those limits in many ways -- but the case of NS2 demonstrates an independent streak in German strategy. It amounts to a zero sum loss for Washington. ..."
"... Lebanon does illustrate the incredible reach of the Empire. A leverage so long that every door leads to self immolation. Your mention of the current spyware scandal is right on point. These are instruments of absolute power. ..."
"... While Trump is certainly no representative of humanity, it just as certainly doesn't look like his rise was in the playbook of the dominant faction of the oligarchy. Trump really seems to fit the mould of a Bonapartist, though recast in the context of contemporary America. This would indicate that the imperial oligarchy is in crisis, which itself could lead to fractures in the empire, and among the empire's vassals in particular. ..."
The sanctions war the U.S. waged against Germany and Russia over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline
has ended with a total U.S. defeat.
The U.S. attempts to block the pipeline were part of the massive anti-Russia campaign waged
over the last five years. But it was always based on a misunderstanding. The pipeline is not to
Russia's advantage but important for Germany. As I described Nord Stream 2 in a
previous piece :
It is not Russia which needs the pipeline. It can
sell its gas to China for just as much as it makes by selling gas to Europe.
...
It is Germany, the EU's economic powerhouse, that needs the pipeline and the gas flowing
through it. Thanks to Chancellor Merkel's misguided energy policy - she put an end to nuclear
power in German after a tsunami in Japan destroyed three badly placed reactors - Germany
urgently needs the gas to keep its already high electricity prices from rising further.
That the new pipeline will bypass old ones which run through the Ukraine is likewise to
the benefit of Germany, not Russia. The pipeline infrastructure in the Ukraine is old and
near to disrepair. The Ukraine has no money to renew it. Politically it is under U.S.
influence. It could use its control over the energy flow to the EU for blackmail. (It already
tried
once.) The new pipeline, laid at the bottom of the Baltic sea, requires no payment for
crossing Ukrainian land and is safe from potential malign influence.
Maybe Chancellor Merkel on her recent visit to Washington DC finally managed to explain that
to the Biden administration. More likely though she simply told the U.S. to f*** off. Whatever
- the result is in. As the Wall Street Journal
reports today:
The U.S. and Germany have reached an agreement allowing completion of the Nord Stream 2
natural gas pipeline, officials from both countries say.
Under the four-point agreement, Germany and the U.S. would invest $50 million in Ukrainian
green-tech infrastructure, encompassing renewable energy and related industries. Germany also
would support energy talks in the Three Seas Initiative, a Central European diplomatic
forum.
Berlin and Washington as well would try to ensure that Ukraine continues to receive
roughly $3 billion in annual transit fees that Russia pays under its current agreement with
Kyiv, which runs through 2024. Officials didn't explain how to ensure that Russia continues
to make the payments.
The U.S. also would retain the prerogative of levying future pipeline sanctions in the
case of actions deemed to represent Russian energy coercion, officials in Washington
said.
So Germany will spend some chump change to buy up, together with the U.S, a few Ukrainian
companies that are involved in solar or wind mill stuff. It will 'support' some irrelevant
talks by maybe paying for the coffee. It also promises to try something that it has no way to
succeed in.
That's all just a fig leave. The U.S. really gave up without receiving anything for itself
or for its client regime in the Ukraine.
The Ukraine lobby in Congress will be very unhappy with that deal. The Biden administration
hopes to avoid an uproar over it. Yesterday Politico reported that the Biden
administration preemptively had told the Ukraine
to stop talking about the issue :
In the midst of tense negotiations with Berlin over a controversial Russia-to-Germany
pipeline, the Biden administration is asking a friendly country to stay quiet about its
vociferous opposition. And Ukraine is not happy.
U.S. officials have signaled that they've given up on stopping the project, known as the
Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and are now scrambling to contain the damage by striking a grand
bargain with Germany.
At the same time, administration officials have quietly urged their Ukrainian counterparts
to withhold criticism of a forthcoming agreement with Germany involving the pipeline,
according to four people with knowledge of the conversations.
The U.S. officials have indicated that going public with opposition to the forthcoming
agreement could damage the Washington-Kyiv bilateral relationship , those sources said. The
officials have also urged the Ukrainians not to discuss the U.S. and Germany's potential
plans with Congress.
If Trump had done the above Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would have called for another
impeachment.
The Ukrainian President Zelensky is furious over the deal and about being told to shut up.
But there is little he can do but to accept the booby price the Biden administration offered
him:
U.S. officials' pressure on Ukrainian officials to withhold criticism of whatever final deal
the Americans and the Germans reach will face significant resistance.
A source close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kyiv's position is that
U.S. sanctions could still stop completion of the project, if only the Biden administration
had the will to use them at the construction and certification stages. That person said Kyiv
remains staunchly opposed to the project.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration gave Zelensky a date for a meeting at the White House
with the president later this summer , according to a senior administration official.
Nord Stream 2 is to 96% ready. Its testing will start in August or September and by the
years end it will hopefully deliver gas to western Europe.
Talks about building Nord Stream 3 are likely to start soon.
Posted by b on July 21, 2021 at 17:13 UTC | Permalink
Did Merkel also get Biden to promise that neither he nor any of his clients (AQ, ISIS, etc.
etc. etc.) would perpetrate any "unfortunate incidents" or "disruptions" on NS 2?
And would any such promises be worth the breath that uttered them?
But it was always based on a misunderstanding. The pipeline is not to Russia's advantage
but important for Germany
I'm afraid it is you who doesn't understand. Two world wars were fought to keep Germany down. The stated purpose of NATO is to keep the
Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.
They weren't trying to block NS2 to keep Russia out but to keep Germany down,
I beg to differ. IMO US didn't cause NS2 friction because it thinks it benefits Russia, but
exactly because it benefits Germany too much.
You know, NATO, "Keep the Germans down..." and all that. US must not permit it's vassals
to become too economically stronger than their master. They want to drag everyone they can
down with them (and in shitter US goes) so they can still be king of the hill (or ad least
shitter bottom).
That is why there is also pressure for all western countries to adopt insane immigration,
LGBT, austerity policies and what not. What a better way to destroy all these countries, both
economically and culturally, or adleast make them far more worse than US, it is only way US
can again become "powerhouse", like after WW2.
Does this represent a fracturing of the EU? or maybe a change in direction?
What b is pointing out about how if it were Trump....only means that the bullying approach
by empire didn't work and now we are seeing face saving bullying and backpedaling like crazy
in some areas.
I roll my eyes at this ongoing belief that Trump represented humanity instead of all or
some faction of the elite....as a demigod it seems.
the "facts" as you state them are not quite right.
1. China is ruthless. They waited until the last possible second to sign a deal with Iran,
thus ensuring they are getting the best possible price for Iran's oil, basically robbing Iran
blind. The poor Iran didn't have a choice but to agree. Even today, Putin will NOT say how
much China is paying for gas on Siberia pipeline and a lot of people think China is robbing
Russia blind on the deal. A second Siberia line without a NS2 will put Russia is very bad
negotiation position and China in very good one, giving them the advantage to ask for any
price of Russia and get it.
2. Merkel is leaving anyway in September and thw Green party that will be taking over HATES
RUssia with passion. The NS2 is far from done deal, it needs to be insured. Plus it will fall
under the EU 3rd energy package making sure Germany doesn't use it 100% . The NS2 will never
be 100 usable, the Green party will see to that. AT best it will be only 50% usage.
And so on and so on.
Funny how in today's world, we all have different facts. My facts are different than YOUR
facts. My facts are just as relevant as your facts.
What is more, the most dangerous potential alliance, from the perspective of the United
States, was considered to be an alliance between Russia and Germany. This would be an
alliance of German technology and capital with Russian natural and human resources.
The article explains a lot, more than just Germany or Russia.
They weren't trying to block NS2 to keep Russia out but to keep Germany down...
Germany would be 'down' no matter how much financial power it accumulates - i.e regardless
of NS2. The imperial garrison at Rammstein AFB will make sure of that. What the Americans fear is the symbolic meaning of NS2 in terms of geopolitical influence
for Russia. The loss of maneuverability against Russia that results from a key vassal not
being able to move in complete obedience to Uncle Sam's wishes.
The pipeline construction battle has been won, not the energy flow war.
The Financial Empire is most likely resorting to some CHARADE to find an excuse to later
stop the gas flow through Nord Stream 2. Empire's bullying was clearly exposed through
sanctions and it LOST the battle of stopping the pipeline construction. So it moves to the
next battle to find an excuse to stop the gas flow. Empire's evil intent is visible in these
words, "the U.S. also would retain the prerogative of levying future pipeline sanctions in
the case of actions deemed to represent Russian energy coercion, officials in Washington
said."
The Financial Empire has worked hard over the last century to prevent Germany from allying
herself with Russia. It wants to control energy flowing in Eurasia and its pricing. The war
will be only won when the Financial Empire is defeated and its global pillars of power
DISMANTLED.
"The 'heartland' was an area centered in Eurasia, which would be so situated and catered
to by resources and manpower as to render it an unconquerable fortress and a fearsome power;
and the 'crescent' was a virtual semi-arc encompassing an array of islands – America,
Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan – which, as 'Sea Powers,' watched over the
Eurasian landmass to detect and eventually thwart any tendency towards a consolidation of
power on the heartland."
Has the Financial Empire stopped interfering in other regions?
"US, Germany Threaten Retaliatory Action Against Russia in Draft Nord Stream 2 Accord -
Report...."
"As the US and Germany have reportedly reached a deal on the Nord Stream 2 project,
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing the obtained draft text of the agreement, that it
would threaten sanctions and other measures if Russia tried to use energy as a 'weapon'
against Ukraine , though it did not specify what actions could provoke the
countermeasures.
"According to the report, in such a case, Germany will take unspecified national
action , a decision that may represent a concession from Chancellor Angela Merkel, who
had previously refused to take independent action against Moscow over the gas pipeline that
will run from Russia to Germany." [My Emphasis]
The article continues:
"On Tuesday, Ned Price, a spokesman for the US State Department, told reporters that he
did not have final details of an agreement to announce, but that 'the Germans have put
forward useful proposals, and we have been able to make progress on steps to achieve that
shared goal, that shared goal being to ensure that Russia cannot weaponize energy
."
" The US was hoping for explicit language that would commit Germany to shut down gas
delivery through Nord Stream 2 if Russia attempted to exert undue influence on Ukraine .
Germany, on the other hand, has long rejected such a move, stating that such a threat would
only serve to politicize a project that Merkel stresses is solely commercial in nature." [My
Emphasis]
The overall motive appears to be this:
"The accord would also commit Germany to use its influence to prolong Ukraine's gas
transit arrangement with Russia beyond 2024, possibly for up to ten years . Those talks
would begin no later than September 1, according to the news outlet." [My Emphasis]
So, here we have the Outlaw US Empire meddling in the internal affairs of three
nations--Germany, Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine cannot afford Russian gas as it has no rubles
to pay for it. Thus if Ukraine has no money to buy, then why should Gazprom be obliged to
give it away freely? What about other European customers who rely on gas piped through
Ukraine; are they going to see what they pay for get stolen by Ukraine? And what happens when
the pipelines breakdown from lack of maintenance since Ukraine's broke thanks to the Outlaw
Us Empire's coup that razed its economy? Shouldn't the Empire and its NATO vassals who
invaded Ukraine via their coup be forced to pay for such maintenance? And just who
"weaponized" this entire situation in the first place?
From my understanding, NS 2 was mutually beneficial for Germany and Russia.
As noted, Germany desperately needs energy and relying on the outrageously priced and
unreliable US LNG was not a viable option.
Russia benefits also.
1.No more high transit fees Russia pays Ukraine. I imagine some of that was finding its way
into US pockets after 2014.
2.Ukraine supposedly helped itself to plenty of stolen gas from the pipeline. That will
stop.
3.Ukraine was occasionally shutting down the pipeline for political reasons until Russia paid
the ransom. Not anymore.
So, Russia and Germany were both highly motivated to finish the pipeline ASAP.
Germany would be 'down' no matter how much financial power it accumulates - i.e regardless
of NS2.
The imperial garrison at Rammstein AFB will make sure of that.
Putin not too long ago (can't find the article now) said he was prepared to help Europe
gain its independence should they wish to do so, Rammstein or no Rammstein.
What the Americans fear is the symbolic meaning of NS2 in terms of geopolitical influence
for Russia. The loss of maneuverability against Russia that results from a key vassal not
being able to move in complete obedience to Uncle Sam's wishes.
What they fear should this deal go ahead is a Germany/Russia/China Axis that would control
the world island and thus the world.
I was convinced that the US of Assholery had lost its infantile anti-NS2 'battle' in
September 2020, after watching an episode of DW Conflict Zone in which Sarah Kelly
interviewed Niels Annen, Germany's Deputy FM. Annen came to the interview armed to the teeth
with embarrassing facts about US hypocrisy including, but not limited to, the fact that USA,
itself, buys vast quantities of petroleum products from Russia each year.
The interview is Google-able and, apart from pure entertainment value, Sarah is much
easier on the eye than Tim Sebastian...
1. China is ruthless. They waited until the last possible second to sign a deal with Iran, thus ensuring they are
getting the best possible price for Iran's oil, basically robbing Iran blind.
Hmmm... I seem to remember Iran shafting China on the south Pars gas field when it looked like the JCPOA was looking
likely...
If this memory of mine was correct (it may not be) then you really can't blame China for a little commercial payback.
In any case it was shown as soon as JCPOA Mk.1 was passed Iran RAN, not walked, to smooch up to the west for business, not
China, not Russia. So if its just business for Iran then its just business for China.
In our eagerness to expose the empire's shortcomings in a quick 'gotcha!' moment we
shouldn't rush head first into false premises. To suggest Dear Uncle Sam is concerned with
anything other than his own navel is naive. He's the man with the plan. He knows that down
the road, Oceania's eastern border won't run along the Dnieper but right off the shore of
Airstrip One.
As has been mentioned before, the NN2 pipeline gives Germany leverage over Russia ,
not the other way around.
US => Germany => Russia.
Which is now plan b for the US. If then they can use their leverage over Germany to
steer it in any direction it wants to vs. Russia.
This will probably be followed by "targeted" sanctions on specific Politicians, Bankers
and Heads of industry. They only need to propose such sanctions individually for them
to have an effect. Using Pegasus for inside information to Blackmail those it wants to.
*****
Example of a sanctions racket :
Similar to the potential sanctions on any Lebanese Politian or Group Leaders if they get Oil
from Iran, Russia or China. The Lebanese population be damned.
"Apparently US Treasury has informed the government of Lebanon, that if any Oil
products from Iran make it into Lebanon, in any way; the government of Lebanon and all its
members will be sanctioned. This includes the Central Bankers"
Just in case you didn't understand how the crisis in the country is manufactured.
Pegasus again:
"leaks on the targets of Israeli spy program Pegasus, show hundreds in
Lebanon including the elected leadership of every party, every media outlet, & every
security agency, have been targeted by clients in 10 countries; all belonging to the
Imperialist camp.
But it is very easy to guess by looking at who are the external imperialist forces
active in Lebanon. USA/UK/France/Turkey/Germany/Canada/Israel/Qatar; that's eight. Plus Saudi
Arabia." *******
PS. Lebanon; This comes as a response to Sayyed Nasrallah stating in his last speech
that if the State in Lebanon is not able to provide fuel, he will bring it at the expense of
Hizbullah from Iran, dock it in the port of Beirut, and dared anyone to stop it from reaching
the people.
*****
Germany will only be the latest victim as the Mafia-US "protection" racket is ramped
up.
Both b and the many commenters raise excellent points. Yes, the US wants to hurt both Russia
and Germany. And yes the US *definitely* fears close cooperation between Moscow and Berlin.
But the main take home lesson is that the US failed despite enormous efforts to block NS2.
Russo-German cooperation is inevitable and the world will be better for it.
>>a lot of people think China is robbing Russia blind on the deal
Why would be Russia building Power of Siberia 2 and 3 to China then? Or selling LNG too?
You don't have much knowledge on the topic, the way it looks. A giant gas plant was built
near the border with China, the second biggest gas plant in the world, because the gas for
China is rich in rare elements, thus turning Russia in of the the biggest producers of
strategic helium, not to mention extracting many other rare elements. China gets gas that has
been cleaned of anything valuable from it, with the exception of the gas itself.
>>merkel is leaving anyway in September and thw Green party that will be taking
over
The latest polls show clear lead for CDU/CSU. And it looks like its too late.
>>the NS2 will never be 100 usable, tthe Green party will see to that. AT best it
will be only 50% usage.
Do you even follow what has been going on? Germany is free not to buy russian gas, that
is, to be left without gas if this is what it wants.
Do you see how nat gas prices exploded in Europe recently? Do you know why is that?
Because Russia refuses to sell additional volumes via Ukraine's network. It is a message to
finish the issues with NS 2 pipeline faster and then everything will be fine, there will be
plenty of space for new gas volumes, and the gas price will drop.
It is the UNSC resolutions of 2006, 2007 and 2010 which have laid the backbone for the
incremental diplomatic, economic and material warfare against Iran. Without them, there would
be no narrative framing Iran as an outlaw nor justification for crippling sanctions. That
Iran should even be subjected to the JCPOA is in itself an objective injustice.
Each of these resolutions could easily have been blocked by the two permanent members of
the UNSC we go to much lengths on this forum to depict as selfless adversaries of the Empire.
All they had to do was raise a finger and say niet. In other words, by their actions, these
two members placed Iran in a very disadvantageous trading position.
So, did they profit from this position of strength?
"According to the draft deal, obtained by Bloomberg, Washington and Berlin would
threaten sanctions and other retaliation if Russia 'tries to use energy as a weapon against
Ukraine', with Germany being obligated to take unspecified actions in the event of Russian
'misbehaviour' . [My Emphasis]
The article then turns to the interview:
"Professor Glenn Diesen of the University of South-Eastern Norway has explained what is
behind the US-Germany row is." [That last "is" appears to be a typo]
I suggest barflies pay close attention to Dr. Diesen who's the author of an outstanding
book on the geoeconomics of Russia and China, Russia's Geoeconomic Strategy for a Greater
Eurasia . I judge the following Q&A to be most relevant:
"Sputnik: The Biden administration waived sanctions on the firm behind the gas project,
Nord Stream 2 AG, and its chief executive, Matthias Warnig. At the same time, Secretary of
State Antony Blinken stated in June that the pipeline project was a Russian tool for the
coercion of Europe and signaled that the US has leverage against it. What's behind
Washington's mixed signals with regard to the project? How could they throw sand in Nord
Stream 2's gears, in your opinion - or are Blinken's threats empty?
"Glenn Diesen: The mixed signals demonstrate that the completion of Nord Stream 2 was a
defeat for the US. Biden confirmed that he waived sanctions because the project was near
complete. Sanctions could not stop the project [link at original], rather they would merely
continue to worsen relations with Berlin and Moscow. The best approach for Washington at this
point is to recognise that Nord Stream 2 is a done deal, and instead Washington will direct
its focus towards limiting the geo-economics consequences of the pipeline by obtaining
commitments from Berlin such as preserving Ukraine's role as a transit state [Link at
original].
"The US therefore waives sanctions against Nord Stream 2, yet threatens new sanctions if
Berlin fails to accept US conditions and limitations on Nord Stream 2. Blinken's threats
are loaded with 'strategic ambiguity', which could be aimed to conceal that they are merely
empty threats . However, strategic ambiguity is also conducive to prevent Berlin from
calculating the "costs" and possible remedies to US threats. Furthermore, ambiguity can be
ideal in terms of how to respond as it is not a good look to continuously threaten allies."
[Emphasis original]
The professor's closing remarks are also very important regarding Merkel's successor.
Where I disagree is with the notion that the Outlaw US Empire has geoeconomic leverage over
the EU--military yes, but the Empire is just as uncompetitive versus the EU as it is versus
China.
So, did they profit from this position of strength?
Of course they did, let's be real. China and Russia are not going to be the all benevolent saviors of the world, they never
were, never will.
They will always serve their interests first and foremost. Sometimes, they do get suckered
into UNSC resolutions like those you spoke of. Sometimes, there're backroom horse trading
that we're not privy to and little countries are just chips on the table...
The best we can hope for is that they can behave with more integrity than currently shown
by the incumbent anglospheric bloc in their re-ascendancy.
Either we ditch the UNSC system or everybody get nukes, because i can't see the current
UNSC members willing ditch their own, ever.
Lysander is correct.
The most important point to know is that US hegemony in Europe is predicated on fear and
hostility between Germany and Russia.
Types of interdependence between Germany and Russia, eg. NRG security, are a direct threat
to US dominance over Europe as a whole.
There are many limitations to European strategic autonomy -- and the EU embodies those
limits in many ways -- but the case of NS2 demonstrates an independent streak in German
strategy. It amounts to a zero sum loss for Washington.
Way too much confusion over what Nord Stream 2 really means.
1) Russian gas transiting Ukraine had already fallen from 150 bcm to the high 90s/low 100s
before Nord Stream 2 goes online.
Even after NS2 goes online, a significant amount of Russian gas will still transit via
Ukraine.
2) Energy demand generally increases over time, not decreases. Russian gas exports aren't
increasing in a straight line, but keep in mind that there are significant new competitors
now and in the process coming online. These include Azerbaijan as well as the ongoing
pipeline struggle through the Black Sea/Turkey/Eastern Med.
I never believed there was any chance of NS2 not completing; the only question was
when.
Lebanon does illustrate the incredible reach of the Empire. A leverage so long that every
door leads to self immolation. Your mention of the current spyware scandal is right on point.
These are instruments of absolute power.
What we need now is a worldwide Me Too movement to denounce this leverage. Taking that
first step would require a lot of courage for any blackmailed individual, but the one little
breach could lead to a flood of world citizens just about fed up with the Empire's shit.
It pains me that I do not remember exactly who it was, but one of the more erudite posters
here mentioned some time ago that Trump seemed more like a Bonapartist figure than a fascist
or a typical and simple representative of a faction in the oligarchy. While Trump is
certainly no representative of humanity, it just as certainly doesn't look like his rise was
in the playbook of the dominant faction of the oligarchy. Trump really seems to fit the mould
of a Bonapartist, though recast in the context of contemporary America. This would indicate
that the imperial oligarchy is in crisis, which itself could lead to fractures in the empire,
and among the empire's vassals in particular.
It is unwise to downplay the significance of Trump coming to power in 2016, regardless of
what feelings one may have about the individual himself. The conditions that led to the rise
of Trump not only persist, but have intensified. Those conditions cannot be resolved by mass
media gaslighting and social media censorship, which actually seems to be having an effect
more like holding the emergency relief valve on a boiler closed; it quiets an annoying sound,
but causes the underlying issue to grow more severe.
Basically, further splits in the EU are inevitable. It is the timing of those splits that
is difficult to predict, but the accuracy of that prediction hinges upon the accuracy of our
assessment of events occurring now. Interestingly, Trump is still part of these unfolding
events.
Fracturing NATO and the West hmmm ... If Germany gains any independence from U.S.
coercion they are 'fracturing Europe'. Bad Germany.
Germany must forever remain a vassal state of the U.S. by allowing the U.S. to use another
vassal state to control their energy supply. And who says we don't believe in freedom. Neocons are such vile creatures. Always twisting words but remember, whenever they say
something, the exact opposite is true.
One issue underlying this fiasco is I believe that the neocons / Atlantic Council were 100%
certain that Russia did not have the expertise to lay pipelines at the required depths, and
once Allseas was facing sanctions, the project would never be completed.
I believe that the exact pricing formula for Power of Siberia is confidential, but this
much is known:
"The price of Russian gas supplies to China increased in the second quarter of 2021 for
the first time since deliveries started via the Power of Siberia pipeline in 2019, but daily
delivery volumes fell in April, Interfax reported on Sunday.
Russian gas giant Gazprom GAZP.MM has said it supplied China with 3.84 billion cubic
metres of gas via the Power of Siberia pipeline in its first year of operation.
Citing Chinese customs data, Interfax said the price of gas increased to $148 per thousand
cubic metres, rising from $121 in the first quarter, and reversing a downward trend."
Also, Victoria Nuland informed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today about Biden's
cave to Russia. That must have been brutal for her. Regardless, nice to see a rare display of
sanity from s US administration.
The primary and only objective of the US Foreign policy vis-a-vis Europe since WW2 has
been to prevent Russia and Germany (now read the German run EU project) coupling up, that's
it, nothing else matters on Europe.
The completion of N-2 presents a serious blow tho this aim, the new pipeline is a must for
Germany, it must get finished, without it Germany's supply of energy would have been almost
fully controlled by the Americans who have either direct or indirect authority over every
major source of hydrocarbons except for Venezuela and Russia, the latter only partly, the
Ukrainian pipeline is fully in their sphere of influence.
Energy fuels everything from private dwellings to major corporations, it's together with
labour and technology the most important ingredient in every economy. To lose control of it
would have been a catastrophe for Germany, in particular if one takes into account the secret
treaty between Germany and the Allies (read the US) from 1949.
"On 23 May 1949, the Western Allies ratified a new German constitution, known as the
"Basic Law" or Grundgesetz.
However, two days prior, a secret state treaty - Geheimer Staatsvertrag - was also signed to
grant complete Allied
control over education and all licensed media, press, radio, television and publishing houses
until the year 2099.
This was confirmed by Major-General Gerd-Helmut Komossa, former head of German Military
Intelligence in his
book, "Die Deutsche Karte" or The German Card".
What's interesting about Power of Siberia-1 is that the gas is being stripped -- refined at
the newly completed Amur Gas Plant -- of its components prior to being piped into China. I
don't know if Germany's petrochemical industry will be deprived in similar manner with
NS2.
CD Waller @36--
Nothing in the energy production realm is carbon neutral. ROSATOM has mastered the fuel
cycle which means most if not all toxic waste will now be burned for energy. New reactors do
NOT use water as coolant. Clearly you need to update what you know about nuclear power.
The Russian 'victory' is very narrow and mostly consists of the patience and determination to
follow-thru while consistently being derided/attacked by Western media, pundits, and
politicians:
Since Russia/Gasprom owns NS2 100% (paying for half the construction cost outright and
financing the rest), there was never much need to stop construction, only to stop/limit
consumption. The 'trick' was to find a way to accomplish US/NATO goals that would not make
German leaders look like puppets.
Biden's approach looks good compared to Trump's heavy-handed approach. As they are BOTH
spokesman of the Empire's Deep State, we can surmise that this is merely good cop / bad cop
theatrics.
This USA-GERMAN agreement makes Germany appear to voluntarily support EU/NATO -
a good thing(tm) that most Germans will accept without question. But behind the scenes,
it's unlikely that there was ever any real choice, just a mutual desire to fashion a
'smart' policy that didn't undermine German political leaders.
Germany can now be pressured to support USA-Ukraine belligerence - if they don't they
will be portrayed as not living up to their obligations to US/NATO/EU/Ukraine as enshrined
in this agreement.
If Russia retaliates against German purchase reductions in any way they will be labeled
as a politically-driven, unreliable supplier. That will 'invite' sanctions and spark
efforts to force EU/Germany to eliminate all Russia goods from their markets.
Russia and China are likely to be increasingly linked in Western media/propaganda.
Deficiencies of one or the other will apply to BOTH.
The next few winters in EU will be very interesting.
Jackrabbit @41 incorrectly says Russia owns NS2 100% It's owned by Nord Stream 2 AG, and
here's its
website listing its financial investors, while its shareholders/owners are global. The
company is located in Zug, Switzerland. Here we are told who the financial companies
are :
"In April 2017, Nord Stream 2 AG signed the financing agreements for the Nord Stream 2 gas
pipeline project with ENGIE, OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, Uniper, and Wintershall. These five
European energy companies will provide long-term financing for 50 per cent of the total cost
of the project."
As with the first string, Russia doesn't own it 100% nor did it finance it completely;
rather, its stake was @50% It appears both Nord Streams will be managed from the same
location in Zug. I hope the company produces a similar sort of book to record its
accomplishment as it did for the first string pair, which can be found and downloaded here
.
Who is paying for it: Russia's energy giant Gazprom is the sole shareholder of the
Nord Stream 2 AG , the company in charge of implementing the €9.5 billion ($11.1
billion) project. Gazprom is also covering half of the cost. The rest, however, is being
financed by five western companies: ENGIE, OMV, Royal Dutch Shell, Uniper and
Wintershall.
Emphasis is mine.
<> <> <> <> <>
Nord Stream 2 AG is a German company that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia's
Gazprom. The German subsidiary has borrowed half of the construction cost but is 100% owner
of the NS2 project.
From karlof1's link to Nord Stream 2 AG's Shareholder and Financial Investors page makes it
clear that NordStream 2 AG is a subsidiary of Gazprom international projects LLC, which is,
in turn, a subsidiary of Gazprom. Under "Shareholder" there is only one company listed:
Gasprom.
PS I was mistaken: Nord Stream 2 AG is a Swiss company, not a German one.
"4. Germany can now be pressured to support USA-Ukraine belligerence - if they don't they
will be portrayed as not living up to their obligations to US/NATO/EU/Ukraine as enshrined in
this agreement.
If Russia retaliates against German purchase reductions in any way they will be labeled as
a politically-driven, unreliable supplier. That will 'invite' sanctions and spark efforts to
force EU/Germany to eliminate all Russia goods from their markets."
Germany has been portrayed as not living up to its NATO obligations one way or another
since about 1985, and with respect to NS 2, since 2018. They do not seem fazed - maybe a
Green win would change that. If the USA-Ukraine get (more) belligerent, Germany might be less
likely to insist on Ukraine gas transit after 2024.
The Russian government owns a majority of Gazprom. As majority owner they can be said to
control the company and with that control comes an inescapable political dimension.
For the purposes of this discussion: the Russian government has biggest stake in the
financial success of Nord Stream 2. That "success" depends on gas sold, not simply the
completion of NS2 construction.
Merkel is meeting with President Joe Biden on Thursday this week, and said while
she will discuss the issue at the White House, she does not believe the matter will be resolved
at that time.
"I don't know whether the papers will be fully finalized, so to speak. I believe rather
not," Merkel said. "But these will be important talks for developing a common position."
Sanctions imposed against German companies involved in the project by the U.S. were recently
waived, which raised hopes in Berlin that the two countries may soon be able to find an
acceptable agreement on the matter.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Washington has long argued that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline carrying natural gas from Russia
to Germany endangers Europe's energy security and harms allies such as Ukraine, which currently
profits from transit fees for Russian gas.
Germany is keen to increase its use of natural gas as it completes the shutdown of its
nuclear power plants next year and phases out the use of heavily polluting coal by 2038.
Merkel's comments to reporters in Berlin came ahead of a meeting with Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has warned that Nord Stream 2 poses a threat to his country's energy
security. Should Russia route all of its gas around Ukraine in the future, the country might be
cut off from the supplies it needs, putting it at further risk of being pressured by
Moscow.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and supports separatists in Ukraine's eastern
industrial heartland of Donbas.
Zelenskyy said he was looking for guarantees that Ukraine will remain a transit country for
Russian gas beyond 2024. He also suggested that the gas issue should become part of four-way
talks between his country, Russia, Germany and France on solving the conflict in eastern
Ukraine and that the United States could join those negotiations.
Merkel said she took Ukraine's concerns seriously and that Germany and the European Union would use
their weight in negotiations with Russia to ensure the agreements are extended.
"We have promised this to Ukraine and we will stick to that. I keep my promises and I
believe that is true also for any future German chancellor," she said.
Merkel isn't running for a fifth term in Germany's national election on Sept.
26.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, not
pictured, give statements ahead of talks at the Chancellery in Berlin, Monday, July 12, 2021.
Stefanie Loos/Pool Photo via AP
I admit to some amusement over the suspension of the female American sprinter Sha'Carri
Richardson by WADA. Imagine if she were Russian. WADA has waged a political war against
Russian Olympians ruling against the entire national team most of whom never used performance
enhancing drugs according to independent testing. And now the expected cries of racism
against a blood test for a banned drug. Sort of ironic I suppose, but watched a clips of
several African American sports pundits and they all agreed that rules are rules and must be
followed. It has been mostly white pundits who have virtue signaled that her suspension must
be lifted due to racism.
Russia under Putin stewardship has been doing more than just good given the disaster of
Yeltsin period. That's said. Russia now is just a one-man-Putin show. It's not the "Russian
system of governance."
So, the question is what would happen after Putin?
Given the fact that several "oligarchies" are pulling their strings around Putin,
another-Yeltsin is waiting at the gate of Kremlin is very likely. I hope I am wrong for the
Russians' best interests!
We should know for sure sometime between January and December 2022. We will know when it is
confirmed that Russia is in decline. That will be the tipping point. Many producers are already
in decline but Russia is now the largest. Of course, the US being in decline, the two largest
producers in the world, would leave no doubt about it. LIGHTSOUT IGNORED07/03/2021 at 11:47
am
Thanks Ovi. KSA,Russia and US are starting to look like a line of domino's.
Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar said in a video posted on Saturday on the
ministry's Facebook page that BP (BP.L) was considering withdrawing from Iraq, and that
Russia's Lukoil (LKOH.MM) had sent a formal notification saying it wanted to sell its stake in
the West Qurna-2 field to Chinese companies.
Iraq's top tax authority has ordered government departments to stop issuing visas and
halt imports for nearly two dozen international energy companies whom it accuses of late tax
payments.
If enforced, the orders, dated June 27, 2021, could prevent some of the biggest players
in Iraq's oil, gas, and electricity sectors from bringing staff and equipment into Iraq,
effectively depriving the country of work that is needed to meet its own production targets at
a time when insufficient gas feedstock is causing nationwide electricity failures.
The power cuts have hit the south of Iraq especially hard. In Basra, where Iraq's oil
wells are situated, people have started taking to the streets in protest and main roads had to
be shut down.POLLUX IGNORED07/03/2021 at 2:59
pm
An official of Iranian Truck and Fuel Tanker Drivers' Union said Thursday that drivers
were refusing to transport fuel due to low or late payments from the government. There has been
a shortage of supply in gasoline stations in recent days in various parts of the
country.
In a statement published on social media Thursday, the National Association of Drivers'
Unions expressed solidarity with striking contract oil and petrochemical workers and said
drivers would join their strike if the oil workers' demands were ignored.
Putin
Signs Law Forcing Foreign Social Media Giants To Open Russian Offices (reuters.com) 47
Posted by msmash on Thursday July 01, 2021 @12:45PM from the how-about-that dept. President
Vladimir Putin has signed a law that
obliges foreign social media giants to open offices in Russia , a document published by the
government on Thursday showed, the latest move by Moscow to exert greater control over Big
Tech. From a report: The Russian authorities are keen to strengthen their control of the
internet and to reduce their dependence on foreign companies and countries. In particular, they
have objected in the past to political opponents of the Kremlin using foreign social media
platforms to organise what they say are illegal protests and to publicise politically-tinged
investigations into alleged corruption. Moscow has fined firms for failing to delete content it
says is illegal, slowing down the speed of Twitter as punishment, and on Wednesday opened a new
case against Alphabet subsidiary Google for breaching personal data legislation. by
Vlijmen Fileer ( 120268 ) on
Thursday July 01, 2021 @12:47PM ( #61540686 )
Other countries do the same. But somehow get less media attention for it
MH17, I had originally thought was a US ploy, but a lot of stuff points to Britain. I
think Britain pulled that stunt, no doubt coordinated with factions in the US, and it was
enough to tip the balance in the US - to force the US into action who then put pressure on
the Euro vassals.
Where the US oligarchy is a bit divided, not much of an incident is required by perfidious
albion to tip the balance.
Weaver "China seems to have defined "communism" as a rejection of democracy."
What is democracy? In the west, it has become apparent that whoever controls the media
controls democracy. We elect rulers. We do not get any say in formulating many laws as in
each new law being put to a referendum. China voted with its feet during the revolution. Many
culture elect or otherwise have local leaders who everyone in the community knows and the
community leaders decide on or elect who has positions at the next level of governance and so
forth. In that way, China is very democratic beginning at the grass roots level.
The Chinese government have done a huge amount in bringing millions of people out of poverty,
creating better living conditions for its people. When there is constantly and increase in
prosperity at all levels, even if some prosper more than others, the people have an
optimistic outlook.
Democracy at a national level where voters do not personal know the candidate requires
accurate information to enable an informed vote. In that way, democracy in the west is non
existent - it is an illusion but the sheeple cling to it.
Compared to the so called west, China government is very much of the people for the
people.
@ Peter AU1 (# 23), name a democracy that isn't a suzerainty. We don't elect rulers. We
elect puppets that have been selected by the rulers. Who owns the media? Who creates majority
of money in your nation?
"The true equation is 'democracy' = government by world financiers."
– J.R.R. Tolkien
"Democracy" is a temporary phase of history which allows the Global Financial Syndicate to
take control from the earlier generation of dominant power players: the monarchies.
Long ago and far away, a group of very clever paleo-banksters figured out a way to stop
those annoying periodic slave revolts... eventually it came to be known as "the two party
system" (democracy/Republic) and it's working like a charm...Rulers make the slaves fight
each other.
World Financiers & Banksters ENSLAVEMENT plan using democracy:
– Create a REVOLUTION & steal a region
– Create a Private CENTRAL BANK (First Bank of the USA, BoE-1694)
– Fund & control new rich individuals (Kleptocrats)
– Fund & control political PARTIES & MEDIA
– Nationalize the central bank (the Fed, BoE-1946)
Enslave & control people by DOMINANCE over economic & political powers & call
it a DEMOCRACY. An interesting FRACTAL emerges when one analysis the formation of
democracies.
What we have is "representative" democracies designed by the economically powerful solely
for their interests and in this sense would always be functioning anti-democratically. In a
money democracy (where the fundamental element of influence is the unit of money), the
political and legal system is influenced and shaped by systems of power to protect and
enhance those systems of power.
"There are none so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The
truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They
feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes."
– Goethe
Your understanding of democracy and the prevalent Chinese understanding of democracy are
divergent.
It is true that all of the political decisions in China are made by the communists; the
CPC. But do note that the CPC has almost 100 million members . These are not simply
voters like political parties have in the US, who just align themselves with a party
and vote for it every couple years. These 100 million members of the CPC are actual
decision-makers.
Of course, that is a lot of work and responsibility and not everyone in China wants to
commit that much of their life to politics. With that said, how much of your life do
you commit to politics? Does your biennial vote actually carry any weight, and do you take
full responsibility for the consequences of it? Of course not on both points.
Those Chinese people who choose to do so live democracy. You, on the other hand,
just play a shallow democracy game that is little more than a reality TV show like
Survivor . Does Trump get voted off the island? Clinton? Sanders? That is your choice.
Does America slaughter some more dark skinned people in the Global South? Do the banks get
bailed out with your wealth? These things you get no say in.
Communists don't oppose democracy. They oppose the crappy reality TV "The Democracy
Show!™" sham that westerners love to hate.
I look on it as somewhat of a mixed group. Fellow travelers do the same thing but for
different reasons. Finance, anglo supremacy ect. Amongst the vassal states in same cases
straight out corruption as in selling their service es to the highest bidder, amongst the
five-eyes, the elite in particular, in the current events of trying to bring down Russia and
China, continued anglo dominance of the world is a very big driver. The anglosphere has been
a dominant force in the world for close to 500 years and many are truly afraid of this
ending. The cant envisage a world that is dominated by cultures other than anglo or
anglo/europe.
What is the fastest way to create lots of DEBT (money)? Wars, civil war, technological
waves, credit bubbles (speculative, housing,...), infrastructures...
What is the real purpose of war? To capture & control more areas for EXPLOITATION? War
is the fastest way to create lots of debt for all parties.
"the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt it creates. You control the
debt, you control everything."
Money Power = Land x Lives x Loans
Putting Afghanistan in further debt, enables it to be exploited... What are its revenue
sources? Who pays for its security and infrastructure? Will NATO leave by September?
Who wants to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt?
Those Uyghur jihadists stuck in Idlib province in Syria and in refugee camps in Turkey are
bound to get a warm welcome from the Taliban when Ankara finally ships them off to Kabul as
part of this proposed "security force" to protect the airport so the CIA can continue to ship
out its heroin.
The US MSM is ablaze with "Taliban against Afghan forces" headlines, conveniently forgetting
that the Taliban are Afghan forces too, in fact they preceded the current "Afghan forces" in
government until the US intervention.
So why do their guys always beat our guys? Because their guys fight for their country and our
guys fight for us.
@ ToivoS, why did the U$A withdraw from Vietnam? There was conscription in the U$A, thereby
the rich were at risk. Also, the U$A was being constrained by money creation due to the gold
standard. Both of these issues have been addressed.
Name a nation that the U$A has WITHDRAWN its military after occupying it, other than
Vietnam. Aren't we still in Germany, Japan, South Korea, ...?
It ain't over 'til it's over.
How much DEBT has the Afghanistan conflict created so far? In trillions? Who got that
money?
@ CJC #10
re: . . . Turkey to retain control of airport after NATO withdraws
It's more than NATO.
The US-Taliban agreement:
The United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United
States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel,
private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within
fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement. . .
here
@ Max
re: . . . why did the U$A withdraw from Vietnam?
The US had no choice because the conscription-based US Army was broken, with troops refusing
to obey orders and fragging their superiors etc. . .So Washington pulled out the troops and
ended the draft.
The US "experts" who are crying about a possible, or inevitable, return to Talban
government haven't read the agreement.
The US-Taliban Agreement of Feb 29, 2020 called for all foreign forces to leave Afghanistan
by May 2021, and recognized that the outcome would be a return to a Taliban government. For
example one agreement condition, II-5:: "The Taliban will not provide visas, passports,
travel permits, or other legal documents to those who pose a threat to the security of the
United States and its allies to enter Afghanistan." . .
here
re: Why is the US in Afghanistan?
Decades ago Washington had its own "Silk Road" strategy, to move into the -Stans in Central
Asia after the uSSR breakup. There was a large interest in Kazakhstan up north, as well as
the other -Stands including Afghanistan. It was of course a road to nowhere but as we know
the creeps in Washington ain't too bright. There were no seaports to accommodate this road,
for one thing. There were some other considerations, like an energy pipeline, but it was all
just going nowhere until 9-11 came along, giving the US to do what it does worst, employ its
military.
@ Abe 32
re: This simplistic "views" are as inaccurate as insulting.
You need to get out more.
. . .from Fragging: Why U.S. Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers in Vietnam
During its long withdrawal from South Vietnam, the U.S. military experienced a serious
crisis in morale. Chronic indiscipline, illegal drug use, and racial militancy all
contributed to trouble within the ranks. But most chilling of all was the advent of a new
phenomenon: large numbers of young enlisted men turning their weapons on their superiors.
The practice was known as "fragging," a reference to the fragmentation hand grenades often
used in these assaults. . . here
Glad to hear that Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan is not letting the US use Pakistan
as a base for its continued machinations, in spite of heavy US pressure, and that Pakistan as
a whole was saying #AbsolutelyNot. Kudos Pakistan.
According to M. K. Bhadrakumar:
"Washington is now considering the hiring of Pentagon contractors (mercenaries) to secure
Kabul airport. But that will be a hugely controversial step with grave consequences, as
apparent from Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's brusque rejection of the very idea of
American military presence on Pakistani soil in relation to the Afghan situation."
MKB also places all this into the context of "the US' grand project to create rings of
instability in [Russia and China's] adjacent regions -- Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, Hong
Kong, Myanmar, Afghanistan."
You forget the ISIS group that magically appeared in Afghanistan a few years ago. The same
group that immediately attacked the Taliban, forcing the Taliban to dedicate its best forces
to countering the threat instead of fighting the puppet child sex slaver Quisling warlord
regime. What's more likely than continuing the occupation in the name of "fighting ISIS"?
Just like Iraq was reinvaded and reoccupied in the name of "fighting ISIS" and continues to
be occupied to this day?
This "fairly good" relationship is mainly done in spite to China and to gain another pawn
on the SCS theatre.
It's being wined and dined by the school jock after China gave him the finger like a
back-up shag. But Vietnam knows the score, it works for them for now and it would be stupid
not to play along as long as it is aligned to its interests.
A large number of its businesses exporting to the west are, you guessed it, are founded
and operated by the Chinese for the lower wages and to skirt quotas, tariffs etc.
Vietnam is still a communist state, how is this fact not lost in the face of full spectrum
demonisation of China for being communists in the minds of the 5 eyes populace is a most
interesting question indeed.
It's as moronic as "China is authoritarian!" but Saudi Arabia is A-OK!
Today democracy and human rights are just fig leaves of the hegemony, war cry for the
[colonization of] expendables.
Of course you've heard the name " George Soros ," often invoked as a sort of folk demon on the
American and international right, it's likely that you have some vague notion of why you think
he's a bad guy, or maybe you think the whole thing is a bunch of hype.
However, if you're a freedom lover, there's nothing "hype" about the influence that George
Soros has around the world attacking your freedom. Indeed, you probably vastly underestimate
the influence that he has on politics.
From the perspective of someone who values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
there is no more dangerous man today than George Soros. This is not hyperbole, it is the simple
truth. While we don't plan to paint a picture of a man standing behind the scenes, rubbing his
hands together and cackling as he plays puppet master over each and every attack on freedom
around the world, Soros acts as a strawman and a caricature of what is actually going on in the
world.
George Soros, his
money , and his NGOs
are bankrolling and influencing public policy and opinion from the local level all the way up
to the national level. Entire nations have been made to bow to the Soros agenda, but perhaps
more importantly for our purposes, key local officials in government are increasingly wholly
owned subsidiaries of the Soros machine.
American political culture focuses almost entirely on Presidential elections, with
Congressional and gubernatorial races getting much less attention from the general public. When
it comes to local politics, unless you live in a large city, chances are good that you don't
know much about city politics. For example: Who is your local district attorney or county
prosecutor?
Most people have no idea. It's a low-key office, generally staffed by someone looking to do
public service, not advance their career. There is little glamor, low pay, and lots of
thankless work to be done at this level, which means that for the most part, this is not where
social climbers begin their careers.
That being said, these elected officials have enormous amounts of power because they decide
who gets prosecuted, who doesn't, and what charges are levied against them. If your DA decides
that the local band of looters are actually peaceful protesters, they won't ever see the inside
of a courtroom. Similarly, if the local DA isn't a fan of the right to self-defense, one must
consider this when choosing whether or not to pull your firearm if a mob of them shows up on
your lawn.
Part of this is just the very nature of bureaucracy, the plainer term for what people mean
when they talk about "the deep state." The government rests on men doing things, chief among
these are what Vladimir Lenin called "special bodies of armed men"
: cops, courts, and jails. According to Lenin, this is the very essence of the state.
Libertarians will sympathize with this definition of the state. At its core, the state is a man
with a gun who will throw you in a cage or kill you if you fail to comply. Everything else is
just window dressing.
The local prosecutor is a chokepoint in the special bodies of armed men. The attorney
general isn't euphemistically called "top cop" for no reason and in his own way, the local
prosecutor is also a "top cop," albeit with a much smaller jurisdiction. This also means that
he has more direct control over the individuals in his district, as the attorney general deals
more in broad brushstrokes.
Who is your local DA? George Soros knows. He might very well be his paymaster.The campaigns
for local DAs and the like aren't shy about stoking racial resentment and animosity. The
Democratic Party's playbook hasn't changed much since the days of Jim Crow, it's just that it
has found new ways to make political hay out of sowing racial divisions among Americans. One
Soros-produced ad for Noah Phillips campaign for District Attorney of Sacramento County,
focuses almost exclusively on a black
boy in a hoodie .
It is of course unrealistic to expect that even highly bureaucratic roles are entirely
apolitical, however, the Soros DAs have ratcheted up the partisanship, not just in the race,
but in the actual execution of the office. As of September 2020, there were
31 Soros-backed DAs in the United States . That might not sound like a lot, but it includes
the DAs of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, and St.
Louis. All told, tens of millions of Americans are now victims of the Soros racket in the form
of their local top prosecutor.
Some examples of the Soros machine at work in America's DA offices include:
After the last round of rioting, looting, and arson in St. Louis, Circuit Attorney Kim
Gardner dismissed charges against all 36 people arrested. She's on the take from Soros for
$307,000 . This is also the prosecutor who filed charges against the McCloskeys.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon got over $2 million
from the Soros operation , he ended cash bail and is no longer prosecuting the crimes
of trespassing, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, prostitution, or driving without a
license.
Kim Foxx is the Illinois State's Attorney and has received
$807,000 from Soros. She also declined to prosecute rioters, saying "The question it
comes down to is, is it a good use of our time and resources? No, it's not." Foxx likewise
declined to prosecute hate crime hoaxer, Jussie Smollett.
Philly District Attorney Larry Krasner has received
$1.7 million from Soros. He won't be prosecuting rioters, looters, and arsonists.
Krasner was very open about the ideology driving his permitting chaos in the city:
"Prosecution alone will achieve nothing close to justice -- not when power imbalances and
lack of accountability make it possible for government actors including police or
prosecutors to regularly take life or liberty unjustly and face no criminal or career
penalty."
Krasner is worth calling out for special attention because he filed 75 cases against the
police and has represented both Occupy Philadelphia and Black Lives Matter. At his victory
party, supporters chanted, "F*** the police! F*** the police!" He generally declines to
call himself a "prosecutor," instead labelling himself a "public defender with power."
The results in Philadelphia are stunning as charges are dropped in 60 percent of all
shooting cases – though we suspect your odds of being a conservative self-defense
case and having your charges waived are rather slim. Shootings in Philadelphia were up 57
percent year over year from 2019 to 2020.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who's working off
$620,000 in Soros money, proclaims that "[t]he criminal justice system isn't just
massive and brutal, it's also racist." He doesn't prosecute crimes such as solicitation,
public camping, or public urination, which has certainly
transformed San Francisco into a paradise on earth . Homicide rates have increased,
burglary cases have increased by 42 percent, motor vehicle theft increased by 31 percent,
and arson rates increased by 45 percent. He was formerly an advisor to Hugo Chavez and his
parents were members of the Weather
Underground , a far-left terrorist organization who directly participated in the
robbery of an armored car. His victory party included obscene anti-police chants.
DA Mike Schmidt of Portland, who's received
$230,000 in Soros money, also declined to prosecute rioters who burned the city for
months while besieging a federal building. He openly sympathized with the rioters saying
that they "represent the instinctive reactions of people who have been gassed repeatedly,
who have been struck with kinetic projectile weapons."
If the Soros machine can capture a District Attorney's office in San Francisco, which is
extremely expensive, there is little preventing them from capturing prosecutorial powers in
Omaha, Annapolis, or Colorado Springs – or indeed your hamlet.
The Soros Machine
and Racial Unrest
Much like the Democrat Party he supports, George Soros is not the slightest bit afraid to go
into the mud of the politics of racial resentment. The Open Society Foundations are the primary
mechanism for Soros delivering money to political activists in the United States and around the
world. In 2020, The Open Society Foundations unveiled plans to spend
$220 million on "efforts to achieve racial equality in America."
To show you the relative priority that the Soros machine places on "racial equality" as
opposed to electoral politics, the Soros machine only spent
$28 million on the Democrat Party in 2020 .
When Soros says "racial equality," he means something very different from what you or the
average American means when they say it. What Soros deems "racial equality" might more
accurately be called "racial revenge," though the left prefers to use the term "racial equity."
We will dive more into the ideology motivating Soros later, but our article on
the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism is also an excellent resource on the deep
philosophy of the Soros machine.
What Are the Open Society Foundations?
It's important to know how the Soros machine operates so that you can learn to look for it.
The Open Society Foundations is the main umbrella under which Soros distributes money. It
includes a number of organizations, most of which you've probably never heard of and most of
which feature very innocuous, even bland-sounding, names. The think tank used to generate the
ideology is New America, formerly known as the New America Foundation, the name of which is
much more direct about what it intends to create.
So what is an "Open Society?" Well it's based on a phrase used by Karl Popper , a
somewhat obscure 20th Century thinker known best for his " paradox of tolerance ," which
essentially says that liberals should stop tolerating diversity of opinion when it begins to
threaten liberalism.
Where does the Soros operation put its money in America in order to transform the country
into an "open society?" It aims to abolishing
the police and invest $1.5 million into the Community Resource Hub for Safety &
Responsibility, another one of these blandly named organizations working to undo the American
way of life. Additionally, his money has been
linked to the urban unrest in Ferguson in 2014 . In total he spent
$33 million fomenting chaos in the formerly safe suburb of St. Louis.
Of course, no rogue's gallery of the radical left would be complete without mentioning Black
Lives Matter (BLM), another one of these vaguely innocuous-sounding organizations that Soros
spends his money on. And boy howdy, did he spend money on BLM - George Soros spent
$33 million on BLM alone .
What Is the Philosophy of the Open Society
Foundations?
We've seen the modus operandi of the Soros machine, but what is the ideology that motivates
it?
Soros' umbrella organization is The Open Society Foundations. The phrase "open society" is
one of those things that sounds so unassailable that no one could be against it. After all, are
you for a closed society?
This is the framing trick used by the left since time immemorial. Something vague and
innocuous sounding is picked as a name which means something very, very different to those in
the know. So what is an "open society" to Soros and his retinue?
It is a concept developed by Karl Popper, Soros' intellectual hero. Popper was not a
Cultural Marxist, in fact he was highly critical of Marxism. However, there is so much overlap
in terms of end results that it becomes a distinction without a difference.
Karl Popper didn't invent the concept of the open society, despite his association with the
term and his development of the idea – that dubious honor falls to a Frenchman by the
name of Henri Bergson. However, we can credit most of what the open society is understood as
today as springing from the mind of Karl Popper.
There are some key takeaways about what an open society actually is. First, the open society
is an atomized society. People are to be seen not as part of any kind of social organism, but
rather as radically separate individuals. The individual is not an essential building block of
society, it is the end to itself. Social norms and traditions are seen as necessarily
oppressive.
The open society is hostile to the notion of natural law and instead puts man-made laws,
properly called "legislation," over and above a more natural law flowing from a set of first
principles, most notably God. Again, like Cultural Marxism, it seeks to "dethrone God" from
society, replacing it with a cult of human judgment.
Popper also believed in a culture of constant critique, this is a point of overlap with
Cultural Marxism; and humanitarianism, which is a loaded word designed to sound innocuous, but
which actually means something far more specific than "being nice to people."
Perhaps most frighteningly, the "open society" is just that – open. That is, entirely
without any sort of privacy. While the notion of a "right to privacy" as interpreted by United
States courts as a justification is troubling in practice, far more troubling is Popper's
conception of a society where every facet of a person's life is in the public sphere,
irregardless of their consent.
Free speech and free elections were seen as a necessity for such a society, however, Popper
and the Open Society Foundations had different interpretations for this. Free speech does not
apply to opponents of the open society unless they are critiquing society from the left –
the only way to complain about Comrade Stalin is to say how much better we would all be if
there were but two of him. Similarly, free elections means that of the kind we had in 2020
– one with absolutely no safeguards against abuse and taking place behind closed doors
under the supervision of ideologically motivated "monitors" with rampant fraud.
It's not just in America, it's a worldwide phenomenon.
George Soros: King of the Color
Revolution
George Soros' primary weapon for changing countries to be more pliable to his desires is the
"color revolution." You've probably heard of revolutions occurring, generally in post-Soviet
states, but also elsewhere. They have names like the Yellow Revolution (the Philippines), the
Rose Revolution (Republic of Georgia), the Orange Revolution (Ukraine), and the Saffron
Revolution (Myanmar).
There are some common themes to a color revolution which are worth noting for those wishing
to prevent such a thing from happening in their own country. A disputed election where there is
widespread cheating on the part of the "opposition" candidate generally kicks things off. The
"opposition" is controlled by the Soros machine and friendly to NATO or other Atlantacist
political organizations. There are then street rallies where violent operatives hide in crowds
of otherwise peaceful protesters.
The government then responds and there is outcry from "humanitarian" organizations that the
government has dealt sternly with what are effectively terrorists using human shields. There
are generally operatives within the command structure who are sympathetic to Soros and his
allies in Western governments.
There have been mixed success with color revolutions. They fail more often than they
succeed. But they do succeed, especially where one defines success not so much as overthrowing
the existing government, but forcing it to accept radical concessions that dramatically remake
the political culture in the country. Color revolutions have resulted in what was effectively
regime change in the Republic of Georgia ( twice ), Ukraine , the Arab World , and Belarus .
George Soros is deeply embedded in color revolutions around the world through the auspices
of his Open Society Foundations NGO. The playbook should look somewhat familiar to most
Americans after the summer riots of 2019 and 2020, as well as the aftermath of the
2020 elections .
It's important to remember that George Soros is not a god. He is simply a man with a lot of
money. Thus, we should be cautious in attempting to attribute each and every action on the far
left to him, particularly in the view that he is some kind of micromanaging puppet master who
is involved in the trenches of making policy or street activism. He is not.
He is a real-world supervillain and he is able to direct the law, constitutional, and
political culture of entire nations using his money and his vision for what society ought to
look like. He is able to get away with it thanks to general ignorance of just how effective he
is and a coordinated effort by the media to smear anyone who calls him out as a dangerous
fanatic.
It is George Soros, however, who is the dangerous fanatic. He is gunning for you, your
property, your children, and ultimately your way of life.
play_arrow
7thGenMO 4 hours ago
It is a bit of a red herring to focus only on Soros when he is part of a network - our
friends of intelligence that:
- Gun down American sailors in lifeboats after firebombing their ship.
- Infiltrate the financial and, accordingly, the political systems.
- Steal military technology.
- Sell poor American kids as sex slaves.
- Etc., etc., etc.
gregga777 5 hours ago
George Soros, aka Gyorge Schwartz, was a Nazi collaborator and assisted the SS in
confiscating wealth from Hungarian ****. The Holtzman Amendment prohibits anyone who
participated in Nazi persecution from living in the United States. Why is George Soros even
allowed in the US not to mention being allowed to live here? Does that Law only apply to
Gentiles and not to ****?
Lordflin 5 hours ago
When later asked how he felt about that part of his life... he said that aiding his Nazi
stepfather to plunder his own people... made him feel powerful...
RedCharles 17 minutes ago
Compare Soro's moral position with Einstein's take on Gandhi's moral position.
Operation Paperclip brought the best of Nazi middle management and scientists to the US
and Canada. Wernher Braun for example.
Canada's Deputy PM is the descendant of a Ukrainian Nazi propagandist.
gregga777 5 hours ago (Edited)
NASA hero SS-Sturmbannführer Werner von Braun was an unindicted Nazi war criminal.
He was responsible for deaths amongst slave laborers, probably numbering in the thousands,
at the Mittelwert Dora V-2 assembly plant. But, 95-year old retired factory worker
Friedrich Karl Burger was recently deported back to Germany because in 1945 he had served a
few weeks as an 18-year old concentration camp guard. The 2010 Holtzman Amendment prohibits
anyone who participated in Nazi persecution from living in the United States.
Fluff The Cat 5 hours ago
Millions of illegals get away with violating our sovereignty, yet the state will throw
the book at the average Joe citizen for a misdemeanor. People like Soros and Gates are
untouchable for a reason. It's not just because they have so much money but rather because
they fill roles which help facilitate radical transformations to our detriment.
Gold Bug XXX 5 hours ago remove link
Thankfully, the 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft that exposes Soros' Sabbatean
Frankist origins is still online. Anyone who wants to know the real story about Soros and
the wealthy patron family behind him needs to read Rabbi Marvin Antelman's 2 book series:
Eliminate The Opiate available on Amazon. Antelman was the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Rabbinic Court of America from 1974 to 2004 and he exposes both who and what is behind
Soros and his agenda. Literally, this is THE book every American needs to read now.
This is the group behind Fabian Socialism, the group exposed by George Orwell (Eric
Blair) in his book 1984, as well as in Animal Farm. This is the philosophy of of modern
progressive Democrats in the USA and the liberal Labour party in Britain. This is the group
behind the Rhodes Trust, that created the Rhodes Scholarships, the London School of
Economics (Soros is a grad) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs who created
the CFR branch in the USA. Why do you think we have so many Rhodes Scholars and graduates
of the London School of Economics in the Obama and Biden administrations and leading the
far left?
Soros has sponsored everything evil from NAMBLA to BLM. He (and Bloomberg) funded the
anarchy and nationwide explosion in violent crime that we are seeing in every Blue City
where they installed their radical, Marxist prosecutors and DAs like Gascon in LA, Larry
Krasner in Philly, Kim Gardner in St. Louis, and Kim Foxx in Chicago - all cities where
prosecutors are emptying the jails, not prosecuting crime, and letting chaos reign supreme
so they can Federalize the Police (Soros' primary agenda) giving the federal government
more political power. This will extend the corruption we already see in our Intel Agencies,
the DOJ, all the Courts, and especially in the rogue FBI which is now a purely NKVD,
Brownshirt SA, STASI political police force focused inward on political dissidents and no
longer a legitimate law enforcement agency.
America had better wake up and wake up now, because with the purge of conservatives,
Christians and patriots from the military led by MIC Ratheon board member, the bitter
affirmative action general known as Lloyd Austin and the bat ****e crazy radical Marxist
Bishop Garrison, if we lose the police and the military - we will relive the Bolshevik
Revolution... the round ups, the torture the gulags and the death.
And then just like Solzhenitsyn warned, we'll burn in the camps wondering what would
have been if only we had resisted...
C urious it was to
read that the Russian judiciary ruled last Wednesday that Alexei Navalny's political
network is an extremist movement. Its members should be grateful that the courts recognized it
as a movement, given Navalny's nationwide support has never exceeded 3 percent or so, but on
paper they are now liable to arrest and prosecution and, if convicted of one or another charge,
could be fined or imprisoned.
There have been no arrests, so far as has been reported. But think of all those chances
Western intel agencies and their clerks in the press may now have to lionize a new cohort of
oppositionists as Navalny's heroic followers. Let us not forget, a kooky poseur journalist
named Oleg Kashin had the nerve to call Navalny "Russia's true leader" in a recent
New York Timesopinion piece.
There is no limit to the silliness in all matters Russian, it seems. At least not at the
Times .
I say "curious" because, in the ordinary conduct of statecraft as we have had it for the
past seven decades, the Moscow's court's ruling, exactly a week prior to President Joe Biden's
first summit with President Vladimir Putin, would have to be counted obtuse. Wouldn't minding
one's manners -- especially given that the Navalny network's significance resides solely in the
minds and news pages of Western propagandists -- be the wise course?
I don't think so. I have no clue as to the independence or otherwise of the Russian
judiciary, but it is unthinkable the Russian leader did not know in advance of what the courts
were about to determine. I think Russia was indeed minding its manners -- a different and
altogether more honorable set of manners than American pols and diplomats have exhibited lo
these many decades.
In a sensible read, the court ruling was a calculated gesture in response to Biden's
commitment,
announced during a Memorial Day speech, to confront Putin in Geneva on June 16 with the
question of human rights in the Russian Federation. "We will not stand by and let him abuse
those rights," saith the man from Scranton.
We will not stand by, Moscow replied in so many words, as you grandstand at Russia's
expense. Recall in this connection, Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, has lately made
it a habit to note
that Moscow is monitoring human rights in the U.S. since the Jan. 6 protests at the Capitol.
"We have no taboo topics," Lavrov said in evident response to Biden's speech. "We will discuss
whatever we think is necessary."
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and President Vladimir Putin meeting with
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi, 2017. (President of Russia)
It would be very wrong to take this matter as a passing spat as the Russian and American
presidents find their feet with one another. In my view, the court judgment last week and
Lavrov's remarks on human rights as a two-way street make the Geneva encounter far more
important than it may have otherwise turned out to be.
Five Principles
To understand this, we must go back and back and back some more until we reach the early
1950s, when newly independent India and newly socialist China were working out how two very
large neighbors ought best to conduct their relations. It was while negotiating a bilateral
agreement on this question in 1953 that Zhou Enlai, Mao's cultured, subtle, farsighted premier,
first articulated his Five Principles, the ethical code by which the People's Republic would
conduct its relations with all nations.
These were incorporated into the Sino–Indian Agreement of 1954 and have been
justifiably well-known since. Note that four of the five have to do with respectful conduct and
parity:
– Mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty;
– Mutual nonaggression;
– Noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations;
– Equality and mutual benefit among nations;
– Peaceful coexistence.
A year after New Delhi and Beijing signed their accord, Zhou's principles were reiterated at
the historically monumental conference of nonaligned nations Sukarno hosted at an Indonesian
hill station called Bandung. When the Non–Aligned Movement was formally constituted six
years after that, the Five Principles effectively became the non–West's statement -- of
aspiration, of intent -- to the West: This is what we have to offer the postcolonial world, the
NAM said in so many words. This is our contribution to a new and peaceable world order. This is
how we will manage our relations with others.
The Grand Mosque of Bandung, Indonesia, with its twin minarets, adjacent to the city square
in Asia-Afrika Street, 2008. (Prayudi Setiadharma, Wikimedia Commons)
The United States never had any time for the NAM. As readers of a certain age will recall,
it dismissed the movement, with-us-or-against-us style, as a badly dressed bunch of
crypto–Communists or Soviet dupes. The decades since are an easy lesson in why Washington
took this utterly awful position: It has not once, not in any given year, observed even one of
Zhou's principles. It has always, in any given year, abused all five.
Vladimir Putin
One may admire or detest Vladimir Putin, but he is undeniably possessed of an excellent
grasp of history, as many of his speeches attest. I doubt he thinks very specifically about the
NAM or Zhou's principles, but, without naming them, these are what he will have on the table
when he meets Joe Biden.
This is the meaning of the oddly timed court judgment against Navalny's apparatus and the
message Lavrov conveyed in response to Biden's Memorial Day speech: Internal affairs are to be
resolved internally.
Geneva will mark the start of a long and welcome process. Its importance will lie in its
formalization of a stance Russia -- and China, too -- have adopted since those two
catastrophically stupid mistakes Biden and Secretary of State Blinken made last March, when
Biden called Putin a murderer and tin-eared Blinken hollowly lectured the Chinese about human
rights and democracy.
President Joe Biden in Oval Office, April 27. (White House, Adam Schultz)
Beijing and Moscow have ever since stiffened their backs toward the U.S., giving as good as
they get on all the questions with which Washington customarily browbeats others.
If we have begun a process, where will it lead? In my read to an excellent place, where
nations mind the better set of manners noted above -- Zhou Enlai's manners, let us say.
Before this century is out, and very possibly before the midway mark, Zhou's Five Principles
stand to become the norm in international relations. Zhou's true topic was parity between West
and non–West. This will be achieved, and strange it is that the opening months of the
Biden administration have opened us to this salutary prospect. The U.S. will otherwise lead us
all into an egregiously messy period of history, and I do not think rising powers -- Russia,
China, India, others -- will find this acceptable.
One other matter must be clarified as Geneva approaches.
I do not know the merits of the case against Navalny or, since last week, the ruling against
his followers. But I have always found it curious that The New York Times and the other
major dailies recite as rote that Navalny and his people consider the two charges of
embezzlement (and the two convictions) that put him in jail in the first place to be "trumped
up" or "politically motivated." Why doesn't the Times ' Moscow bureau do the gumshoe
work and inform readers whether or not this is so?
True, Times ' Moscow correspondents are among the worst in my lifetime, but this kind
of kabuki requires one to consider carefully whether the charges are indeed legitimate.
My read: The legal case against Navalny probably holds water, and the American press uses the
power of omission to avoid acknowledging this.
Pitiful, if this is the case.
The larger point here: We must learn to put all such questions aside in contexts such as we
have now in U.S.–Russia relations. Anyone who has ever been in a Marxist reading group
knows the importance of distinguishing between primary and secondary contradictions. Let us not
forget the essential lesson, no matter anyone's political stripe.
What is the primary contradiction here? It is Washington's refusal to observe the principles
of noninterference and sovereignty, and it is vital far, far beyond bilateral relations that
Russia defends these. The Navalny case and the associated matter of human rights are, plainly
and simply, a secondary contradiction -- and one it is imperative to leave to Russians to
resolve.
Geneva in June, a rather nice place to be. Let us see if Biden and Putin mind their manners
-- and whose manners these turn out to be.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune , is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is
Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century . Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist . His web site is Patrick Lawrence . Support his work via
his Patreon site .
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those
of Consortium News .
@fyi 30 Russia has nothing to gain from invading Ukraine. She refused to do so in 2014.
Putin was never happy about the Donbass insurrection, just could not get them crushed and
massacred because the Russion people would not have understood nor accepted that. Russia had
the opportunity to occupy if not all of Ukraine then at least Novorossija (all the east and
northeast from Charkov to Odessa oblast) three times at minimum since 2014. From a merely
military point of view they could do it anytime within a week, or faster. They had even
larger exercises than the latest transferring 300k servicemen with full equip from the far
east and central Siberia to the western part.
The political repercussions would be grave. NS2 would certainly the first victim. And for
which gain? Russia, instead of EU and (to some extent, US) had to foot the bill for that
bankrupt failed state. As to the popular uprising, even when real (or just PD), there was a
popular uprising against the Nazis in Donbass. NATO sides with Nazis, the Greens love them.
German Chancellor aspirant Annalena Baerboeck boasted before the Atlantic Council, that her
Grandpa in winter 1945 (together with his Hitler Wehrmacht and SS comrades) fought "for the
reunification of Europe" - against the evil Russkis.
The West is already fighting for and alongside with Nazis, also in those Baltic
shitholes.
Odessa is not likely to be attacked by Russia in spite of the city's past historical
associations with Russia. If everyone is expecting a Russia attack on Odessa then NATO
strategies in the Black Sea will be based on such an assumption. So Russian strategy must be
based on what everyone least expects the Russians to do.
If the Russians were so minded as to want to cut off Ukrainian access to the Black Sea,
they could do so by building up their naval forces at the Kerch Strait and near Sevastopol,
as
a show of force. If they were to target a city, not that they need to, that city would be
Mariupol on the Azov Sea.
I suspect most people in Odessa and Mikolayiv in SW Ukraine are by now so fed up with Kiev
that they would, if given an opportunity, switch their loyalties to Russia without the
Russians having to fire a shot.
Summits are good - if they are successful. But when they fail, potentially crashingly, they
can quickly lead to escalation. Biden is just as much in his fifties as his predecessor. This
generation is not capable of coming to terms with the current power situation. For them, the
usa is still the undisputed leading power. They act accordingly arrogantly. Geneva could
backfire - on all of humanity.
Sorry Aquadraht but my smartphone changed your name in my comment @ 38. I was too busy fixing
up other deliberate changes my smartphone was making to my comment to notice.
1.Putin has already won the hearts of humanity.
2.The purpose of computing accelerated algorithms have been useful tools of economics,
politics & psychopaths.
3.The favorite play of Joe is the dumb dementia card. Let's not forget the badass boss his
authentic meanness projects.
4. Narily consuming news, I have observed a financial front setup for the dollar demise in
Russia via some big fund there. Equally important is their positioning a system of trade that
excludes SWIFT. (I read it on this blog) What's the point of BIS killing Putin? Just out of
hate, spite, what? No. Hes got an elite euro pedigree. I expect a mean Joe in Switzerland
with all his marbles lined up. Putin won't quake, then what will the Pentagon play be?
Thanks b.
Expect nothing.
Biden is a cold war thug and a Russia hater. Being his age he will be running on his 20's
brain cells and memories and prejudices. He was the Obummer point man in Ukraine and Kurt
Volker with that belligerent mind set are likely music to Biden's ears. Biden just has to
reassert that the killers are back in charge after the tragi-comedy of Trump and the clown
cart. Biden has a mission to merely demonstrate the return of the magi
neo-cons.
Yes it will fail. It will be seen as pathetic at first and a week later as useless.
The USA has NEVER grasped the flower of peace and no world leader has offered that flower
so consistently as has Putin or lately Xi. And yet the USA shits on their hand of greeting.
This is a tragedy for all across this world as we witness the idiocy of squandered resources
on military might.
I do not expect the USA to clean house and sack the colony of warmongers occupying their
foreign policy advice team. I suspect the state is not in control of its destiny but rather
run by a self perpetuating mindset within the military/academia/media that glorifies itself,
ensures its succession, and then glorifies itself some more. An echo chamber of ego, fear and
loathing.
Passer by@44 I firmly believe that history books still need massive infusions of facts, but I
am not an adherent of Critical Race Theory, which substitutes moralizing for scientific
analysis, only to do a bad job with the morals (notably, the notion of collective hereditary
guilt plays a major part in much of it...and CRT is deliberately left vague so that the more
extreme positions can be reserved while more reasonable ones are defended in lieu.) And I
also believe that re-defining "democracy" as "social democracy" while ignoring how democracy
is class collaboration in pursuit of national conquest (or defense when things go badly.)
Pretending that the past democrats weren't is a way of flattering ourselves that we are so
enlightened we know better and will have true democracy as soon as we reform the bad people's
minds. It's opposing an imaginary ideal to a straw man reality in defense of illusions. The
fundamental motive I think is anti-communism, but that's my opinion I guess. The multipolar
world of 1900 wasn't unipolar because "white," that's hare-brained CRT crap in my judgment. I
don't agree with it.
But history books really need to concentrate on what happened without moralizing on
motives, which are always mixed. Children will grow up and figure that out eventually, except
for the religious ones who mentally consign others to hell.
Babylon 5 is a space war TV series, so if the argument is supposed to be that multipolar
is more peaceful, the logic escapes me. If the idea is that if "states" are equal, then it's
democratic strikes me as ideology. In the US, the idea that this or that state has rights
that ordinary people do not (variations on residual sovereignty usually,) has *never* been
essential to progress. The people having rights, majority rule, yes. But those things and
states' rights rarely even aligned. States' rights to maintain slavery or Jim Crow are the
primary examples. But I can't think of any real states' rights that work out to progress for
real people, as opposed to legal abstractions like a state. Consider the attitude of the
federal government to the states' right to decriminalize/legalize marijuana.
fyi 30
What you wrote about Ladakh and China vs. India is rubbish too (as always when you cluelessly
write about China). As MK Bhadrakumar detailed a while ago, it is not China who is the bully
in the Himalayas and Kashmir/Jammu. It is India who constantly changed the status quo by
occupations and annexions like in Sikkim, and with Nepalese territories too.This was the case
under the congress governments already to some extent, and radicalized with the Hindutva
fascists of Janata/RSS in power. It is them who build tens of military airfields and roads
around the LAC, deploying ten thousands of servicemen.
China is not interested in conflicts. It wants to guarantee the safety of the
Sichuan-Tibet-Xinjiang Highway which is crucial for the development of Western Chinese
provinces. It is the Janata regime who tries to menace and cut that connection.
China made a ton of modest and reasonable proposals, from Zhou Enlai's memorandum in 1954
on, to settle all border disputes and uncertainties in the Himalayas. And though China kicked
the Indian's butts miserably in 1961, they pulled back from Southeast Tibet, the area India
boasts as Arunachal Pradesh, British robbery prey from the Chinese empire.
The nationalist and fascist fools in Delhi have nothing real to win in the Himalayas. They
are fighting uphill, and face tremendous cost for their poor country. They continue
provocations though.
@ 46 spudski.. me either... everyone i know has one though.. oh well.. they will just have to
catch up with us!
@ 50 aquadraht... what you have to realize is fyi filters everything thru his religious
bigotry... once you figure that out - then it all becomes obvious why he concludes what he
does... it is all based on a narrow religiously intolerant position...
Very good, though I'm doubtful about the weapons worry. Isn't it the case that 1) both sides
still have significant ICBM and sub-based MRBMs? 2) Isn't it also the case that neither side
has reliable anti-ballistic missile defenses? Aren't we still very much living under a
Mutually Assured Destruction paradigm? So what if the Russians have hypersonic missiles? Are
they going to be able to saturate US missile launching systems? No.
I have a hard time believing we want war. To take on an enemy with the manpower and
productive capacity of China would be suicidal. If there is an alliance between Russia and
China and you throw in Russia's natural resources - doubly so. My take is that what we want
is an excuse to continue spending on defense - it's a business model - and Russia provides
the bogeyman.
Whatever Washington could throw at Russia, the residual Russian forces would penetrate
American defenses and wreak havoc on the American homeland.
You're being polite here.
Russia's nuclear arsenal would do much more than "wreak havoc on the American homeland":
it would reduce its entirety into a radioactive wasteland. There would be no
redneck-in-the-middle-of-Wyoming standing after such attack. The USA would become some kind
of cursed land where nothing grows for millennia.
Russian Government does not need to directly intervene then; a series of small incidents
could be caused during which the city of Odessa organizes a self-defense Unit called Rus
Protection Force and asks for help from Lugansk People's Republic.
The key consideration is to deny a legitimate beach head to the NATO forces.
In any case, I think the Russian Government is resigned to another decade or more of
confrontation with West; they already have concluded that the sanctions against the Russian
Federation will never be removed, that they would be ejected from SWIFT, and should invest
more in autarky lest they reprise the experience of Iran.
The US aircraft you were searching for is the F-15. The new version is the F-15EX which is
now in production after the Gulf states handily paid for the bulk of the R&D. Initially
it will replace the old F-15C/D single seat interceptors but in the longer term will also add
to or replace the F-15E multirole fighter/bomber. There is no overlap in functionality
between the F-15EX and the F-35.
Thank you for that rebuttal. Fyi, I sense the writer is a china russia basher lurking
behind a thin masquerade of faux shia sophistication and all intended to give shia a bad
name. Tacky.
There is a drink waiting for you at the bar of excommunicated souls ;)
In 1900 the world was more unipolar than any time in the last 3000 years. Anglo
colonialism was at a peak, Caucasians directly controlled Africa and South East Asia. white
Colonialism and genocide were everywhere. China was still crushed by European powers, Russia
was incredibly weak.
It takes a lot of word salad and spinning to say the world in 1900 was multi-polar.
Doesn't matter what you think if critical race theory...that has zero relevance here.
>>Babylon 5 is a space war TV series, so if the argument is supposed to be that
multipolar is more peaceful, the logic escapes me
Well, it was a film about different civilisations overcoming war and conflict - the whole
point about constructing the Babylon 5 space station was to avoid war and to find ways to
communicate with each other, no matter how different the various space species can be.
The multipoar space station was constructed after a disastrous Earth War against another
space civilisation, in order to fix conflicts in the Galaxy.
I really recommend you that Sci Fi series.
>>The multipolar world of 1900 wasn't unipolar because "white,"
Unless you are from another race, in which case you will see massive white dominance all
over around the world during those years.
>>Babylon 5 is a space war TV series, so if the argument is supposed to be that
multipolar is more peaceful, the logic escapes me
Well, it was a film about different civilisations overcoming war and conflict - the whole
point about constructing the Babylon 5 space station was to avoid war and to find ways to
communicate with each other, no matter how different the various space species can be.
The multipoar space station was constructed after a disastrous Earth War against another
space civilisation, in order to fix conflicts in the Galaxy.
I really recommend you that Sci Fi series.
>>The multipolar world of 1900 wasn't unipolar because "white,"
Unless you are from another race, in which case you will see massive white dominance all
over around the world during those years.
Yes, that seems like a fair assessment. In 1900 there was indeed not only rivalry between
european-american colonial powers, but also between European Colonial Powers and powerful
European countries who were at disadvantage for lack of colonies...Germany.
Here's what's goin' down. (According to my 95% WRONG predictions.) Nothing whatever of the
slightest importance will be discussed at the Putin/Biden 'summit'. No significant accords
will be established, and virtually nothing will occur. EXCEPT:
This will be a rollicking Royal Send-Up for the benefit of Joe Biden. Why? The logic is
dirt simple. Biden is always on the hairy edge of being removed from office for
incapacitation. Russia would then be dealing with the amateur and insanely aggressive Kamala
Harris. It's about sticking with the Devil You Know.
Therefor, Putin will provide the feeble Joe Biden with an all-in Royal Send-Up. Putin will
praise Biden to the heavens. He will even toss in some empty but hugely auspicious
'concession'. Which will be hailed by the indentured media as a Tremendous Victory.
All solely to keep the feeble Master of Bargain Basement Politics in 'charge'.
>>In 1900 the world was more unipolar than any time in the last 3000 years. Anglo
colonialism was at a peak, Caucasians directly controlled Africa and South East Asia. white
Colonialism and genocide were everywhere. China was still crushed by European powers, Russia
was incredibly weak.
It takes a lot of word salad and spinning to say the world in 1900 was multi-polar.
Doesn't matter what you think if critical race theory...that has zero relevance here.
In my previous comment @8 above, I concurred with b that a significant faction within the
Outlaw US Empire's elite governing aparat are delusional while other factions are very much
aware of the stark reality of the Empire's condition--particularly its domestic condition. A
shining example of this was published today by Global
Times , of which there are three total articles I hope barflies will read, although
they might have read the first two as I linked and commented about them when they were
published. Franz Gayl is a 64-year-old retired US Marine major who worked at the Pentagon as
an analyst and wrote two reality-based articles for publication by Global Times for
what are obvious reasons when read--the Outlaw US Empire has zero chance of winning a war
against China over Taiwan, and he advocated against such a stupid undertaking. But reality
just cannot be mentioned--the Narrative Must Hold at All Costs!!--as with the continuous
stream of lies about the state of the USA's economy that have been ongoing since Reagan and
his VooDoo Economics. For a self-declared Christian nation, it most certainly has
forgotten--buried very deeply--the admonition from Proverbs 16:18: Pride goeth before the
fall. And genuine patriots like Franz Gayl get crucified for trying to avert that fall. Just
like wanting to kill Assange for telling the truth--the Outlaw US Empire is facing the same
stark reality that Gorbachev and the USSR faced in the early 1980s. And guess what, Putin
just said that's exactly what the USA's facing today at the SPIEF to the heads of global
media:
" But problems keep piling up. And, at some point, they are no longer able to cope with
them. And the United States is now walking the Soviet Union's path, and its gait is confident
and steady." [My Emphasis]
At least Clueless Joe @11 sees through the bologna and gets it correct. I highly suggest
this op/ed . As Putin
told the global media heads, Russia is all about Russia and Russians, and is willing to
partner with other nations that can aid Russia in its development that's aimed at benefitting
all Russians . Defending genuine strategic interests is NOT Imperialism. the big
problem for the Outlaw US Empire is that since WW2's end it's seen the entire planet as its
strategic interest, which was the first post-war BigLie it told to itself and swallowed
whole.
NBC pushed regular neocon garbage, so it is not very interesting interview. We saw better
executed similar attempts to attack Putin in the past. The guy is really second rate: too pushy,
too opinioned to be a good interviewer. He really is not interested in Putin opinions, he need to
push the agenda of his handlers. He demonstrated zero respect as if Russia is a US vassal (it was
in 1990 under alcoholic Yeltsin) . In other words he is a regular Pressitute. This neocon pushed
the label killer on Putin, while this label is appropritate to any recent US presendent to much
greater measure. Just look at how many people were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in attempt to
achive "full spectrum Dominance" and enhance andcement global neoliberal empire. But some moments
when Putin destroyed neocon agenda are pretty educational.
Russian President Vladimir Putin this week sat down for an interview with a US media outlet
for the first time in nearly three years . NBC's Keir Simmons talked to Putin for about 90
minutes, and released a teaser segment Friday night.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation centered on the Russian leader's
perspective on American politics and his personal thoughts and comparison of Donald Trump and
Joe Biden. Putin called the former president "extraordinary" and "talented" while noting that
Biden is "radically different" and is a quintessential "career man" in politics .
https://www.youtube.com/embed/oh_obIUJ7HA
"Well even now, I believe that former U.S. president Mr. Trump is an extraordinary
individual, talented individual, otherwise he would not have become U.S. President," Putin told
Simmons.
" He is a colorful individual. You may like him or not. And, but he didn't come from the
US establishment, he had not been part of big time politics before , and some like it some
don't like it but that is a fact."
"...President Biden is a career man. He has spent virtually his entire adulthood in
politics," Putin said in part.
"That's a different kind of person, and it is my great hope that yes, there are some
advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements, on behalf
of the sitting U.S. president."
Also interesting is Putin's response to the March George Stephanopoulos interview with Biden
wherein the US President dubbed Putin a "killer" with "no soul". Putin responded in this new
NBC clip:
"Over my tenure, I've gotten used to attacks from all kinds of angles and from all kinds
of areas under all kinds of pretext, and reasons and of different caliber and fierceness and
none of it surprises me."
Putin called the "killer" label "Hollywood macho."
Putin also took aim at a recent
Washington Post report over Russia-Iranian military relations and the transfer of advanced
satellite systems. "It's just fake news," Putin dismissed. "At the very least, I don't know
anything about this kind of thing. Those who are speaking about it probably will maybe know
more about it. It's just nonsense, garbage."
activisor 2 hours ago
Funny how Putin has become leader of the free world! He and Lavrov are streets ahead
of the rest, and have massive support outside Russia based on their common sense approach
to world events. He will be hard to replace.
yerfej 2 hours ago
EVERYONE with common sense realize Putin is the ONLY current leader who gives a ****
about his country and people and is willing to cooperate with any country that isn't
wandering around the globe looking to tell everyone else what they can say or do or
think.
No_Pretzel_Logic 2 hours ago
How fascinating that you speak for "everyone" with common sense. That's quite a
skill.
Do tell us about the responses from people you've polled in the Scandinavian
countries, Poland, UK, France, etc.?
George Bush League 2 hours ago
You can start by not being such an pathetic condescending azzhole.
smellmyfingers 54 minutes ago
Putin, articulate, intelligent, answers without a teleprompter and without babbling or
stumbling.
Is he perfect? Obviously not nor is he a messiah. But I'd bet people have more
confidence in him out in front than the corruption and lies the USA and many other
western nations have that are completely compromised.
chunga 2 hours ago remove link
Dmitry Orlov has got some interesting translations from Putin at the thing in St.
Petersburg.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia doesn't want to stop using the dollar as he accused the
U.S. of exploiting the currency's dominance for sanctions and warned the policy may rebound on
Washington.
Russia has to adopt other payment methods because the U.S. "uses its national currency for
various kinds of sanctions," Putin said late Friday in St. Petersburg at a videoconference with
representatives of international media organizations. "We don't do this deliberately, we are
forced to do it."
Settlements in national currencies with other countries in areas such as defense sales and
reductions in foreign-exchange reserves held in dollars eventually will damage the U.S. as the
greenback's dominance declines, Putin said. "Why do U.S. political authorities do this? They're
sawing the branch on which they sit," he said.
Putin spoke a day after Russia announced it will eliminate the dollar from its oil fund to
reduce vulnerability to sanctions, a largely symbolic move as the switch in holdings will take
place within the central bank's reserves. Russia has tried with limited success to shift away
from the dollar for years amid international sanctions over Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea
and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, as well as for alleged cyber attacks, election
meddling and espionage operations.
The Russian leader's comments came ahead of his first summit meeting with U.S. President Joe
Biden in Geneva on June 16. While he praised Biden as one of the world's most experienced
leaders, Putin said he expects no breakthrough in relations with the U.S. at the talks.
And he offered a warning at Friday's meeting for the U.S., based on what he said was his own
experiences "as a former citizen of the former Soviet Union."
"The problem with empires is that they think they can afford small errors and mistakes,"
which gradually accumulate, Putin said. "There comes a time when they can no longer be dealt
with. And the U.S., with a confident step, a confident gait, a firm step, is walking straight
along the path of the Soviet Union."
Sanctions are the "gentlemanly" neo-imperial language of gunboat diplomacy, never better
expressed than the attempts of the British government in the early 1950s to discipline a newly
democratic Iran. First the British Labour Government, then a Conservative government under a
splenetic Churchill, tried to put a halt to the runaway popularity of Mohammed Mossadegh, prime
minister of Iran, and his policy to shut down the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and nationalize
Iran's own oil. The British sabotaged their own company, refused to distribute the oil, and did
everything else they could to impoverish Iran. This was only after the AIOC had refused to
budge from its insistence on taking practically all of the profits and to refrain from treating
Iranian oil workers as subhuman. Ironically, the British needed AIOC money to finance their own
program of industrial nationalization and the welfare state. As is so often the case, the
"sanctions" merely hardened anti-imperial sentiment, and were succeeded by a joint US-UK
directed regime-change coup d'etat
None of this need suggest a diminution in the importance of national sovereignty. Sovereign
nations should be free to trade with whomsoever they choose, to protect which domestic
industries they consider worthy of protection. That is their right. They also have the right to
enter into trade agreements with others for the purpose of regulating the conditions of trade
between them, provided that they enter into such agreements without duress, bribery or
punishment.
Questions of Definition
The Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) explains that sanctions have become one of the most
favored tools for governments to respond to foreign policy challenges. The term sanctions
can refer to travel bans, asset freezes, arms embargoes, capital restraints, foreign aid
reductions, and trade restrictions, and represent efforts to coerce, deter, punish, or shame
entities that are considered by those who wield them to endanger their interests. They are
generally viewed as a lower-cost, lower-risk course of action in calculations that balance
diplomacy against war. Yet sanctions can be just as devasting in terms of loss of human life.
They may be particularly attractive in the case of policy responses to foreign crises in which
national interest is considered less than vital, or where military action is not feasible.
Sanctions that blanket entire populations generally do most damage to poorer and more
vulnerable social strata, who lack the means to avoid or compensate for their consequences. The
USA has more than two dozen sanctions regimes. Some target specific countries such as Cuba and
Iran, others target specific categories of person or institution or even specific named
individuals. Sanctions have been used in efforts of counterterrorism, counter-narcotics,
nonproliferation, democracy and human rights promotion, conflict resolution, and cybersecurity.
They are frequently applied as a form of punishment or reprisal for behavior in which it is
alleged that the target has engaged and of which the applying entity disapproves.
In the case of the UN Security Council sanctions resolutions must pass the fifteen-member
council by a majority vote and without a veto from any of the five permanent members: the
United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The most common types of UN
sanctions, binding for all member states, are asset freezes, travel bans, and arms embargoes.
The UN relies on member states for enforcement, with all the idiosyncrasies and abuses that
this entails. The council-imposed sanctions against Southern Rhodesia in 1966 were intended to
undermine Ian Smith's white supremacist regime and were followed in 1977 by another set of
comprehensive UN sanctions against apartheid South Africa. They have been applied more than
twenty times since 1990 against targeting parties to an intrastate conflict, as in Somalia,
Liberia, and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The European Union imposes sanctions as part of its Common Foreign and Security Policy. They
must receive unanimous consent from member states in the Council of the European Union, the
body that represents EU leaders. The EU has levied its sanctions more than thirty times.
Individual EU states may also impose harsher sanctions independently within their national
jurisdiction.
The USA resorts to economic and financial sanctions more than any other country. Presidents
may issue an executive order that declares a national emergency and invokes special powers to
regulate commerce for a period of one year, unless extended by the president or terminated by a
joint resolution of Congress. Most of the more than fifty states of emergency declared by
Congress remain in effect today. Congress may pass legislation imposing new sanctions or
modifying existing ones.
In 2019, the United States had comprehensive sanctions regimes on Cuba, North Korea, Iran,
Sudan, and Syria, as well as more than a dozen other programs targeting individuals and
entities (currently some 6,000). Existing U.S. sanctions programs are administered by the
Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), while other departments,
including State, Commerce, Homeland Security, and Justice, may also play an integral role. The
secretary of state can designate a group a foreign terrorist organization or label a country a
state sponsor of terrorism, both of which have sanctions implications. State and local
authorities may also contribute to enforcement efforts.
The practice of sanctions received a significant boost with the formation of the World Trade
Organization, which recognizes the legitimacy of sanctions as a response to the failure of
parties in a trade dispute to reach agreement on satisfactory compensation. A complainant may
ask the Dispute
Settlement Body for permission to impose trade sanctions against the respondent that has
failed to implement. The complainant's retaliatory response may not go beyond the level of the
harm caused by the respondent. The complainant should first seek to suspend obligations in the
same sector as that in which the violation or other nullification or impairment was found,
unless the complainant considers it impracticable or ineffective to remain within the same
sector The complainant is allowed countermeasures that are in effect and would in other
circumstances be inconsistent with the WTO Agreement. In other words, the result is that a
complainant responds to one trade barrier with another trade barrier, contrary to the
liberalization philosophy underlying the WTO. Such measures are nearly always harmful for both
the complainant and the target. Although such retaliation requires prior approval by the DSB 1,
the countermeasures are applied selectively by one Member against another. The suspension of
obligations is temporary and the DSB is obligated to maintain a review of the situation for as
long as there is no implementation. The suspension must be revoked once the Member concerned
has fully complied with the DSB's recommendations and rulings.
In a 2019 decision
the WTO allowed China to impose trade sanctions on $3.6 billion of American goods on the
grounds that the USA had not followed WTO rules in the way it imposed duties on what it
regarded as unfairly cheap Chinese goods. The ruling concluded a case that China brought
against the USA in 2013 that stemmed from levies placed on more than 40 Chinese goods. At issue
were subsidies that the USA accused China of providing to its companies so that they can sell
goods more cheaply overseas.
The case touched on some of the deep politics of neoliberalism for which the WTO is supreme
icon, and which make the very notion of sanctions problematic as evidenced in frequent
criticisms of the WTO . These are that free trade benefits developed countries more than
developing countries; that countries should trade without discrimination means a local firm is
not allowed to favor local contractors, giving an unfair advantage to multinational companies
and imposing costs for local firms; ; it is important that nations be allowed to assist in the
diversification of their economies and not be penalized for favoring emerging industries; free
trade is not equally sought across different industries "" notably, both the US and EU retain
high tariffs on agriculture, which hurts farmers in developing economies; principles of free
trade often ignore environmental considerations, considerations of labor equity and cultural
diversity.
After 9/11 "" still one of the least understood events in modern history "" and amidst the
subsequent US invasions of the sovereign countries of Afghanistan and Iraq, and
de-stabilization of many others (including Libya, Syria, Ukraine), the USA set about disrupting
what it deemed the financial infrastructure supporting terrorists and international criminals,
(but not including the USA itself). The Patriot Act awarded Treasury Department officials
far-reaching authority to freeze the assets and financial transactions of individuals and other
entities suspected of supporting terrorism, and broad powers to designate foreign jurisdictions
and financial institutions as "primary money laundering concerns." Treasury needs only a
reasonable suspicion""not necessarily any evidence""to target entities under these laws. The
centrality of New York and the dollar to the global financial system means these U.S. policies
are felt globally. Penalties for sanctions violations can be huge in terms of fines, loss of
business, and reputational damage. Sanctions regimes today increasingly impact not merely the
primary targeted countries or entities but also those who would do business with such countries
or entities.
Questions of Effectiveness
Sanctions have a poor track record, registering a modest 20-30 percent success rate at best,
according to one source, Emily Cashen, writing for World Finance in 2017. According to leading
empirical analyses, between 1915 and 2006, comprehensive sanctions were successful, at best,
just 30 percent of the time. The longer sanctions are in place, the less likely they are to be
effective, as the targeted state tends to adapt to its new economic circumstances instead of
changing its behavior.
Examples of "successful" applications of sanctions (always judged from the very partial
viewpoint of those who impose them) are said to include their role in persuading the Iranian
leadership to comply with limits to its uranium enrichment program. But if this was "success,"
why then did the USA break its agreement with Iran in 2018? And why was there an agreement in
the first place if Iran had never had nuclear weapons nor was likely to produce them on its own
account without serious provocation. Sanctions are also said to have pressured Gadaffi in
handing over the Lockerbie suspects for trial, renouncing the nation's weapons of mass
destruction and ending its support for terrorist activities. But then, if that was "success,"
why did NATO bomb Libya back to the stone age in 2011?
Sanctions that are effective in one setting may fail in another . Context is everything.
Sanctions programs with relatively limited objectives are generally more likely to succeed than
those with major political ambitions. Furthermore, sanctions may achieve their desired economic
effect but fail to change behavior. Only correlations, not causal relationships, can be
determined. The central question is one of comparative utility: Is the imposition of sanctions
better or worse than not imposing sanctions, from whose viewpoint, and why? Best practices are
said to combine punitive measures with positive inducements; set attainable goals; build
multilateral support; be credible and flexible: and give the target reason to believe that
sanctions will be increased or reduced based on its behavior.
In cases where the targeted country has other trading options unilateral measures have no
real impact or may be counterproductive. Sanctions against Russia over Ukraine may have simply
helped to push Russia closer to its eastern neighbors, notably China.
To bypass sanctions Russia has shifted its trade focus towards Asia. Asian non-cooperation with
the sanctions helps explain why Russia was expecting to grow its trade with China to $200bn by
2020. For several countries in western Europe, the sanctions had a double-edged sword.
Russia is the European Union's third largest commercial partner, and the EU, reciprocally, is
Russia's chief trade partner, accounting for almost 41 percent of the nation's trade prior to
the sanctions. In 2012, before the Ukrainian crisis began, the EU exported a record
€267.5bn ($285bn) of goods to Russia. Further, US sanctions against Russia
increasingly and patently had nothing to do with Ukraine and everything to do with US interest
in exploiting its imperial relationship with West European vassal states to grow its LNG
(liquefied natural gas) market in competition with Russia, and by doing everything possible to
obstruct "" and to coerce European nations into helping it obstruct "" Russia's Nord Stream 2
oil and gas pipeline that will bring cheap Russian oil to Europe without passing through
Ukraine. The very opposite of principles of globalization and free trade.
The USA can afford to be aggressive in sanctions policies largely because (for the time
being, and that time is getting shorter by the day) there is no alternative to the dollar and
because there is no single country export market quite as attractive (for now and even then,
one must wonder about China) as the USA. Sanctions that are effective in one setting may fail
in another. Context is everything. Sanctions programs with relatively limited objectives are
generally more likely to succeed than those with major political ambitions. Furthermore,
sanctions may achieve their desired economic effect but fail to change behavior. Only
correlations, not causal relationships, can be determined. The central question is one of
comparative utility: Is the imposition of sanctions better or worse than not imposing
sanctions, from whose viewpoint, and why? Best practices are said to combine punitive measures
with positive inducements; set attainable goals; build multilateral support; be credible and
flexible: and give the target reason to believe that sanctions will be increased or reduced
based on its behavior.
Sanctions and Human Misery
Since the early 1990s, the US, Europe and other developed economies have employed sanctions on
other nations more than 500 times , seeking to assert their influence on the global stage
without resorting to military interventions. Yet military interventions tend to happen in any
case suggesting that in some cases the sanctions are intended to "soften up" the target prior
to armed conflict).
The economic stranglehold of stringent sanctions on Iraq after the successful allied
invasion of 1991 caused widescale malnutrition and prolonged suffering, and a lack of medical
supplies and a shortage of clean water led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern
history. Sanctions all but completely cut off the oil trade. Iraq lost up to $130 billion in
oil revenues during the 1990s, causing intense poverty to many Iraqi civilians. Prior to the
embargo, Iraq had relied on imports for two thirds of its food supply. With this source
suddenly cut off, the price of basic commodities rose 1,000 percent between 1990 and 1995.
Infant mortality increased 150 percent, according to a report by Save the
Children, with researchers estimating that between 670,000 and 880,000 children under five
died because of the impoverished conditions caused by the sanctions. Then US Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright notoriously excused this horrendous slaughter as "worth the
price ." During the Gulf War, almost all of Iraq's essential infrastructure was bombed by a
US-led coalition, leaving the country without water treatment plants or sewage treatment
facilities, prompting extended outbreaks of cholera and typhoid.
Targeted sanctions can be equally devastating. The de facto
boycott on Congolese minerals, for example, has led to the loss of more than 750,000 jobs in
the nation's mining sector. The loss of income resulting from this mass redundancy has had
a severe impact on child health in the nation, with conservative estimates recording a 143
percent increase in infant mortality. Despite an international shift away from comprehensive
sanctions, this Congolese suffering indicates targeted measures are still not free from ethical
quandaries.
Application of sanctions became more popular at the end of the first cold war because
previously targeted nations could negotiate for relief with the oppositional superpower. In the
succeeding era of greater enthusiasm for sanctions it became clear that they could have dire
consequences for civilian populations, and this helps account for increased popularity of
targeted sanctions.
Sanctions of Spite: Syria and the Caesar Act
There are many current examples of the murderous horror of the impact of sanctions by
"civilized," usually western powers, especially when their targets are poorer countries such as
Venezuela and Syria. Not untypically, some of the behaviors that the imperialists seek to
change are themselves the consequence of past imperial aggression.
The secular regime of Bashar Assad in Syria has faced a ten-year existential threat from the
Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda affiliates, ISIS and other jihadist entities supported by an array
of global and regional actors including the USA, UK, and other NATO members, Israel, Jordan,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE. Whatever the regime's defects they are at the very
least comparable and in some cases dwarfed by those of many of Syria's opponents in the Arab
world.
The significance of genuine popular support for Assad , demonstrated in numerous polls, has
been marginalized by western mainstream media. The regime's survival, with air support from
Russia and ground support from Hezbollah and Iran, is extraordinary by any measure. Yet the USA
has continued to interfere in the affairs of Syria with a view to its continuing impoverishment
and destabilization by allowing Turkey to occupy large areas of the north west and populate
these with jihadist emigrees; funding Kurdish forces to secure Syria's oil resources on behalf
of the USA, and for maintaining prisons and camps for ISIS supporters, by maintaining its own
military bases; and permitting a constant succession of Israeli bombing attacks on what Israel
claims are Iranian-backed militia or Syrian Arab Army militia working in collaboration with
Iran; and approving further Israeli incursions into the Golan Heights.
Defeat of ISIS and recovery of non-Kurdish areas outside of Idlib by the Syrian Arab Army
(SAA) took place in conditions of considerable economic challenge, exacerbated by US-imposed
sanctions against both Syria and its neighbor Lebanon. This had a corrosive impact on relations
among top regime figures. Bashar al-Assad's billionaire first cousin and richest man in Syria,
Rami Makhlouf, complained in early 2020 of regime harassment and arrests of employees. Until
then, the Makhlouf family enjoyed exclusive access to business opportunities and monopolies on
hotels, tobacco, and communications, partly
camouflaged by a philanthropic empire that assisted many Syrians through the conflict .
Some $30 billion of the country's wealth, representing 20% of all deposits in Lebanese banks,
was trapped by Beirut's financial implosion, exacerbated by the unprecedented explosion ""
possibly accidental, possibly sabotage "" in the city's harbor area on August 4. Syrian
businessmen needed Beirut's banks to conduct business abroad, and to evade sanctions. A regime
crackdown on money transfer companies made matters worse by creating
a dollar shortage , depriving thousands of families who were dependent on foreign
remittances. Before the explosion, purchasing power of the Syrian pound was already worth 27
times less than before the start of the conflict.
Deteriorating economic conditions ravaged Syria's surviving pretensions to socialist
principle. In the first decade of Bashar's rule, there had been big gains in healthcare in
terms of available beds, hospitals, and nursing staff. But by now there were 50% fewer doctors,
30% fewer hospitals. Before the conflict, 90% of pharmaceutical needs were filled by Syrian
factories. By 2018 those factories which remained had trouble getting raw materials and
replacement parts for equipment because of sanctions. Before the conflict there was improved
land irrigation and food security. In 2011, abject poverty stood at less than one percent,
rising to 35 percent by 2015. The percentage of those facing food insecurity had fallen from
2.2% in 1999 to 1.1% in 2010. Now, 33% lacked food security. One third of homes were
damaged or destroyed, 380,000 killed and 11 million displaced since 2011.
Economic conditions were worsened by ever tightening economic sanctions and US enforcement
of the so-called Caesar Act from June 2020 (named after a faked human rights scandal in 2015).
The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act sanctioned the Syrian government, including President
Bashar al-Assad, for alleged war crimes. The purposes were to cripple Syria for the purposes of
regime change, while luring Russia further into the Syrian quagmire. The Act targeted 39
individuals and entities, including the president's wife, Asma. Anyone doing business with the
regime, no matter where, was potentially vulnerable to travel restrictions and financial
sanctions. The Caesar Act smeared the Syria Central Bank as a "˜money laundering'
institution and sought to render it impossible for Syrian companies to export and import from
Lebanon. It made it difficult or impossible for Syrians abroad to transfer money to family
members. The Act contributed to devaluation of the Syrian pound which tumbled from 650 Syrian
pounds to one US dollar in October 2019 to 2600 to the US dollar in summer 2020.
The Caesar Act (alongside legal initiatives in Europe designed to charge senior
administration officials with war crimes) were designed to stymie reconstruction, hit the
construction, electricity, and oil sectors, and cripple the Lebanese private companies that
would otherwise lead reconstruction efforts. Sanctions prevented non-U.S. aid organizations
from assisting reconstruction. An opposition leader predicted it would result in "
even greater levels of destitution, famine, and worsening criminality and predatory
behavior " and would precipitate regime change, migratory flight, excess deaths, and youth
deprivation. In a climate of regulatory confusion, sanctions often encourage over-compliance.
Prospects of reconstruction investment funds from Russian companies were
negatively impacted . Blumenthal ascribed responsibility for the Caesar sanctions
initiative to a "years-long lobbying campaign carried out by a network of regime-change
operatives working under cover of shadowy international NGOs and Syrian-American diaspora
groups." The country had already suffered severe US and EU economic sanctions. A 2016 UNESCO
report found that sanctions had brought an end to humanitarian aid because sanctions
regulations, licenses, and penalties made it so difficult and risky (Sterling 2020). In 2018,
United Nations Special Rapporteur, Idriss Jazairy, observed that sanctions impacted negatively
on
After 500,000 civilians returned to Aleppo following its liberation in 2016, US sanctions
and UN rules prohibited reconstruction. Returnees were allowed "shelter kits" with plastic but
rebuilding with glass and cement walls was not allowed because "˜reconstruction' was
prohibited.
In brazen acknowledgment of US support for the HTS terrorists of Idlib, the Caesar Act
exempted Idlib province, as well as the northeast areas controlled by US troops and the SDF. It
designated $50 million for "˜humanitarian aid' to these areas. Other US allies pumped in
hundreds of millions of dollars more in aid, further exacerbating pressure on the Syrian pound
and substantially increasing prices for all commodities in regime-controlled areas.
"best-designed sanctions can be self-defeating, strengthening the regimes they were designed
to hurt and punishing the societies they were supposed to protect."
They recalled the destruction of Iraq's middle class in the 1990s, when US sanctions killed
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis:
"Their effect was gendered, disproportionately punishing women and children. The notion that
sanctions work is a pitiless illusion." .
Several European nations (Italy, Poland, Austria, Greece, Hungary) indicating unease with
the continuing stagnation of US and EU sanctions policy, restored tacit contacts with Damascus.
While the EU was an important source of humanitarian aid for internally displaced people in
Syria and for displaced Syrians abroad, it continued to refrain from dealing directly with
Damascus
or from support for reconstruction efforts, on the grounds of continuing instability.
Conclusion
Under indubitably wise international leadership, acting within a framework of equitable
political power among nation states whose sovereignty is sacrosanct, then perhaps sanctions
policies might sometimes be strategically appropriate. These conditions clearly do not apply.
The increasing weaponization of sanctions is a powerful contribution to a crumbling world
order, one that invokes the grave danger of over-reaction by an aggrieved victim, in a context
of intense economic and military competition between rival nuclear powers.
Oliver Boyd-Barrett is Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and at
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is an expert on international media, news,
and propaganda. His writings can be accessed by subscription at Substack at https://oliverboydbarrett.substack.com.
A comprehensive roundup of the sanctions-based aggression being imposed on the world by
the bankster dominated west. I really don't think the majority of citizens have a clue what
is being done by their rulers, nor any idea of the sheer hatred being fostered by those
actions. The time for waking up is well overdue, the west has been sucked dry by those same
policies (especially the US) and the fall is imminent.
"The increasing weaponization of sanctions is a powerful contribution to a crumbling world
order, one that invokes the grave danger of over-reaction by an aggrieved victim, in a
context of intense economic and military competition between rival nuclear powers."
Fact: "War is the health of the state" [Randolph Bourne]- meaning, the "business" of
governments is always war- war on its citizens, war on other nations, it never ends.
Invade the world, invite the world. Economic cold war vs. 1/3 of the world's landmass and
population. Seemingly purposeful hollowing out of it's middle class, the abolition of
educational/societal standards to placate the demands of wokeness and the replacement of it's
historical population with an eclectic mix of third world strivers, corrupt east asians and
south american day laborers. Oh, and an increasingly debt centric economy.
The USA is obviously a very prudent country which focuses on it's own long term survival
first and foremost. I expect it to do quite well in the coming years.
My good friend in Canada says that it seems to be a "BioSecurity Fascist State" forming
also. And it's not against Cuba , it's against the populace of Canada. Worse than anything in
the US.
Sanctions strike hard at the very essence of positive international relationship ""
trade.
U.S. economic sanctions are insulting, provocative, corrosive and largely ineffective.
However, trade is hardly the essence of positive international relationship.
Britain traded massively with Germany right up until Britain attacked Germany in 1914.
Germany traded even more massively with the Soviet Union right up until Germany attacked the
Soviet Union in 1941. Were it not for Japanese trade with China, the Mukden Incident that, in
1931, opened the conflict that developed into World War II in Asia""well, it probably would
not have occurred. In short, the trade premise that underlies your article needs to be
revisited.
Sanctions is war. US wars are always cloaked behind our alleged love for democracy and
freedom, but alleged friends beginning with Saudi Arabia and impacting every country South of
our border, prove we are liars, interested only in preserving the best interests of our
wealthiest citizens.
The purpose of US foreign policy is to enhance the profits of global US Corporations
regardless what the consequences are to local targeted populations. The US has extraordinary
power over the EU, but the Russian pipeline is evidence that EU support is cracking.
Shame on the USA for failing to respect the national sovereignty of other nations big and
small. Our constitutional form of government is not a model example of the fruits of
democracy and freedom, as both are crippled by original design, for profit prisons and
schools, toll roads, and the moral hazards imposed by misguided religious fanatics who impose
their will on a disinterested public.
Winston Churchill was a great one for blockades. Churchill, the MoFker is responsible for
5 million deaths. During the 2nd World War he shipped grain from India to Britain and left
the Indians to starve. Five million Bengalis and east Indians died of starvation. Let's hope
when the tide turns all this is forgotten and forgiven.
The war against Japan was instigated by blocades.
The war against Iran is the next.
Syria policy has nothing to do with oil or Assad being a dictator. It is a continuation of
Israel's policies. The whole purpose of these wars is to establish an independent Kurdish
state so that the pressure on Israel could be reduced and states in the region could be
destabilized. While the US was busy trying to fight Israel's wars in ME, China has become a
strategic threat with no signs of slowing down the process of overtaking the US as the
dominant superpower of the world. Despite all the damage these policies have caused, even the
so-called conservatives in the US keep repeating nonsensical ideas like "Kurds deserve a
state." Not realizing that there is no such thing as "deserving a state" or that this just a
zionist project that offers nothing to the US.
Regarding China, sanctions should be used more not less, unless the US wants to be the
secondary power. However, they are not needed with other countries. In ME, the US should wash
its hands off Israel and let the most moral army of the world protect their own country. That
country is a huge liability and problem for the US, it offered the US nothing other than
selling American military secrets and earning 1.5 billion Muslims' disdain. To counter Russia
and Iran, the US should double down on cooperating with Turkey, increase investments and
military support so that Turks can be more active in Central Asia and Afghanistan as well.
This is the smartest and the most efficient way for the US to achieve its goals in Asia and
ME. Which would be slowing China's growth, Russia's creeping in the South, and Iranian
activity in Arab ME.
However, the US basically does the opposite of everything it should. Turning
neutral/unfriendly with Turkey is one of the dumbest things the US foreign service could do,
considering the fact that Turks are the historical enemies of all three of China, Russia, and
Iran, and they did exactly that? Why? For Israel whose feelings were hurt by Erdogan of
course. Currently, the US government is a hostage to vocal minorities and interest groups.
Therefore, its relative decline will not stop unless actual Americans with no double
allegiances step up and take back their government.
Canada is a pathetic American colony, selling their resources cheap in return for being
allowed to have a few crappy hockey teams and access to degenerate American entertainment.
The Brits tell them to murder white Germans, they do it. The Americans tell them to murder
Afghans, they do it...
The US government is a menace to all, including the US population. All US presidents are
war criminals, and sanctions are only one aspect of their endless criminality.
Sanctions are the modern day adaptation of siege warfare. It's essentially a
"˜starve them out' approach to foreign policy. Theoretically, one presumes, the goal is
to cause enough instability to harm the targeted regime. But I can't think of a single time
they have succeeded at anything but causing mass suffering to those at the bottom of the
power pyramid.
In the case of sanctions on Iraq and the subsequent corrupt Oil-For-Food Program, the
sanctions became a vehicle to transfer billions of dollars to oligarchs and their pet
politicians" as usual.
The latest Novichok victims were exposed to the deadly agent as a result of a leak from a
nearby UK laboratory, authorities have confirmed.
Charlie Rowley, 45, and Dawn Sturgess, 44, fell ill at a house in Amesbury on Saturday,
after being exposed to Novichok "" the same nerve agent that poisoned ex-Russian spy Sergei
Skirpal.
Rt.com reports: Two people,
this time a British couple in their 40s with no link to Russian intelligence, were affected by
a chemical substance on Saturday. Four days later, the UK's counter-terrorism chief said the
chemical that hit them was the same that sent former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and
his daughter, Yulia, into a coma in early March.
Back then, it took mere hours for the UK government to pin the blame on Moscow and unleash a
massive diplomatic offensive together with its allies. Moscow, still waiting for compelling
evidence to be produced, has been shut out of the investigation, and it has raised a number of
questions about the poisoning "" none of which have been answered.
Linking the two poisonings "is clearly a line of enquiry" for UK investigators, but the new
incident doesn't look likely to answer any of those concerns either.
The new victims, 45-year-old Charlie Rowley and his 44-year-old girlfriend Dawn Sturgess
were discovered in Amesbury, some 12 km (7 miles) north of Salisbury. Both scenes, though, are
located around Porton Down, which houses a secretive government chemical lab.
Porton Down has been a crucial part of the Skripal case investigation. It was there that the
chemical agent was identified as Novichok in both cases. Back in March, UK officials cited this
as proof that the substance came from Russia "" only to later be contradicted by the lab's
chief executive, who said they weren't really able to verify the agent's origins.
As for the location of the new scene relative to the old one, 12 km doesn't seem like an
improbably large distance. Plus, a friend of the victims said the couple had been to Salisbury
before they fell ill. The UK Home Secretary's working theory is that the exposure was
accidental, which begs the question: how would that be possible after four months and a massive
clean-up operation? Also, why were there only two random people in the whole 12km radius that
were affected?
Curious timing
Investigators say it's unclear if the supposed Novichok came from the same batch that
poisoned the Skripals in March. But, according to experts, the nerve agents of the Novichok
family lose their potency very quickly, which makes it unlikely that a trace powerful enough
had survived for four months to strike again at this particular moment.
And the moment is significant for two reasons "" two events key to Russia's international
image. One is the hugely successful FIFA World Cup, where the English team just secured a
quarter-final spot. British fans seem to be enjoying themselves in Russia, and berating British
politicians and media for their efforts to scare them away from the event.
The other is the preparations for a summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia's
Vladimir Putin. A date and a place for the meeting "" Helsinki, Finland, July 16 "" were set
just last week, and a possible rapprochement between the two rival superpowers seems to be
keeping British officials up at night.
Nobody died, again
One of the key questions asked back in March was: why did the Skripals survive if they were
indeed exposed to a military-grade nerve agent? While UK officials peddle Novichok as a deadly
nerve agent manufactured by the Soviets, claiming its recent use was the first chemical attack
in Europe since World War Two, it appears to have a surprisingly low lethality rate.
A friend of the couple described Rowley becoming increasingly ill over the course of the
day, before finally being taken to the hospital. There, the supposedly deadly Novichok gave
doctors enough time to treat the couple for a completely different diagnosis: the medics
initially believed that the couple had taken contaminated drugs (Rowley is a registered heroin
addict). Samples from the two were only sent to Porton Down on Monday, two days after they were
admitted.
Back in March, the Skripals were similarly discovered slipping in and out of consciousness
on a park bench. They were also treated for an opioid overdose at first, before the diagnosis
switched to nerve agent poisoning. Both ultimately survived and have now been discharged from
the hospital.
Analysts have repeatedly questioned the apparent low lethality of the supposed
"military-grade nerve agent." Russian officials, as well, have said that if such a deadly
substance had indeed been used, survival would be impossible.
British officials are still investigating the incident. However, this time "" now that
Novichok has been brought up "" they seem less inclined to point fingers, even as England fans
frolic in Russia and Theresa May's handling of Brexit continues to divide the public.
There are a lot of things that can be done to mitigate problems due to declining oil
production. When it comes to SA, they can start using natural gas from Ghawar or Qatar to
replace fuel oil for power generation during especially summer.
Okay, first point: Qatar has plenty of natural gas. The problem is they are in a feud with
Saudi and they do not trade with each other:
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt severed diplomatic ties with
Qatar in mid-2017 after accusing the country of supporting terrorism. Qatar has repeatedly
denied the accusations. The boycotting countries, known as the Arab quartet, also cited
political differences with Qatar over Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Second point: Saudi does not have nearly enough natural gas to power their own power plants
and desalination plants:
New York CNN Business --
Saudi Arabia has placed a huge bet on American natural gas.
In a sign of shifting energy fortunes, Saudi Aramco announced a mega preliminary
agreement on Wednesday to buy 5 million tons of liquefied natural gas per year from a Port
Arthur, Texas export project that's under development.
If completed, the purchase from San Diego-based Sempra Energy (SRE) would be one of the
largest LNG deals ever signed, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
But this may change. Saudi is desperate for natural gas and this has led them to try to make
amends with Qatar:
(CNN)Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies agreed on Tuesday to restore diplomatic relations
with Qatar and restart flights to and from the country, ending a three-year boycott of the tiny
gas-rich nation.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt severed diplomatic ties with
Qatar in mid-2017 after accusing the country of supporting terrorism. Qatar has repeatedly
denied the accusations.
The boycotting countries, known as the Arab quartet, also cited political differences
with Qatar over Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Doha, unlike its Gulf neighbors, has friendly
relations with Tehran, supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and has hosted groups
affiliated with the Islamist group.
Qatar's only land border -- which it shares with Saudi Arabia -- was sealed shut.
Boycotting countries closed their airspace to Qatar, and nearby Bahrain and the UAE closed
their maritime borders to ships carrying the Qatari flag.
REPLYRATIONALLUDDITE IGNORED
06/08/2021 at 8:29 pm
Fantastic Ron. Too many people practising truth by assertion and liar's bluff / wishful
thinking. They won't change, but you persuade others whom are genuinely seeking the truth and
can distinguish between evidence supported logic and security blanket speculation.
SA is going to end badly, as too will fever dreams that don't realise that their electric
transition is a mirage – largely it's all fossil fuels in disguise and totally parasitic
on upon the peak energy infrastructure of previous and current fossil fuel excess calories.
We may have an Electric Middle Ages (Ugo Bardi), but unless a new energy source AT LEAST as
energy dense and net positive as FF is discovered like yesterday then this lovely wealth Blip
we all enjoyed is going away.
Michael Hudson appeared
again on Moderate Rebels in an examination of Biden's policy direction, some of
which are clearly a continuity from Trump and others Neoliberal Obaman. This observation and
the following discussion reveals the modus behind what was initially Trumpian:
"So if you look at the sanctions against Russia and China as a way to split Europe and
make Europe increasingly dependent on the United States, not only for gas, and energy, but
also for vaccines."
Hudson calls it "the intellectual property monopoly" which was a major point in the
rationale he produced for his Trade War with China. But as we've seen, the global reaction
isn't as it was during the previous era from 1970-2000:
"So what we're seeing is an intensification of economic warfare against almost all the
other countries in the world, hoping that somehow this will divide and conquer them,
instead of driving them all together ." [My Emphasis]
And what we're seeing is the latter occurring as the Outlaw US Empire's Soft Power rapidly
erodes. As with their initial program, the discussion is long and involved.
And since I've been absent, I should suggest reading Escobar's latest bit of
historical review , which I found quite profound and an interesting gap filler in the
historical narrative of Western Colonialism.
Who caused the flight to be diverted is still uncertain to me. It's clear that Roman was
the target though. And that relations between the West and Russia are suffering.
With that said, I think it's worthwhile to note that this new low in relations is
something that is not in Russia's interest as NordStream2 is still under attack.
Some say that Nordstream 2 is unstoppable. Well, the completion of the pipeline is near
but whether Germany buys gas from Russia and/or how much gas is still a question. The Empire
opposition to NS2 has been relentless but they may accept a pipeline that guarantees German
energy security yet demand that it restrict purchases of Russian gas to only what is
absolutely necessary.
Barring a mistranslation, Putin said that continued gas transit through Ukraine depends on
Ukraine's behaviour. Based on a quick impression, that contracts pretty much every previous
Russian / Gazprom statement that Garprom intends to retain same flows through Ukraine. No one
expects Russia to keep flows in the event of hostilities, but to give opponents of the
pipeline a soundbyte to say "see, we told you they would do that" is a shocking blunder.
Actually, he kept repeating that the current transit contract will be maintained, but that
if Ukraine wants to increase the volume of gas that goes through their territory, and
subsequently earn more money from transit contracts, they have to make that option more
lucrative for customers and suppliers. Primarily, by breaking up the gas monopoly on that
territory -- harking back to the consortium suggestion by Shroeder in 2008-2009(?).
That said, he was fairly blunt about the advantages of supplying gas directly to Germany
and the lack of any strictly economical reason to use Ukrainian gas transit, and that's a
fairly obvious aspect of this entire project -- provided that the capacity of these auxiliary
pipelines isn't exceeded, there's no good economic reason to use the Ukrainian
infrastructure.
When asked about Ukrainian financial woes, in the comical context of Zelensky complaining
that the gas transit income is essential for financing the Ukrainian army, he replied
sardonically that it's not the responsibility of the Russian state to keep the Ukrainian
state fed. There's a sort of Russian gag, where a guy asks his neighbor for something to eat,
so that he has the strength to take a dump on his doorstep, which neatly fits the
situation.
US Troops Die for World Domination, Not Freedom May 31, 2021 Save
On Memorial Day, Caitlin Johnstone says it's important to block the propaganda that helps
feed a steady supply of teenagers into the imperial war machine.
Airman placing U.S. flags at military graves, May 27. (Arlington National Cemetery,
Flickr)
V ice President Kamala Harris spent
the weekend under fire from Republicans, which of course means that Kamala Harris spent the
weekend being criticized for the most silly, vapid reason you could possibly criticize Kamala
Harris for.
Apparently the likely future president tweeted "Enjoy the long weekend,"
a reference to the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, instead of gushing about fallen troops and
sacrifice.
That's it, that's the whole entire story. That silly, irrelevant offense by one of the
sleaziest
people in the single most corrupt and murderous government on earth is the whole entire
basis for histrionic headlines from conservative media outlets like this :
Harris, the born politician, was quick to course correct.
"Throughout our history our service men and women have risked everything to defend our
freedoms and our country," the veep tweeted . "As we prepare to honor
them on Memorial Day, we remember their service and their sacrifice."
Which is of course complete bullshit. It has been generations since any member of the U.S.
military could be said to have served or sacrificed defending America or its freedoms, and that
has been the case throughout almost the entirety of its history. If you are reading this it is
statistically unlikely that you are of an age where any U.S. military personnel died for any
other reason than corporate profit and global domination, and if you are it's almost certain
you weren't old enough to have had mature thoughts about it at the time.
Whenever you criticize the U.S. war machine online within earshot of anyone who's
sufficiently propagandized, you will invariably be lectured about the second World War and how
we'd all be speaking German or Japanese without the brave men who died for our freedom. This
makes my point for me: the fact that apologists for U.S. imperialism always need to reach all
the way back through history to the cusp of living memory to find even one single example of
the American military being used for purposes that weren't evil proves that it most certainly
is evil.
But this is one of the main reasons there are so very many movies and history documentaries
made about World War II: it's an opportunity to portray U.S. servicemen bravely fighting and
dying for a noble cause without having to bend the truth beyond recognition. The other major
reason is that focusing on the second World War allows members of the U.S. empire to escape
into a time when the Big Bad Guy on the world stage was someone else.
From the end of World War II to the fall of the U.S.S.R., the U.S. military was used to
smash the spread of communism and secure geostrategic interests toward the ultimate end of
engineering the collapse of the Soviet Union. After this was accomplished in 1991, U.S. foreign
policy officially shifted to preserving a unipolar world order by preventing the rise of any
other superpower which could rival its might.
"In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense
Department asserts that America's political and military mission in the post-cold-war era
will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or
the territory of the former Soviet Union.
A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for
weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states
that part of the American mission will be 'convincing potential competitors that they need
not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate
interests.'
The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose
position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter
any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy."
This is all U.S. troops have been fighting and dying for since the Berlin Wall came down.
Not "freedom", not "democracy" and certainly not the American people. Just continual
uncontested domination of this planet at all cost: domination of its resources, its trade
routes, its seas, its air, and its humans, no matter how many lives need to risked and snuffed
out in order to achieve it. The U.S. has
killed millions and
displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century in the reckless pursuit of
that goal.
And, as Smedley Butler spelled out 86 years ago in his still-relevant book War is a Racket , U.S.
military personnel have been dying for profit.
Nothing gets the gears of industry turning like war, and nothing better creates chaotic Wild
West environments of shock and confusion during which more wealth
and power can be grabbed. War profiteers pour immense resources into lobbying ,
think tanks and campaign donations to manipulate and bribe policy makers into making decisions
which promote war and military expansionism,
with astounding success . This is all entirely legal.
It's important to spread awareness that this is all U.S. troops have been dying for, because
the fairy tale that they fight for freedom and for their countrymen is a major propaganda
narrative used in military recruitment. While poverty plays a
significant role in driving up enlistments as predatory recruiters target poor and middle
class youth promising them a future in the nation with the worst income
inequality in the industrialized world, the fact that the aggressively propagandized
glorification of military "service" makes it a more esteemed career path than working at a
restaurant or a grocery store means people are more likely to enlist.
Without all that propaganda deceiving people into believing that military work is something
virtuous, military service would be the most shameful job anyone could possibly have; other
stigmatized jobs like sex work would be regarded as far more noble. You'd be less reluctant to
tell your extended family over Christmas that you're a janitor at a seedy massage parlor than
that you've enlisted in the U.S. military, because instead of congratulating and praising you,
your Uncle Murray would look at you and say, "So you're gonna be killing kids for crude
oil?"
And that's exactly how it should be. Continuing to uphold the lie that U.S. troops fight and
die for a good cause is helping to ensure a steady supply of teenagers to feed into the gears
of the imperial war machine. Stop feeding into the lie that the war machine is worth killing
and being killed for. Not out of disrespect for the dead, but out of reverence for the
living.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those
of Consortium News .
Em , June 1, 2021 at 09:52
Instead of annually memorializing those dead youth, who were, in one way or the other,
coerced to go off to foreign lands to kill or be killed, by other youth, in the name of a
piece of dead symbolic cloth, wouldn't it be a better idea to honor them, while alive in the
prime of living (the world over) by affording them the means to learn, leading by example, to
discover for themselves – how to think critically as to what the real options are,
collectively as well as individually, for survival and thriving.
CNfan , June 1, 2021 at 04:06
"Global domination" for the benefit of a predatory financial oligarchy.
Peter Loeb , June 1, 2021 at 09:11
Read William Hartung's "Prophets of War " to understand the dynamics.
Thank you all for speaking your truth in this dystopian human universe so apparently
lacking human reason and understanding. As is so wisely introduced and recognized herein, the
murderous depravity of the "Wolfwitz Doctrine" being and remaining the public policy
formulation of our national governance, both foreign and domestic, is a fact that every U.S.
citizen should consider and understand on this Memorial Day.
As Usual,
EA
Realist , May 31, 2021 at 17:27
Well stated, perfectly logical again on this subject as always, Caitlin. You out the
warmongers for their game to fleece the public and rape the world all so a handful of already
fat, lazyass but enormously wealthy and influential people can acquire, without the slightest
bit of shame, yet more, more and more of everything there is to be had. You and General
Butler.
Will this message get through, this time? Maybe the billionth time is the charm, eh? Can
the scales suddenly fall from the eyes of the 330 million Americans who will then demand an
immediate end to the madness? On the merits, it's the only conclusion that might realise any
actual justice for our country and the rest of the world upon whose throat it keeps a knee
firmly planted.
Sorry, nothing of the sort shall ever happen, not as long as the entire mercenary mass
media obeys its corporate ownership and speaks nothing but false narratives every minute of
every day. Not as long as the educational system is really nothing more than a propaganda
indoctrination experience for every child born in the glorious USA! Not as long as every
politician occupying any given office is just a bought and paid for tool of the Matrix with
great talents for convincing the masses that 2 + 2 = 3, or 5, or whatever is convenient at
the time to benefit the ledgers of their plutocrat masters.
What better illustrates the reality of my last assertion than the occupancy of the White
House by Sleepy/Creepy Joe Biden who, through age alone, has been reduced to nothing more
than a sack of unresponsive meat firmly trussed up with ropes and pulleys that his handlers
pull this way or that to create an animatronic effect apparently perfectly convincing to the
majority of the American public? Or so they say, based upon some putative election
results.
Truly, thanks for the effort, Caitlin. I do appreciate that some have a grasp on the
truth. I look forward to its recapitulation by yourself and many others to no effect on every
Memorial Day in the USA. It would be unrealistic of me to say otherwise.
Rael Nidess, M.D. , May 31, 2021 at 12:54
Kudos for being one of a very few to mention the central driving ethic behind U.S. foreign
policy since the demise of the USSR: The Wolfowitz Doctrine. As central today as it was when
first published.
"HUNTSVILLE: The Army's experimental Multi-Domain Task Force is a "game changer" that's
turned the tide in "at least 10 wargames," the commander of US Army Pacific says. "Plans are
already changing at the combatant command level because of this." The key: the unit cracked the
Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2/AD) conundrum, Russia and China's dense layered defenses of
long-range missiles, sensors, and networks to coordinate them. "Before, we couldn't penetrate
A2/AD. With it, we could," Gen. Robert Brown said of the task force's performance in "at least
10 exercises and wargames. With the Multi-Domain Task Force," he told me after his remarks to
the AUSA Global conference here, "we could impact their long-range systems and have a much
greater success against an adversary. If I go into any more, it'd be classified."
"In the future, Brown said here last week, "all formations will have to become multi-domain
or they'll be irrelevant, [but] it's going to be years before it can happen." The Army's goal
is modernize enough forces to wage multi-domain warfare against either China or Russia -- but
not both at once -- by 2028." (Breaking Defense)
Comment: I was intrigued when, in April, SecDef Austin announced he was sending two units
with about 500 personnel to Germany. The units are a multi-domain task force and a theater
fires command. Sounded like a mere symbolic move. But there's nothing symbolic about these
particular units. They are an early implementation of the Pentagon's new multi-domain
operations doctrine which focuses on theater level operations. That doesn't mean mass divisions
and corps. It means theater level employment of global assets across the entire spectrum of
conflict. It's still billed as a concept rather than a full blown doctrine, but it's getting
there and is already being implemented in the Pacific theater.
In an Army Chief of Staff paper, "Army Multi-Domain Transformation Ready to Win in
Competition and Conflict" dated 16 March 2021, the multi-domain task force (MDTF) is described
as "theater-level maneuver elements designed to synchronize precision effects and precision
fires in all domains against adversary anti-access/ area denial (A2/AD) networks in all
domains, enabling joint forces to execute their operational plan (OPLAN) directed roles." The
MDTF's purpose is during competition, to "gain and maintain contact with our adversaries to
support the rapid transition to crisis or conflict"; during a crisis, to "deter adversaries and
shape the environment by providing flexible response options to the combatant commander"; and
if conflict arises, to "neutralize adversary A2/AD networks to enable joint freedom of
action."
Russia has been modernizing their doctrine, force structure and equipment in earnest for at
least the last decade. Surely China has been moving in the same direction. It's about time we
do the same. It will be several years, at least, before this doctrine can be fully implemented
with the necessary force structure and equipment. In many ways, our military has atrophied
terribly due to two decades of brigade level, at best, counterinsurgency operations. However,
we should, and apparently are, implementing this new doctrine now with the minimal force
structure changes of the MDTF and the inclusion of EW within cyber. Our current equipment can
be employed more effectively especially if land, sea, air and space systems are better
integrated. It's an evolution, not a revolution.
A2/AD is just modern defense IMO – is it really necessary to have a doctrine that
demands superiority over Russia or China at – lets say – 200 km from their border?
And at which point do we just call this outright agressive posturing ? DougDiggler
says: June
3, 2021 at 1:42 pm
Is this more Pentagon wishful thinking, like their exercise that involved firing a still
nonexistent hypersonic from a B-52? I get the feeling that NATO's ID Pol army would not fare
well in attacking the military professionals of Russia, not even in these proposed multi-front
"crumbling" attacks. However, it is nice that they're finally getting around to studying
Operation Bagration. However I think the operational heirs to that offensive have probably
improved on it and have also spent much time considering being on the receiving end of such a
nightmare. They play chess while we play Nintendo. Christian J. Chuba says:
June
1, 2021 at 5:32 pm
Wow. We've been pushing our navy up Russia and China's nose today and doing the same with
NATO war games on land and air patrols. I hope this doesn't give us a false sense of confidence
to be outright reckless.
For some reason we have become obsessed with depriving the Russians control of their arctic
coastline. I'm not saying we are control freaks (actually we are control freaks) but I can
easily see a situation developing up their if we think we have some technology edge. That is
one place Russia wants to be secure and for some reason, if there is water, we must have our
navy just outside that 12 nautical mile limit.
What kills me is that we do this in the name of 'freedom of navigation' but that route is
going to be mostly transporting Chinese stuff to Europe and only because the Russians are
paying for the necessary ice breakers and rescue stations. In other words, we are waving our
wand over waters that are only navigable because of Russian investment.
Can the MIC make anything other than cost over-runs these days? d74 says:
June
1, 2021 at 11:38 pm
The answer is too easy: no.
Not only are the costs insane, but the functionality is insufficient. Simply put, it doesn't
work or seem unfit for fighting. Stacking technologies is a dream that does not stand up to
warfare realities. 'Keep it simple' seems out of reach.
I followed the adoption of the 120mm mortar by USMC. They started with a good weapon, with
confirmed potential. The end point was tactical paralysis.
This is (was) a very small issue, and an old one. It is significant. blue peacock
says: June
2, 2021 at 9:42 am
Washington would be easy to spot in a game of chess. It's the player with no plan beyond
an aggressive opening. That is no strategy at all. The failure to think several moves ahead
matters.
While I don't agree with everything many pundits including Chas Freeman say about our
behavior with respect to China, I do see the point that Chas makes in the quote above. Iraq and
Afghanistan are great examples. Our political and governmental leadership have no sense of
"smarts", all they've known for decades is bully behavior under both Democrats and Republicans,
especially towards those they perceive as weak, like our "invasion" of Grenada. How would we
actually perform against a serious military rival like China or Russia? What would be the
reporting at hysterical CNN, MSNBC and Fox when a few carrier strike elements are sunk? Would
they be shrieking to unleash nuclear-tipped ICBMs? How would a "mission accomplished" George
Bush/Dick Cheney type with all their hubristic swagger react? The continental US has not been
attacked like ever. What happens when Seattle, Los Angeles and even DC are under actual missile
fire? How would contemporary woke Americans who have no tolerance for "sacrifice" react?
Do we have the force that reflects good value for money considering that we spend more than
Russia & China combined on the military? What type of military do we actually have relative
to the tens of trillions of dollars spent over the last decade on the credit card? What are the
metrics to evaluate actual effectiveness of a military beyond graphics and tables on Powerpoint
slides?
What would an actual strategic plan to crush the CCP look like? IMO, it begins with insuring
no dependence on a Chinese supply chain. Would the Party of Davos even allow that?
"HUNTSVILLE: The Army's experimental Multi-Domain Task Force is a "game changer" that's
turned the tide in "at least 10 wargames," the commander of US Army Pacific says. "Plans are
already changing at the combatant command level because of this." The key: the unit cracked the
Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2/AD) conundrum, Russia and China's dense layered defenses of
long-range missiles, sensors, and networks to coordinate them. "Before, we couldn't penetrate
A2/AD. With it, we could," Gen. Robert Brown said of the task force's performance in "at least
10 exercises and wargames. With the Multi-Domain Task Force," he told me after his remarks to
the AUSA Global conference here, "we could impact their long-range systems and have a much
greater success against an adversary. If I go into any more, it'd be classified."
"In the future, Brown said here last week, "all formations will have to become multi-domain
or they'll be irrelevant, [but] it's going to be years before it can happen." The Army's goal
is modernize enough forces to wage multi-domain warfare against either China or Russia -- but
not both at once -- by 2028." (Breaking Defense)
Comment: I was intrigued when, in April, SecDef Austin announced he was sending two units
with about 500 personnel to Germany. The units are a multi-domain task force and a theater
fires command. Sounded like a mere symbolic move. But there's nothing symbolic about these
particular units. They are an early implementation of the Pentagon's new multi-domain
operations doctrine which focuses on theater level operations. That doesn't mean mass divisions
and corps. It means theater level employment of global assets across the entire spectrum of
conflict. It's still billed as a concept rather than a full blown doctrine, but it's getting
there and is already being implemented in the Pacific theater.
In an Army Chief of Staff paper, "Army Multi-Domain Transformation Ready to Win in
Competition and Conflict" dated 16 March 2021, the multi-domain task force (MDTF) is described
as "theater-level maneuver elements designed to synchronize precision effects and precision
fires in all domains against adversary anti-access/ area denial (A2/AD) networks in all
domains, enabling joint forces to execute their operational plan (OPLAN) directed roles." The
MDTF's purpose is during competition, to "gain and maintain contact with our adversaries to
support the rapid transition to crisis or conflict"; during a crisis, to "deter adversaries and
shape the environment by providing flexible response options to the combatant commander"; and
if conflict arises, to "neutralize adversary A2/AD networks to enable joint freedom of
action."
Russia has been modernizing their doctrine, force structure and equipment in earnest for at
least the last decade. Surely China has been moving in the same direction. It's about time we
do the same. It will be several years, at least, before this doctrine can be fully implemented
with the necessary force structure and equipment. In many ways, our military has atrophied
terribly due to two decades of brigade level, at best, counterinsurgency operations. However,
we should, and apparently are, implementing this new doctrine now with the minimal force
structure changes of the MDTF and the inclusion of EW within cyber. Our current equipment can
be employed more effectively especially if land, sea, air and space systems are better
integrated. It's an evolution, not a revolution.
A2/AD is just modern defense IMO – is it really necessary to have a doctrine that
demands superiority over Russia or China at – lets say – 200 km from their border?
And at which point do we just call this outright agressive posturing ? DougDiggler
says: June
3, 2021 at 1:42 pm
Is this more Pentagon wishful thinking, like their exercise that involved firing a still
nonexistent hypersonic from a B-52? I get the feeling that NATO's ID Pol army would not fare
well in attacking the military professionals of Russia, not even in these proposed multi-front
"crumbling" attacks. However, it is nice that they're finally getting around to studying
Operation Bagration. However I think the operational heirs to that offensive have probably
improved on it and have also spent much time considering being on the receiving end of such a
nightmare. They play chess while we play Nintendo. Christian J. Chuba says:
June
1, 2021 at 5:32 pm
Wow. We've been pushing our navy up Russia and China's nose today and doing the same with
NATO war games on land and air patrols. I hope this doesn't give us a false sense of confidence
to be outright reckless.
For some reason we have become obsessed with depriving the Russians control of their arctic
coastline. I'm not saying we are control freaks (actually we are control freaks) but I can
easily see a situation developing up their if we think we have some technology edge. That is
one place Russia wants to be secure and for some reason, if there is water, we must have our
navy just outside that 12 nautical mile limit.
What kills me is that we do this in the name of 'freedom of navigation' but that route is
going to be mostly transporting Chinese stuff to Europe and only because the Russians are
paying for the necessary ice breakers and rescue stations. In other words, we are waving our
wand over waters that are only navigable because of Russian investment.
Anyway, so they were able to develop a simulation? That's impressive.
Believe it or not, the president says that human rights R us.
Hear that, BLM? Women? Asian Americans? Hispanics? homeless? heavily indebted students? .
. the list goes on.
Biden said so, May 30, 2021
"I had a long conversation -- for two hours -- recently with President Xi, making it clear
to him that we could do nothing but speak out for human rights around the world because
that's who we are. I'll be meeting with President Putin in a couple of weeks in Geneva,
making it clear that we will not -- we will not stand by and let him abuse those rights." . .
here
..reminds me of Aeschylus: "In war, truth is the first casualty."
Biden backed down on Nordstream 2 and, at The Davos Crowd's insistence, he will back down on
the JCPOA.
Davos needs cheap energy into Europe. That's ultimately what the JCPOA was all about. The
basic framework for the deal is still there. While the U.S. will kick and scream a bit about
sanctions relief, Iran will be back into the oil market and make it possible for Europe to once
again invest in oil/gas projects in Iran.
Now
that Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer going to be leading Israel, the probability of
breakthrough is much much higher than last week. The Likudniks in Congress and the Senate just
lost their raison d'etre. The loss of face for Israel in Bibi's latest attempt to bludgeon Gaza
to retain power backfired completely.
U.S. policy towards Israel is shifting rapidly as the younger generations, Gen-X and
Millennials, simply don't have the same allegiance to Israel that the Baby Boomers and Silent
generations did. It is part of a geopolitical ethos which is outdated.
So, with some deal over Iran's nuclear capability in the near future, Europe will then get
gas pipelines from Iran through Turkey as well as gain better access to the North South
Transport Corridor which is now unofficially part of China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Russia, now that Nordstream 2 is nearly done, will not balk at this. In fact, they'll
welcome it. It forms the basis for a broader, sustainable peace arrangement in the Middle East.
What's lost is the Zionist program for Greater Israel and continued sowing dissent between
exhausted participants.
But the big geopolitical win for Davos, they think, is that by returning Iran to the oil
markets it will cut down on Russia's dominance there. That the only reason Russia is the price
setter in oil today, as the producer of the marginal barrel, is because of Trump taking Iranian
and Venezuelan oil off the market.
With these negotiations ongoing and likely to conclude soon I'm sure the thinking is that
this will help save Iranian moderates in the upcoming elections. But with Iran's Guardian
Council paving the way for Ebrahim Raeisi to win the election that is also very unlikely(
H/T to Pepe
Escobar's latest on this ) :
So Raeisi now seems to be nearly a done deal: a relatively faceless bureaucrat without the
profile of an IRGC hardliner, well known for his anti-corruption fight and care about the
poor and downtrodden. On foreign policy, the crucial fact is that he will arguably follow
crucial IRGC dictates.
Raeisi is already spinning that he "negotiated quietly" to secure the qualification of
more candidates, "to make the election scene more competitive and participatory". The problem
is no candidate has the power to sway the opaque decisions of the 12-member Guardian Council,
composed exclusively by clerics: only Ayatollah Khamenei.
I have no doubt that Iran is, as Escobar suggests, in post-JCPOA mode now and will walk away
from Geneva without a deal if need be, but Davos will cut the deal it needs to bring the oil
and gas into Europe while still blaming the U.S. for Iran's nuclear ambitions because they've
gotten what they actually wanted, Netanyahu out of power.
Seeing the tenor of these negotiations and the return of Obama to the White House, the
Saudis saw the writing on the wall immediately and began peace talks with Iran in Baghdad put
off for a year because of Trump's killing Soleimani.
The Saudis are fighting for their lives now as the Shia Crescent forms and China holds the
House of Saud's future in its hands.
Syria will be restored to the Arab League and all that 'peace' work by Trump will be undone
quickly. Because none of it was actually peaceful in its implementation. Netanyahu is gone,
Israel just got
defeated by Hamas and now the rest of the story can unfold, put on hold by four years of
Jared Kushner's idiocy and U.S. neoconservatives feeding Trump bad information about the
situation.
The Saker put together two lists in his latest article (linked above) which puts the entire
situation into perspective:
The Goals:
Bring down a strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces,
and security services.
Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a "security zone" by
Israel not only in the Golan but further north.
Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah.
Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each other to death, then create a "security zone,"
but this time in Lebanon.
Prevent the creation of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon.
Break up Syria along ethnic and religious lines.
Create a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
Make it possible for Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East
and force the KSA, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas
or oil pipeline project.
Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert, and eventually attack Iran with a broad regional
coalition of forces.
Eliminate all centers of Shia power in the Middle-East.
The Outcomes:
The Syrian state has survived, and its armed and security forces are now far more
capable than they were before the war started (remember how they almost lost the war
initially? The Syrians bounced back while learning some very hard lessons. By all reports,
they improved tremendously, while at critical moments Iran and Hezbollah were literally
"plugging holes" in the Syrian frontlines and "extinguishing fires" on local flashpoints.
Now the Syrians are doing a very good job of liberating large chunks of their country,
including every single city in Syria).
Not only is Syria stronger, but the Iranians and Hezbollah are all over the country now,
which is driving the Israelis into a state of panic and rage.
Lebanon is rock solid; even the latest Saudi attempt to kidnap Hariri is backfiring.
(2021 update: in spite of the explosion in Beirut, Hezbollah is still in charge)
Syria will remain unitary, and Kurdistan is not happening. Millions of displaced
refugees are returning home.
Israel and the US look like total idiots and, even worse, as losers with no credibility
left.
The net result is everyone in the region who were aggressors are now suing for peace. This
is why I expect some kind of deal that returns Iran to the global economy. There's no way for
Germany's shiny new trade deal with China to work without this.
Trump's hard line against Iran was always a mistake, even if Iran's nuclear ambitions are
real. But with the Open Skies treaty now a dead letter the U.S. has real logistical problems in
the region and they only multiply if Erdogan in Turkey finally chooses a side and gives up his
Neo-Ottoman ambitions, now very likely.
But when it comes to economics, as always, Davos has this all backwards vis a vis oil. They
still think they can use the JCPOA to drive a wedge between Iran and Russia over oil. They
still think Putin only cares about oil and gas sales abroad. It's clear they don't listen to
him because the policy never seems to change.
So, to Davos, if they bring 2.5 to 3 million barrels per day from Iran back online and oil
prices drop, this forces Russia to back down militarily and diplomatically in Eastern Europe.
With a free-floated ruble the Russians don't care now that they are mostly self-sufficient in
food and raw material production.
None of that will come to pass. Putin is shifting the Russian economy away from oil and gas
with an announced ambitious domestic spending plan ahead of this fall's State Duma elections.
Lower or even stable prices will accelerate those plans as capital no longer finds its best
return in that sector.
This carrot to Iran and stick to Russia approach of Brussels/Davos is childish and it will
only get worse when the Greens come to power in Germany at the end of the year. Unless the
German elections end in a stalemate which is unforeseen, the CDU will grand coalition as the
junior partner to the Greens, just as Davos wants it.
Don't miss the significance of the policy bifurcation either when it comes to oil. The Biden
administration is trying to make energy as expensive as possible in the U.S. -- no Keystone
Pipeline, Whitmer trying to close down Enbridges's Line 5 from Canada into Michigan, etc. --
while Europe gets Nordstream 2 from Russia and new, cheap supplies from Iran.
This is what had Trump so hopping mad when he was President. This is part of why he hated
the JCPOA. Israel and the EastMed pipeline was what should have been the U.S. policy in his
mind.
Now, those dreams are dead and the sell out of the U.S. to Davos is in full swing.
Seriously, Biden/Obama are going to continue on this path of undermining U.S. energy production
until they are thrown out of office, either by the overwhelming shame of the election fraud
lawsuits which recall Senators from Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, the mid-term elections which
brings a more pro-Trump GOP to power or by military force. That last bit I put a very low
probability on.
Bottom line, for now global oil prices have likely peaked no matter what drivel comes out of
John Kerry's mouth.
The Brent/WTI spread will likely collapse and go negative for the first time in years as
Iran's full oil production comes online over the next two years while U.S. production falls.
We'll see rising oil prices in the U.S. while global supply rises, some of which China is
getting at a steep discount from who? Iran.
Meanwhile Russia continues to hold the EU to account on everything while unmasking the not
just the latest Bellingcat/MI6/State Dept. nonsense in Belarus surrounding the arrest of Roman
Petrosovich, but also filling the void diplomatically left by a confused and incompetent U.S.
policy in the Middle East.
If I'm the Bennett in Israel, the first phone call I make after taking office is to no one
other than Putin, who now holds the reins over Iran, Hezbollah and a very battle-hardened and
angry Syria who just re-elected Assad because he navigated the assault on the country with no
lack of geopolitical skill.
Because it is clear that Biden/Obama, on behalf of Davos , have left Israel out to twist in
the wind surrounded by those who wish it gone. We'll see if they get their wish. I think the
win here is clear and the days of U.S. adventurism in the Middle East are numbered.
The oil wars aren't over, by any stretch of the imagination, but the outcome of the main
battles have decisively shifted who determines what battles are fought next.
About time that fcking Project for the New American Century(aka Greater Israel from the
Nile to the Euphates) got derailed .
Fcking useless neocon sh its gutted and bankrupted the U.S. for their fcked up ziosh it
garbage.
Sheldon Adelson belongs in the Aus witz Mengele suite in hell. He was the biggest
cheerleader for the last 20 years of this hell on earth that was created in the middle
east.
Woodenman 2 hours ago remove link
Trump got it *** backwards , he should have defunded Israel and fast tracked Iran to be
a nuclear power, Iran is an oil producer, what does Israel do for us?
Would I care that Israel cannot sleep at night knowing Iran has the bomb, not at
all.
AGuy 37 minutes ago
" what does Israel do for us? "
Keeps the ME unstable so the US has the excuse to keep a lot of military resources in
the ME, in the name of being the worlds policemen. Plus the US needs to protect the Petro
dollar, but at this point I don't think that will matter soon considering the amount of
money printing & spending the US is doing at the momement.
wellwaddyaknow 2 hours ago (Edited)
Soleimani was very good at destroying ISIS trash.
And which countries backed ISIS?
JR Wirth 2 hours ago
NeoCon tears as the world attempts to move on from deranged foreign policy. Will the US
throw a fit and drag the world into war? Let's call Tel Aviv and find out.
Der Steppenwolf 2 hours ago remove link
Iran already sells huge amounts of oil to China and likely many others, there just isn't
going to be a significant increase in Iranian oil hitting the market as a result of any
deal. Moreover, this relatively small increase will occur over time. Even if Iran
eventually increases production the 2.5-3 million bpd the author cites, world consumption
in 2021 is forecast to increase about 6 million bpd over 2020. Considering these facts any
changes in Iranian oil production should do little to affect the overall
price.
lay_arrow
AGuy 42 minutes ago
" Iran has huge potential to increase production "
I doubt that very much. Iran has very old oil fields which have been producing since the
1920s. Global Oil production peaked in 2018 & is now in permanent decline. Iran could
increase NatGas production, but Oil production is in permanent decline.
Apollo 32 minutes ago
God, I hope half of the above comes true. Bibi needs to be court martialed and Israel
needs to go back into smaller and more peaceful version of itself (if that is even
possible) . USA can just bugger off home, and try to deal with transgendered army,
president's dementia and critical race theory nonsense first.
What the world needs is less wars, less central bankers screwing the game and less
stealing of other people's natural resources. Instead it just more plain old hard work,
honest trading and no bs diplomacy.
dead hobo 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
Amazingly perfect analysis.
Israel will survive. I wish them well.
So many US wars are oil based. Lies abound to cover this up. Neocon Economics turns
every war opportunity into a profit center. No Profit = No War potential. Whenever you see
a Neocon pumping a war somewhere, you need to look for who will make scads of money from
it.
Trump isn't an angel. He's the guy who destroyed Establishment Republicanism. That begat
populism. I detested him working his book when he pumped QE and ZIRP. I considered it a
temporary price to pay to remove Establishment Republicans from the world. Yes, the US also
needed a good Front Door with a lock. He also did good there. Trump playing the Imperialism
Game clumsily worked in the favor of Peaceful Coexistence. Probably by mistake. Ok by me if
everyone else declares peace anyway.
The US economy can still outpower anyone even if it is forced to play fair.
This brings us to the Deep State. Who exactly are they?
Are they Neocons who want war profits by making it look like others are the war mongers?
Are they anti-peace as long as it doesn't start a full blown war - providing a profit can
be made from it by their oligarch bosses?
Or is the Deep State the Davos oriented oligarchs who wants the 99% to whistle while
they work to support uncountable billions of dollars flowing into the asset piles of the
1%?
Why did the Deep State allow the BLM / Antifa / Democrat cabal take over? Are they
stupid? Or did they think Covid-19 along with these freaks would work in their favor
somehow?
Is the Deep State only common ordinary Imperialism? Is it only oil, and natural gas and
who gets to control the markets? Ukraine has a lot of natural resources. Is that a
coincidence?
What is it about Peaceful Coexistence that makes them go crazy?
What does The Deep State really want?
AGuy 49 minutes ago
" The only difference will be the wars will be fought for lithium and other rare metals.
"
Unlikely Oil will remain the King for causing wars. electricification of transportation
is doomed to fail. First average Americans cannot afford EV. heck they are struggling with
cheaper ICE vehicles. Auto loan duration have ballooned & most Americans are rolling
over debt from their older vehicle when they buy a new one. Second the grid is struggling.
Most of the older power plants are getting replaced by NatGas fired plants & at some
point we are going to see NatGas prices shoot up. Much of the US grid was built in the
1930s & 1940s and will need trillions just to maintain it and replace equipment &
power lines operating beyond their expected operating lifetime.
The US economy is slowly collapsing: Mountains of debt, demographics, dumbed down
education, and worthless degrees for Millennials, failing infrastructure (ie I-40 bridge).
We are on borrowed time.
AJAX-2 1 hour ago remove link
The fly in the ointment is that the banksters desperately need higher oil prices to prop
up their derivative portfolios. As a result, they are at odds with the Davos Crowd and
their desire for cheap/plentiful oil for Europe. We shall see who prevails.
AGuy 1 hour ago
" The fly in the ointment is that the banksters desperately need higher oil prices to
prop up their derivative portfolios. "
Nope:
Higher oil prices leads to higher defaults, which is likely to trigger derivative
losses. Banker shady deals come under congressional\agency scrutiny usually ending with
billion dollar fines, and bad press. A lot of banks probably will get nationalized when the
next banking crisis happens & all those bankers will lose out on the financial scams
they play.
European Monarchist 46 minutes ago remove link
Currently:
The Syrian state has survived, and its armed and security forces are now far more
capable than they were before the war started (remember how they almost lost the war
initially? The Syrians bounced back while learning some very hard lessons. By all
reports, they improved tremendously, while at critical moments Iran and Hezbollah
were literally "plugging holes" in the Syrian frontlines and "extinguishing fires" on
local flashpoints. Now the Syrians are doing a very good job of liberating large
chunks of their country, including every single city in Syria).
Not only is Syria stronger, but the Iranians and Hezbollah are all over the
country now, which is driving the Israelis into a state of panic and rage.
Lebanon is rock solid; even the latest Saudi attempt to kidnap Hariri is
backfiring. (2021 update: in spite of the explosion in Beirut, Hezbollah is still in
charge)
Syria will remain unitary, and Kurdistan is not happening. Millions of displaced
refugees are returning home.
Israel and the US look like total idiots and, even worse, as losers with no
credibility left.
The net result is everyone in the region who were aggressors are now suing for peace.
This is why I expect some kind of deal that returns Iran to the global economy. There's
no way for Germany's shiny new trade deal with China to work without this.
ut218 2 hours ago remove link
Solarcycle 25 had a bad start. By 2028 people will realize we are in a period of global
cooling. oil prices will soar
Itinerant 18 minutes ago
There won't be major investments of European majors in Iran's oil industry.
For Iran, Western partners have proved too fickle
For Western corporations, the risk is too great for long term investment.
China will be reaping most of the investement opportunities.
2 play_arrow
Marrubio 1 hour ago
.... the NWO & Davos idiotards ,they have been trying since March for oil not to
exceed the $ 70 barrier and they are not succeeding. Week after week they try to lower the
price, frightening with the covid, the production of Iran or whatever, and the following
week the oil rises again. The only thing left for them is mass slaughter ... but now people
know that what is going to kill them is in the "vaccine". Of course they will be stupid
enough to do it; if they have shown anything it is that they are profoundly idiots. They
will not be successful in getting cheap oil, simply because PeakOil is running since 2018
and since then oil production decreases at 5% per year: -5% per year, I am telling to the
NWO deep idiotards.
European Monarchist 55 minutes ago (Edited)
Interesting, but it remains to be seen where this is going, short term and long.
Now
that Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer going to be leading Israel, the probability of
breakthrough is much much higher than last week. The Likudniks in Congress and the Senate
just lost their raison d'etre. The loss of face for Israel in Bibi's latest attempt to
bludgeon Gaza to retain power backfired completely.
U.S. policy towards Israel is shifting rapidly as the younger generations, Gen-X and
Millennials, simply don't have the same allegiance to Israel that the Baby Boomers and
Silent generations did. It is part of a geopolitical ethos which is outdated.
So, with some deal over Iran's nuclear capability in the near future, Europe will then
get gas pipelines from Iran through Turkey as well as gain better access to the North
South Transport Corridor which is now unofficially part of China's Belt and Road
Initiative.
Russia, now that Nordstream 2 is nearly done, will not balk at this. In fact, they'll
welcome it. It forms the basis for a broader, sustainable peace arrangement in the Middle
East. What's lost is the Zionist program for Greater Israel and continued sowing dissent
between exhausted participants.
play_arrow
Einstein101 55 minutes ago remove link
Now the Syrians are doing a very good job of liberating large chunks of their
country, including every single city in Syria).
Really? Hell no! The Syrians and the mighty Russians and the Hezbollah for many months
now are not able to overcome lowly terrorists militia in northern Syria's Idlib. Plus,
the Israelis has been launching hundreds of airstrikes over Syria while the Russian made
Syrian anti air defense can do nothing about it.
"... No other book out there has the level of breadth on the history of US imperialism that this work provides. Even though it packs 400 pages of text (which might seem like a turnoff for non-academic readers), "How to Hide an Empire" is highly readable given Immerwhar's skills as a writer. Also, its length is part of what makes it awesome because it gives it the right amount of detail and scope. ..."
"... Alleging that US imperialism in its long evolution (which this book deciphers with poignancy) has had no bearing on the destinies of its once conquered populations is as fallacious as saying that the US is to blame for every single thing that happens in Native American communities, or in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc. Not everything that happens in these locations and among these populations is directly connected to US expansionism, but a great deal is. ..."
"... This is exactly the kind of book that drives the "My country, right or wrong" crowd crazy. Yes, slavery and genocide and ghastly scientific experiments existed before Europeans colonized the Americas, but it's also fair and accurate to say that Europeans made those forms of destruction into a bloody artform. Nobody did mass slaughter better. ..."
I'm a professor at the University of California San Diego and I'm assigning
this for a graduate class.
No other book out there has the level of breadth on the history of US imperialism that this work provides.
Even though it packs 400 pages of text (which might seem like a turnoff for non-academic readers), "How to Hide an Empire" is
highly readable given Immerwhar's skills as a writer. Also, its length is part of what makes it awesome because it gives it the
right amount of detail and scope.
I could not disagree more with the person who gave this book one star. Take it from me: I've taught hundreds of college students
who graduate among the best in their high school classes and they know close to nothing about the history of US settler colonialism,
overseas imperialism, or US interventionism around the world. If you give University of California college students a quiz on
where the US' overseas territories are, most who take it will fail (trust me, I've done it). And this is not their fault. Instead,
it's a product of the US education system that fails to give students a nuanced and geographically comprehensive understanding
of the oversized effect that their country has around our planet.
Alleging that US imperialism in its long evolution (which this book deciphers with poignancy) has had no bearing on the destinies
of its once conquered populations is as fallacious as saying that the US is to blame for every single thing that happens in Native
American communities, or in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc. Not everything that happens in these locations
and among these populations is directly connected to US expansionism, but a great deal is.
A case in point is Puerto Rico's current fiscal and economic crisis. The island's political class share part of the blame for
Puerto Rico's present rut. A lot of it is also due to unnatural (i.e. "natural" but human-exacerbated) disasters such as Hurricane
María. However, there is no denying that the evolution of Puerto Rico's territorial status has generated a host of adverse economic
conditions that US states (including an island state such as Hawaii) do not have to contend with. An association with the US has
undoubtedly raised the floor of material conditions in these places, but it has also imposed an unjust glass ceiling that most
people around the US either do not know about or continue to ignore.
To add to those unfair economic limitations, there are political injustices regarding the lack of representation in Congress,
and in the case of Am. Samoa, their lack of US citizenship. The fact that the populations in the overseas territories can't make
up their mind about what status they prefer is: a) understandable given the way they have been mistreated by the US government,
and b) irrelevant because what really matters is what Congress decides to do with the US' far-flung colonies, and there is no
indication that Congress wants to either fully annex them or let them go because neither would be convenient to the 50 states
and the political parties that run them. Instead, the status quo of modern colonial indeterminacy is what works best for the most
potent political and economic groups in the US mainland. Would
This book is about much more than that though. It's also a history of how and why the United States got to control so much
of what happens around the world without creating additional formal colonies like the "territories" that exist in this legal limbo.
Part of its goal is to show how precisely how US imperialism has been made to be more cost-effective and also more invisible.
Read Immerwhar's book, and don't listen to the apologists of US imperialism which is still an active force that contradicts
the US' professed values and that needs to be actively dismantled. Their attempts at discrediting this important reflect a denialism
of the US' imperial realities that has endured throughout the history that this book summarizes.
"How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States" is a great starting point for making the US public aware of
the US' contradictions as an "empire of liberty" (a phrase once used by Thomas Jefferson to describe the US as it expanded westward
beyond the original 13 colonies). It is also a necessary update to other books on this topic that are already out there, and it
is likely to hold the reader's attention more given its crafty narrative prose and structure
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This is exactly the
kind of book that drives the "My country, right or wrong" crowd crazy. Yes, slavery and genocide and ghastly scientific experiments
existed before Europeans colonized the Americas, but it's also fair and accurate to say that Europeans made those forms of destruction
into a bloody artform. Nobody did mass slaughter better.
The author of this compelling book reveals a history unknown to many
readers, and does so with first-hand accounts and deep historical analyses. You might ask why we can't put such things behind
us. The simple answer: we've never fully grappled with these events before in an honest and open way. This book does the nation
a service by peering behind the curtain and facing the sobering truth of how we came to be what we are.
This is a stunning book, not to be missed. If you finished Sapiens with the feeling your world view had
greatly enlarged, you're likely to have the same experience of your view of the US from reading this engaging work. And like Sapiens,
it's an entirely enjoyable read, full of delightful surprises, future dinner party gems.
The further you get into the book the more interesting and unexpected it becomes. You'll look at the US in ways you likely
never considered before. This is not a 'political' book with an ax to grind or a single-party agenda. It's refreshingly insightful,
beautifully written, fun to read.
This is a gift I'll give to many a good friend, I've just started with my wife. I rarely write
reviews and have never met the author (now my only regret). 3 people found this helpful
This book is an absolutely powerhouse, a must-read, and should be a part of every student's curriculum in
this God forsaken country.
Strictly speaking, this brilliant read is focused on America's relationship with Empire. But like with nearly everything America,
one cannot discuss it without discussing race and injustice.
If you read this book, you will learn a lot of new things about subjects that you thought you knew everything about. You will
have your eyes opened. You will be exposed to the dark underbelly of racism, corruption, greed and exploitation that undergird
American ambition.
I don't know exactly what else to say other than to say you MUST READ THIS BOOK. This isn't a partisan statement -- it's not
like Democrats are any better than Republicans in this book.
This is one of the best books I've ever read, and I am a voracious reader. The content is A+. It never gets boring. It never
gets tedious. It never lingers on narratives. It's extremely well written. It is, in short, perfect. And as such, 10/10.
I heard an interview of Daniel Immerwahr on NPR news / WDET radio regarding this book.
I'm am quite conservative
and only listen to NPR news when it doesn't lean too far to the left.
However, the interview piqued my interest. I am so glad I
purchased this ebook. What a phenomenal and informative read!!! WOW!! It's a "I never knew that" kind of read. Certainly not anything
I was taught in school. This is thoughtful, well written and an easy read. Highly recommend!!
NORDSTREAM. Washington has lifted sanctions on German companies involved with the pipeline
but imposed
new ones on Russian entities . What are we to make of this? A realisation that Berlin is
determined on completion combined with face-saving meaningless toughness. Amusingly Biden's now
being called " Putin's $5
million man " (because of the supposed payout by the pipeline to the supposed Russian
supposed hackers). Nordstream was a " key Putin goal ",
giving
power to Putin , what does he have
on him ? Hilarious, isn't it? Biden loved it then: here he is calling Trump Putin's puppy
.
I saw this today and while I can't say it is surprising, I am sorry that we are officially
at the end of the "engagement" period with China. I hate to see our major challenges in the
world increase.
I was wondering if you think we will officially recategorize our relationship with Russia,
too? If so, would you expect us to also label that "competitive?" How do you think this change
in our China stance will affect Russia?
Thanks.
"The U.S. is entering a period of intense competition with China as the government running
the world's second-biggest economy becomes ever more tightly controlled by President Xi
Jinping, the White House's top official for Asia said. "The period that was broadly described
as engagement has come to an end," Kurt Campbell, the U.S. coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs
on the National Security Council, said Wednesday at an event hosted by Stanford University.
U.S. policy toward China will now operate under a "new set of strategic parameters," Campbell
said, adding that "the dominant paradigm is going to be competition." (via Bloomberg News)
Reply
Dollar short and a day late. The US has lost the competition.
The USA was mighty because of tremendous manufacturing capacity, great inventiveness and
the ability to harness that, political stability and the "American Dream" had sufficient
reality. What's left of that? And the same applies to the West in general.
As to Moscow, why would it ever trust Washington?
One can't blame everything on Israel. Yes, it is part of five eyes, more like SIX
eyes.
Biden (JB) is building a coalition to challenge China. JB's administration wants to
neutralize Russia. Nord Stream 2 is an element of contention and by making a concession JB is
making Germany and Russia happy. Agree, that its completion will be a "huge geopolitical win
for Putin". Let's see when Nord Stream 2 becomes fully operational. Time will tell.
Russia's main focus is De-Dollarization, stability in Russia and in its neighborhood.
China's announcement about Bitcoin led to it dropping by 30%. What will China, Russia,
Turkey and Iran announcement about the U$A dollar do to its value and the market? When will
China become the #1 ECONOMY?
The US is now the largest provider of LNG, so there is relatively little more financial
advantage to be gained from a direct confrontation with Germany or Russia. Political maybe,
but the dedollarisation is starting to take hold. (Aside; even Israel depends on the strength
of the dollar to continue, like musical chairs, when the music stops there will be
precious few chairs left ). The Gas/Oil lobbies in the US who are behind the sanctions
may have some other trick up their sleeve, but the deflation of Zelensky in Ukraine, and the
opening up of a steal-fest of Ukrainian assets might compensate.
***
Note that the West has closed Syrian Embassies so as to stop Syrians voting for Assad. They
steal it's oil, and Syria is still next to Israel and doing relatively well in spite of
tanker bombings, and missiles. It is also possible that, as you say, there is a price for
non-interference in Israel itself.
The key characteristics of the SOCIOECONOMIC system of a suzerainty are hierarchy, polarization and exploitation. This enables
the Global Financial Syndicate to drive PRIVATE CONTROL by privatization, extracting profits and increasing its power. Without
this system it can't survive, capture new entities and increase its power.
In analyzing any situation one need to understand the POWER DYNAMICS. This enables one to understand the hierarchy of religions,
nations, corporations, elites,...There seems to be a well defined playbook that is being followed to expand the global power.
However, now it seems to be failing?
Is this a good chart of the
POWER PLAYERS
driving U$A's and international developments?
(Solid lines refer to funding and dashed lines refer to mostly ideological connections)
Are there better charts and overview of the power players?
If one were to view Israel from an imperialist lens then it is a beachhead in the Middle East of the Financial Empire like
the Colony of Virginia (1606). The IMPERIALIST goal is to create a Middle East Union (MEU), similar to the United States and the
EU. Israel will be the financial, technological, military and trading hub of the ME? It will drive decimation of states to steal
the region's land, oil gas and natural resources, so they can be priced in the Empire's currency.
What were the strategies and tactics used by the Imperialist settlers to steal land from the Native Americans? Wasn't (freedom
of) religion one of the dimensions? How was the LAND stolen from natives of America? Weren't treaties made in bad faith? "In 1830,
US Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, forcing many indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi from their lands."
Ayn Rand framed
it as ... to the graduating Class Of U$A's military academy at West Point
Which of the past patterns of stealing land and getting rid of the natives are being repeated by Israel? We're watching a tragedy
and living through an epoch in the history of humanity.
One more thing... MECHANISM of power & control expansions to capture resources and control points...
Is this a good overview of what happened in
Ukraine? It discusses various power players,
plans and ploys.
"Anyone who does not understand contemporary history as a chain of decisions and events and instead always takes only the end
link of a long chain into account – will not understand anything at all."
"We must cultivate among the Ukrainians a people whose consciousness is altered to such an extent, that they begin to hate
everything Russian". -- Who said this & why?
The Dollar Empire is working towards neutralizing Russia through short term concessions. Russia has defined redlines and demanded
no interferences with Nord Stream 2, Belarus, Syria & Ukraine (implementation of the Minsk agreement). Also, no NATO membership
for Ukraine and Georgia. Russia wants to develop Iran and Turkey as regional powers, and be the third power to that of the U$A
and China. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
The The Hill piece linked in the week in review here confirms our suspicions Ukraine has
become a financial black hole for the West, and the USA is trying to get rid of it by
throwing it to the EU's arms:
Instead of expending diplomatic capital on a campaign to stop Nord Stream 2, the Biden
administration should work with its European partners to prepare Ukraine to withstand the
pipeline's completion. The deadline for action is 2024, when Kyiv's current gas contract
and President Biden's term effectively end. By that time, Washington and Brussels should
formulate and implement an economic package that, first and foremost, covers Ukraine's
inevitable budget shortfall from the loss of transit fees to keep the Ukrainian state
running. This package should, however, also invest in the country's sustainable growth.
That would entail material and technical support for Kyiv's ongoing anti-corruption
campaign, whose success is a prerequisite for attracting long-term investment. One idea
worth considering is a loan to cover revenue shortfalls, whose repayment would be
incrementally forgiven in exchange for concrete progress on reforms by Kyiv.
That won't happen. The easiest way you can infer that is that the USA and Germany don't
even have the resources to invest in green energy in their own territories, let alone on
third-parties' territories. Hell, the USA doesn't even have the resources to rebuild Puerto
Rico.
This is not the 1950s. The American Empire's bottomless pocket is no more.
Glenn Greenwald writes that President Trump acted more hostile to Russia than President
Biden does, even while the media claimed that Trump was 'a Russian agent'. It is probably a
fair point to make but in his piece Greenwald himself falls for anti-Russian propaganda
nonsense.
Greenwald seems to presume that it is the right or the job of a U.S. president to 'permit'
pipelines between two foreign country? That is of course completely false. The U.S. has no
right, duty or whatever to interfere in regular businesses between foreign partners. Such
interference is in fact illegal under international law. Biden, as well as Trump, should be
criticized for even thinking about 'permitting' it.
On to Greenwald's main point:
When it came to actual vital Russian interests" as opposed to the symbolic gestures hyped
by the liberal cable and op-ed page circus" Trump and his administration were confronting
and undermining the Kremlin in ways Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, had, to his credit,
steadfastly refused to do.
Indeed, the foreign policy trait relentlessly attributed to Trump in support of the
media's Cold War conspiracy theory" namely, an aversion to confronting Putin" was, in
reality, an overarching and explicit belief of President Obama's foreign policy, not
President Trump's.
Obama waged a massive undercover war to overthrow the Syrian government, an old Russian
ally. He arranged a fascist coup in the Ukraine and he sent the anti-Russian academic Michael
McFaul as ambassador to Russia where McFaul immediately started to prepare a color revolution
against President Putin. It was the Obama administration which launched the 'Russiagate'
campaign against Trump which further infested U.S. policies with anti-Russian sentiment.
Seen from the Russian side Obama certainly showed absolutely no 'aversion to confronting
Putin'.
While Trump ripped up arms treaties with Russia and gave a few useless weapons to the
Ukraine, making sure they would not reach the front lines, he otherwise took, thankfully, few
other damaging steps.
Well, the fact that the pipeline has not been finished for years, despite being near
completion, tells us that it's not actually true that the "pipeline would have been finished
with or without US sanctions." Certainly, it seems that Trump's pressure did work to severely
slow down if not completely stop the completion of the project and presumably Biden could
have continued that pressure. Btw, didn't the front-running Green party head come out against
the pipeline, showing that there's not unanimous support in Germany for its completion?
But more importantly, Greenwald's main point is that Trump's actions had nothing to do
with the Russian Puppet narrative against him. That both Biden and previously Obama were less
"anti-Russian" in practice and yet were thought to be "tough" on Russia, while Trump
(providing lethal arms to Ukraine and stopping NS2) was a "puppet" ... narrative building by
the Deep State. Greenwald's larger point is in fact accurate.
I think Greenwald was thrown off by what seems a sudden reversal and positive step by
Biden administration.
Personally I think Biden Administration was stunned at almost having instigated WW3 within
100 days of taking office. They looked fairly like amateur idiots even to the unwashed such
as myself. Then they realized that it would be difficult and given their evident ineptness
they chose the well proven political tactic of taking the loss and making it a win. Voila
they are genious - why didnt Trump think of that?
We in the US must accept that our government is craven incompetents and have to hope that
they might accidentally do something good by virtue of being so incompetent.
Greenwald makes an error but it is understandable. NS2 pipeline wont deliver enough gas to
truly make a significant difference to Germany. Where it makes a difference is to Ukraine,
which will struggle to steal as much gas from Russia as it has in the past. Gas transit rates
will fall, and if Ukraine doesnt like it RF will still be able to supply Germany without
Ukraine stealing gas which was meant for Germany.
But who will make good any shortfall in Ukraine's budget?
The early closure of the Netherlands Groningen natural gas field, due to land subsidence,
was a big hit to European energy security - especially with the move from coal/nuclear to
natural gas. B is very right in stating that Europe desperately needs Russian gas to fill a
yawning future hole between supply and demand. Russia is also developing their Arctic gas
reserves, which can be provided as LNG to Europe (as well as Asia). Very bad for the
Ukrainians, but they (or the US and the Nazis) picked their bed and can deal with the
consequences.
The Russians opened the Power of Siberia gas pipeline to China, and have agreements to
start development on additional pipelines. China is rapidly expanding natural gas usage so no
demand problem there.
Seems like the Biden administration took their "hardass" shot in the past months and it
blew up in their face. Now they have to take a step back and play a bit better with their
so-called allies. Probably won't last long, the US elite have extreme learning difficulties
when it comes to the reality of their decline from the Unipolar moment.
This is somewhat OT to the subject, but it's clear to me a greater understanding of the
Russian POV is needed. Although the transcript is currently incomplete, this meeting of the Russian
Pobeda (Victory) Organising Committee provides an excellent insight into the Russian
mind, and IMO this excerpt says a great deal:
"Regrettably, the ranks of the great generation of victors are thinning out. But this is
only increasing our responsibility for preserving their legacy, especially now that we are
witnessing increasingly frequent attempts to slander and distort history and to revise the
role played by the Red Army in the routing of Nazism and the liberation of European nations
from the Nazi plague.
"We understand the reasons for this, and attempts to hamper the development of this
country, regardless of its name, be it the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union or Russia, were
made in different times and historical epochs and under different political systems. These
approaches and principles remain the same. There is one principle or rather, one reason
for containing Russia: the stronger and more independent Russia becomes, the more
consistently it defends its national interests, the greater the striving of foreign forces to
weaken it, to discredit the values uniting our society and sometimes to slander and distort
what people hold dear, the things that are instilled in the younger generations of Russians
and which help them acquire a strong character and their own opinions .
"This is why all kinds of Russophobic individuals and unscrupulous politicians are trying
to attack Russian history, to promote the ideas of revising the results of World War II and
to exonerate Nazi criminals." [My Emphasis]
"Very soon, we will be celebrating 20 years of our core bilateral document, the Treaty of
Good-Neighbourliness, Friendship and Cooperation. Since the signing of this treaty, Russia
and China have achieved great success in strengthening our multidimensional cooperation and
mutual trust across all areas without exception: politics, international affairs, trade and
the economy, cultural and humanitarian exchanges. It can be said that Russia-China relations
have reached their highest level in history."
And those relations will certainly reach much greater heights regardless the nature of
Russian-EU relations.
I'm puzzled by b's arithmetic on the gas flow rates
Apart from Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, there are also old Soviet pipelines that go
through Belarus and Ukraine, as well as the recently completed Turk Stream, part of which is
used to export gas to Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia (and soon Hungary, Bosnia and
Austria).
@11
My two cents on that is that the old surface Power-structure of Germany has been crumbling
rapidly for around the last decade. Merkel has left the christian conservative party in
shambles and there's no one with enough gravitas around to fill the giant sized shoes she's
left vacant, same thing with the social democrats who've been in a freefall from 35% to now
barely 15% for the last 15 years. Environmentalism coated Neoliberalism seems to be the maxim
of the hour in the leftists and centrists spheres, and almost everyone, but foremost the
Green Party, is trying to ride that wave to the finish line. Don't expect peoples first
policies, climate change will dominate the election, and we'll likely be wrapped up in more
deindustrialization coupled with an ever more chaotic energy policy. If anything the average
persons cost of living in terms of rent, energy, food and transportation will continue to
rise, while jobs in traditional industry sectors will continue to fall off. I haven't heard a
coherent plan on how the German economy is supposed to work like 10 years from now, and there
likely is none, all I expect is more taxes and the possibility of plundering social security
trust funds to address whatever critical infrastructure issue will face us next.
@14
Green-Party was about to oust the Conservatives in a major federal state election. People got
really riled up by nuclear, especially since there already was an ongoing controversy around
long term waste storage. It was one of Merkels signature opportunistic moves that aimed to
size the moment in absence of long term planing. It didn't work btw, Greens still ousted
them, but once you make a big move like that there's not going back without losing face, but
it does seem like exiting nuclear proved to be a popular strategy with the electorate in the
long run. I'm sure that are more complex/intricate theories around, but I can't speak on
that
Thanks b. The Empire of the Deranged is in a steady downward slide. By its own hand,
through financial engineering (stock buy back schemes fueled by bailout's of bankrupt
corporations plus derivatives etc. etc.) Add to this, restrictions on the use of swift. The
US devalues its own currency. Other countries are not so interested in purchasing US debt to
offset rising US deficit. Include all of that with our foreign policymaking which angers even
our allies like Germany, as you point out with NS2. The Leaders think they can snap their
fingers and bring the world to heel. That ship sailed a long time ago. The multi-polar world
is a reality that the paper tiger struggles with. To Glen Greenwald's Brazil, US influence
evaporates should Lula get elected as the next President. The tiger is toothless Glen, no
need to give it more authority than it has.
With the US pressuring Germany to end NS-2 in favor of importing much more expensive
fracked US gas, we see that the US thinks there is nothing wrong with asking it's vassal
states to cut their own throats (forego steps to retain their economic competitiveness) to
please their patron. The idiocy of Cold War 2 is costing US allies a lot and seems inimical
to the very idea of US allies even regarding their own national interests. One would hope
this is leading to either a re-evaluation of these alliances or a revolt of the satraps.
thanks b... Agree that "the U.S. has no right, duty or whatever to interfere in regular
businesses between foreign partners." Every journalists needs to be making this key point.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Vladimir Putin in his Munich (2007) speech announced Russia's pivot away from the Dollar
Empire and unwillingness to be a vassal. The Dollar Empire challenged Russia through Georgia
in 2008. Obama & Clinton fooled Russia through their reset announcement and got a go
ahead to attack Libya. The relationship was calm in 2012. Obama fooled Medvedev by saying,
"he will have "more flexibility" to deal with contentious issues," after reelection, in
early 2012. However, Vladimir Putin was back in 2013 and the Dollar Empire realized it has
been outplayed. It moved aggressively after the two outside Russian military bases in Syria
and Ukraine. Russia captured Crimea in 2014, and Putin declared Russia's willingness to go to
war in Syria (2015). The Imperial Council
of the United States was surprised by Russia's move into Syria and wasn't ready for a
war. In the meantime, China was developing strong. Here comes Trump in 2017. It seems like
the Imperial Council and its Intelligence Community came with a new ploy to associate Trump
with Russia, so they can bully China and bend it over on trade. China stood up to Empire's
challenge and developed its independence plan! In the meantime Trump increased sanctions on
Russia using the Congress as a pretext while strengthening Ukraine. The sanctions on the Nord
Stream 2 brought halt to work in December 2019. Did Trump FOOL Putin/Russia by stating, "he
will have "more flexibility" to deal with contentious issues," after reelection? The
reasoning behind this question is that Russia didn't start work on the pipeline until the
election was over in December 2020. One year wait to start work on the pipeline.
MISSING DIMENSIONS
Why isn't Greenwald speaking against the dollar monetary imperialism and enslavement? Very
rarely one come across a journalist that shines light on reality and exposes truth. It seems
like Empire's MSM and journalists are making a big deal of this minuscule Nord Stream 2
sanction waiving. Why? It is just propaganda and perception management to create distrust in
the China-Russia relationship? No one is mentioning Russia's redlines or its ability to
retaliate to additional sanctions. Andrei Martyanow gets it right!
Please analyze every geopolitical
development from the MONETARY lens too. Russia as part of its De-Dollarization plan is
offering energy deals in national currencies to win nations in Eurasia, including Japan. In
which currency is the U$A offering its LNG ? US$? Also, it seems like Russia's transit
payments to Ukraine are in the US$. In addition to providing an alternate route, the Nord
Stream 2 increases Russia's leverage with Ukraine. Imagine if those transit payments were in
Rubles to Ukraine, Russia's leverage will be immense.
China, Russia, Germany, Japan... (Non-$ Bloc) are standing up to dollar's monetary
imperialism, and seeking more trade in their respective national currencies. The EU and
Germany will pay for its energy in Euros and reduce threats to their economies. Why don't
journalists address the monetary or currency dimensions?
RUSSIAN SUCCESSES?
Successfully completing the Nord Stream 2 and supplying gas to Europe in Euros will be a huge
victory for Russia and Germany. It has yet to implement its agreements (Minsk, Astana,
JCPOA...). All its conflicts are frozen and unresolved. Please share agreements that Russia
has successfully delivered on in the 21st Century, particularly when the Dollar Empire is
involved. Will the Empire surprise Russia by attacking on multiple fronts?
To say that there is a shift in US geopolitical policies, is an understatement. In short,
IMO, Biden is going back to Obama's plan and his pivot to Asia. Therefore, it is China,
China, China. Nothing else matters that much right now.
1. Nordstream 2 settled"¦..check
2. Germany and Europeans happy"¦..check
3. Settling ME problems with going back to JCPOA, promoting KSA and Iran peace, pulling out
of Afghanistan (not ME)"¦..check
4. Putting Israel in its place (via a shift in media coverage and taking away support slowly
and congress expressions of outrage) "¦..check
5. Abstention form UN resolution punishing Israel"¦"¦.coming up
6. Taking Europeans to the South East China confrontation"¦..coming up
7. Prying away Iran and Russia away from China"¦"¦wishful thinking,
hopefully.
8. Ousting Netanyahoo"¦"¦coming up
Although, Biden is a zionist, Netanyahu and his antics are not convenient at this time and
Israel takes a back seat to grand chessboard strategy.
Greenwald's and b's commentaries are a bit of a sideshow, in my opinion. Best concentrate
on the outcome and the bigger picture instead of this he said she said.
What happened this year is that the winter was cold, gas storage in Europe was nearly
depleted, and Europe needed huge amounts of russian gas.
The other problem is that LNG is more expensive in Asia, causing LNG producers and
shippers to prefer the asian market.
There are many more issues as well - such as the hit on US producers by the Covid crisis,
Germany moving the carbon goal posts from 2050 to 2045, green energy problems this winter in
Germany, explosions on pipelines in Ukraine, and so on.
It is also true that Russia is readying Power of Siberia 2 and 3 pipelines to China, as
well as actively developing its own LNG exports.
The disputed claim by Greenwald is that, "Nord Stream 2... is designed to double Russian
sales capacity to an EU addicted to cheap Russian natural gas, producing massive revenue for
the Russian economy and giving Moscow greater leverage when dealing with its European
neighbors." This is very different from the statement that NS2 together with NS1 is twice the
capacity of NS1 on its own.
There are several, to my mind, wrongful assumptions in Greenwald's claim.
The first, that the EU wants to increase its purchases of Russian gas, but is prevented
from doing so solely due to the lack of infrastructure which, presumably, is operating at
full capacity. From this assumption, it then follows that Russia is expecting massive
revenues from an increase in transit capacity, since customers are already standing by.
Finally, as a result of supplying significantly more gas to Europe and earning substantially
more money from it, Moscow can be expected to take advantage of its position as an energy
supplier to pressure Europe over political matters.
While it's true that European gas-needs are growing, it's more of a long-term projected
development and not some energy crisis straining the current configuration. A more topical
and urgent crisis is the situation in Ukraine and the state of disrepair of the gas transit
infrastructure in that country, which not long ago accounted for 80% of Russian gas supplied
to Europe. IIRC, official estimates gave these pipelines a few short years before becoming
unusable without major repair efforts -- something like 5 years -- and coupled with the state
of the country itself, it's not impossible that the pipelines outlive the state.
If we, for the sake of argument, assume that Ukraine and/or the gas infrastructure on that
territory ceases to function tomorrow, halting all gas transits to Europe in the blink of an
eye, which isn't as far-fetched as you might think, the result would be an energy crisis.
Already, this crisis would not be of catastrophic proportions as it would have been a mere
decade ago, due to alternative transit routes established to lessen reliance on Ukrainian
pipelines. NS2 is designed to eliminate reliance on Ukrainian pipelines completely, if one
disregards various political commitments made by Russia on Europe's behalf to retain part of
its gas export through Ukraine, which I'm sure would fall to the wayside the moment European
capitals started going dark. Of course, cutting off transit states also has the added benefit
of making the gas cheaper and thus the contract becomes more lucrative, but that's more of a
bonus.
If we, for the sake of argument, assume that all the pipelines to Europe are working at
full capacity, and Europe desperately needs more gas -- say, 25 years from now when no new
green alternatives have presented themselves and no new pipelines have been built because the
war of sanctions continues -- there's always LNG, which Russia can supply at a competitive
price, and the port infrastructure for that is already available, provided the EU is willing
to resolve its energy problems collectively.
From this it follows that, no, Russia isn't expecting massive revenues to come flooding in
at the completion of NS2. They're presumably expecting massive revenues from new energy
projects in Asia, but they're at worst expecting to retain the current revenue in the
European market, and at best see it grow in connection with European economy. Certainly, they
wouldn't like to lose the European market, especially due to unpredictable incidents abroad
that are outside of their control, but Europe is arguably much more vulnerable and has more
to lose from such an eventuality.
Lastly, since we are no longer expecting an immediate increase in European reliance on
Russian energy following NS2, how does it translate to Russian leverage over European
politics? Russia is already Europe's main supplier of, not only gas, but crude oil which
accounts for 2/3 of Europe's energy supply (gas is 24%). If Russia wants to leverage its
position as the main energy supplier to Europe, it does not need NS2 to do so, and shutting
down NS2 will not prevent it from doing so.
It's Izvestia and it was in Russian, that's why I'm not able to recover it. It was also
machine translated, so I may well have gotten the wrong message.
But yeah, from what I understood, the spirit of the article was that it was just a matter
of time before Russia start to deliver LNG to Western and Northern Europe at much more
competitive prices than the American LNG, through the Arctic route (investment in
icebreakers, gas pipelines, oil pipelines, nuclear reactors etc. etc.).
"Our race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from
the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are
beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our
destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader
with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves." -- Menachem
Begin (Israeli Prime Minister, 1977-1983)
"... A draft report published online by the assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs caused consternation in Russian media on Monday, after statements came to light that argued the bloc "should establish with the US a transatlantic alliance to defend democracy globally" and "deter Russia" from supposed aggression in Eastern Europe. ..."
A draft report published
online by the assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs caused consternation in Russian media on Monday, after statements came
to light that argued the bloc "should establish with the US a transatlantic alliance to defend democracy globally" and "deter
Russia" from supposed aggression in Eastern Europe.
As part of its "vision" for future ties with Moscow, the paper concludes that the EU should put forward a number of incentives
designed to persuade Russians that a turn to the West would be beneficial, including visa liberalization and "free trade investment."
[...]
At the same time, the committee puts forward a number of extreme steps that it says the bloc should take. It insists that
Brussels "must be prepared not to recognize the parliament of Russia and to ask for Russia's suspension from international
organizations with parliamentary assemblies if the 2021 parliamentary elections in Russia are recognized as fraudulent."
The success or failure of this operation will depend entirely on the Russian people. Will it fall for the Western European
honey trap once again?
After Putin is gone, bets are off. Also, the EU continues to suffer from refugee waves from Syria and Libya, and its economy
continues to deteriorate (recession confirmed for Q1 2021). The whole system is so exhausted that they don't talk about even of
the absorption of Moldova anymore (the Moldovan president had to bring that up to the Kremlin; good they remembered them).
This looks like Biden had some surge of sanity, but it's not: I read an article on Izvestia some days ago and it seems Russia
won the war for the Arctic and has expelled the USA from that sea. That, combined with the fact that Russia has been ramping up
investment on the sector, results in the fact that, soon enough, Russia will also have the infrastructure to deliver cheaper LNG
by ship to Europe, too.
That means the USA has given up on the NordStream II in order to hurt the Russian LNG investments. Yes, people, that's the
insanity of the situation: the USG is completely lost. It still has its ace in the hole, though: the Green Party is set to win
the next German general elections, and they're rabid Atlanticists. Like, this would cost Germany dearly and they wouldn't last
two years in government, but at least Russian gas to Europe through a non-Ukrainian route would be stopped.
Speaking of the Ukraine, this whole situation makes us reflect: it is patent at this point in time that the EU is a subsidiary
of NATO - it expands eastwards after those countries become NATO members. They're the "socioeconomic" version of NATO. This has
created a huge problem for the EU, though, because the Ukraine is a massive financial black hole to the American economy (through
the IMF) and the USA is pressuring the EU to make it a member quick, so that this black hole goes to European (i.e. German) hands.
The thing is Germany obviously doesn't want that, because it needs the Euro to keep at where it is or stronger (you can only enter
the EU by entering the EZ nowadays). The Ukraine is salivating to become an EZ member - that's the whole point of the Maidan coup
in the first place - so Ukraine entering the EU without entering the EZ is out of the table. The EU must've told the USA that
no, the Ukraine must first become a NATO member, then they'll make it an EZ-EU member. The Ukraine is the proverbial hot potato.
All of that coupled with the hard economic fact that, without the Russian gas transit exclusivity, you can't leverage Ukraine's
debt, because, after Maidan, all of the public goods and infrastructure were privatized to American capitalists. That means we
have the absurd situation where Germany has to give up cheaper gas for itself (which would be essential for its economic recovery)
in order to make the Ukraine happy so that it enters the EU, so that it becomes a financial black hole... to the German economy!
Germany has to pay the Ukraine for the privilege of having to pay it even more, for eternity.
The price of nation-building has become more and more expensive to the capitalist world. Turns out those Third World shitholes
have learned something after all those decades.
Taiwan is also suffering from a significant brain drain to the Mainland. They're trying to solve the problem by demonizing
those people by calling them "traitors".
> In a recent book, Luke Harding, an investigative reporter at The Guardian, described how Mr. Steele had dispatched his "collector"
to surreptitiously approach a real estate broker, Sergei Millian, who was a peripheral figure in the Trump/Russia saga. "Millian
spoke at length and privately to this person, believing him or her to be trustworthy "" a kindred soul," Mr. Harding wrote.
But the trouble for Mr. Harding, who is close to both Mr. Steele and Mr. Simpson, was that he wrote those lines before the
release of the F.B.I. interview of Mr. Danchenko.
In the interview, the collector said that he and Mr. Millian might have spoken briefly over the phone, but that the two
had never met.
Mr. Harding did not respond to requests for comment. <
Here are Ten Things We Have Learned During the Covid Coup.
1. Our political system is hopelessly corrupt. Virtually all politicians are hopelessly corrupt. No political party
can be trusted. They all can be, and have been, bought.
2. Democracy is a sham. It has been a sham for a very long time. There will never be any real democracy when money and
power amount to the same thing.
3. The system will stop at nothing to hold on to its power and, if possible, increase its levels of control and exploitation.
It has no scruples. No lie is too outrageous, no hypocrisy too nauseating, no human sacrifice too great.
4. So-called radical movements are usually nothing of the sort. From whatever direction they claim to attack the system,
they are just pretending to do so, and serve to channel discontent in directions which are harmless to the power clique and even
useful to its agendas.
5. Any "dissident" voice you have ever heard of through corporate media is probably a fake. The system does not hand
out free publicity to its actual enemies.
6. Most people in our society are cowards. They will jettison all the fine values and principles which they have been
loudly boasting about all their lives merely to avoid the slightest chance of public criticism, inconvenience or even minor financial
loss.
7. The mainstream media is nothing but a propaganda machine for the system... ...and those journalists who work for
it have sold their sorry souls, placing their (often minimal) writing skills entirely at the disposition of Power.
8. Police are not servants of the public... ...but servants of a powerful and extremely wealthy minority which seeks
to control and exploit the public for its own narrow and greedy interests.
9. Scientists cannot be trusted. They will use the hypnotic power of their white coats and authoritative status for
the benefit of whoever funds their work and lifestyle. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
10. Progress is a misleading illusion. The "progress" of increasing automation and industrialisation does not go hand
in hand with a progress in the quality of human life, but in fact will "progressively" reduce it to the point of complete extinction.
Irrelevant how much the Western peoples hate China. China is not Iran, Afghanistan, Russia or some other random Third World
country, it is above the pay grade of Western public opinion.
However, it is true China is not up to the level achieved by the Soviet Union. It still has a military disproportionately weak
compared to its economic might. That problem will still take some three or more decades to solve, but it is being worked on.
This headline by the NYT (in the upper right corner of the Home Page) reflects the West's frustration with Israel. In the first
part, they try to tell the reader that the Israeli are waging a war of equals, and not genociding, the Palestinians (and that
the USA has nothing to do with it). In the second part, it laments the bad timing by the Israelis, who interrupted their propaganda
warfare operation against China on the "Uighur genocide" campaign.
It urges Israel to clean the mess as quick as possible in order for the anti-China propaganda campaign to resume.
In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, the above statement is literal, as the USA has, so far, exported zero - I repeat, zero
(not rounding down) - vaccines so far.
Meanwhile, China has already exported 250 million doses and counting (last time I checked, a week ago) - more than the entire
Indian production (India had just exported some 60 million doses).
The inner contradictions of capitalism in plain sight.
On the one side, you have to give people money so they can keep themselves quarantined. On the other side, capitalism requires
people to keep working or to keep searching for work in order to pull down wages, thus increasing the rate of surplus value. That's
why conservatives are usually in favor of the Christian charity, that gives only food and shelter, but not cash, to the unemployed,
but not of wage raises and unemployment benefits - the fact that you're paid in cash and not in kind makes all the difference
in the world in the capitalist system.
Unemployment benefits only help capitalism is it is low enough just to keep one physically alive and in constant search for
jobs. That way, he/she incorporates the industrial reserve army, which brings wages down. The problem with the USA is that wages
were already so low before the pandemic that those USD 600.00 checks made 35% (!!) of its recently unemployed recipients richer
than when they were employed. Logically, those 35% don't want to go back to work, as their lives are objectively better now than
they were before the pandemic, and that's why the Republican congressmen and senators are pressuring Biden (as they pressured
Trump) to outright extinguish those checks.
P.S.: the top rated commentary in the article ("Great generations of Americans came here 100 years ago...") by the time I typed
this is hilarious, shows the delusion of the average American towards their own system almost perfectly. The other comments are
also very funny. The narrative that "there are a lot of jobs available, but no one is skilled enough/wants it" is used by the
capitalists every time there's an economic crisis, just search your favorite newspaper for the years of 1980-1982, 1975 etc. etc.
and you'll see the same bullshit being preached over and over again.
Talks about apartheid as the only possible synthesis between a Jewish theocratic state and a liberal bourgeois state, which
I mentioned in the past two threads about the subject.
As I said before, the system is unstable and is doomed to fail. Either Israel abandons its Zionist project and gives up the
idea of being an 100% Jewish state and thus becomes a liberal bourgeois state or it will continue to wither and degenerate until
it falls to a civil war.
It would've been the first if not for a providential last grasp effort by NASA, who used the resources it had and didn't have
to pull that off, by a few months.
The tendency, however is clear. NASA will soon cease to exist as we know it and essentially become the State façade of SpaceX.
The USA's space program will then be entirely dependent on the genius of Elon Musk.
--//--
Cuban vaccines (Abdala and Soberana 02) continue advancing on their trials:
If you had read and understood the Mars 3 link I provided you would have learned that it wasn't a rover either. Which the first
rover was has already been told. End of story.
Posted by: Norwegian | May 16 2021 18:37 utc | 37
Yes, but no. Mars 3 actually had a rover on board, PROP-M. To quote Wikipedia:
"The Mars 3 lander, a so called Passability Estimating Vehicle for Mars, was designed and manufactured in Mobile Vehicle Engineering
Institute by a team of approximately 150 engineers, led by Alexander Kemurdzhian. The vehicle had a small 'Mars rover' on board,
which was planned to move across the surface on skis while connected to the lander with a 15-meter umbilical cable. Two small
metal rods were used for autonomous obstacle avoidance, as radio signals from Earth would take too long to drive the rovers using
remote control. The rover carried a dynamic penetrometer and a gamma ray densitometer."
... although it seems it never was deployed because of the communication failure, so it cannot count as the first rover to
function on Mars.
Probably it was not a false flag. First of all the state of IT security at Colonial Pipeline
was so dismal that it was strange that this did not happened before. And there might be
some truth that they try to exploit this hack to thier advantage as maintenance of the
pipeline is also is dismal shape.
Notable quotes:
"... "As for the money-nobody really knows where it really went." If you are right about the perpetrators, my guess would be that it went into the black-ops fund, two birds one stone. ..."
"... I have become so used to false flags, I am going to be shocked when a real intrusion happens! ..."
"... an in depth article researching solarwinds hack - looks like it was Israel, not a great leap to see that colonial was a false flag https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/01/investigative-reports/another-mega-group-spy-scandal-samanage-sabotage-and-the-solarwinds-hack/ ..."
"... Regarding the ownership of Colonial Pipeline: 'IFM Investors, which is owned by 27 Australian union- and employer-backed industry superannuation funds, owns a 16 per cent stake in Colonial Pipeline, which the infrastructure manager bought in 2007 for $US651 million.' ..."
"... 'The privately held Colonial Pipeline is valued at about $US8 billion, based upon the most recent sale of a 10 per cent stake to a unit of Royal Dutch Shell in 2019.' ..."
The Colonial Pipeline Co.,ransomware attack was a false flag. They wanted to blame Russian
hackers so they could derail Nordstream II
It is common knowledge that the only real hackers that are able of such sabotage is CIA
and Israeli. It's the same attack types they do to Iranian infrastructure on a regular
basis.
The Russians are not that stupid to do something they know will be blamed on them and is
of no political use to them. And could derail Nordstream2.
As for the money-nobody really knows where it really went. CEO is ultra corrupt. They
never ever invested in their infrastructure so when it went down they came up with a
profitable excuse. Just look at their financials/balance sheet over the years. No real
investment in updating and maintaining infrastructure. Great false flag. Corruption and
profiteering.
"As for the money-nobody really knows where it really went." If you are right
about the perpetrators, my guess would be that it went into the black-ops fund, two birds one
stone.
I'm not familiar with your handle - hello. IMO, it would be counterproductive for Russia
to initiate such a hack. What really affects and debilitates US oil and gas interests is low
prices, both at the pump and on the stock exchange. The hack helped jack up prices (which
were already being jacked-up despite demand still lagging behind supply) which only HELPS
those energy interests. It has long been known, the math isn't complicated, what level crude
must trade at for US domestic oil & gas operations to be profitable. Remember that just
as the pandemic was emerging Russia and Saudi Arabia once again sent the global crude market
into the depths of despair.
I do agree the hack can be interpreted in light of the desperation of US energy interests
to try to kill NS2. I have not yet read the recent articles discussing Biden's recent moves
in that regard. If these moves are a recognition that US LNG to Europe (and elsewhere) are
diametrically opposed to climate responsibility, I'd welcome those moves. As is usually the
case though, environmental responsibility is probably the least likely reason.
Regarding the ownership of Colonial Pipeline: 'IFM Investors, which is owned by 27
Australian union- and employer-backed industry superannuation funds, owns a 16 per cent stake
in Colonial Pipeline, which the infrastructure manager bought in 2007 for $US651
million.'
also
'The privately held Colonial Pipeline is valued at about $US8 billion, based upon the
most recent sale of a 10 per cent stake to a unit of Royal Dutch Shell in 2019.'
. . . which has caused some GOP leaders to fear alienating female Republican voters, particularly educated suburbanites
who will be key votes in the 2022 elections.
When I first met my wife, she told me women shouldn't have the right to vote. It was instant love.
A Girl In Flyover Country 59 minutes ago
[in case of Cheney] The war monger doesn't fall far from the tree.
Rise21 42 minutes ago remove link
Amazing how the liberal news outlets are now supporting a Cheney. But they know more war equals more rating
yochananmichael 51 seconds ago
its time for the republicans to rid itself of chicken hawk warmongers like Cheney.
He father disbanded there Iraqi Army which was supposed to provide security, causing an insurgency and 5000 dead American boys
and countless maimed.
vic and blood PREMIUM 4 minutes ago
Cheney's benefactors have erected massive billboards all over the state, 'thanking her for defending the Constitution.'
She has an incredible war chest, and sadly, money and advertising decides a lot of elections.
Strange news of the fatherland... knowing what is going on in Germany right now is helpful
to understanding the strange goings on in the USAi and its dreams of eternal empire. It ain't
clear sailing yet for NS2!
If your country is part of an international empire, the domestic politics of the country
that rules yours are your domestic politics too. Whoever speaks of the Europe of the EU
must therefore also speak of Germany. Currently it is widely believed that after the German
federal elections of 24 September this year, Europe will enter a post-Merkel era. The truth
is not so simple.
In October 2018, following two devastating defeats in state elections in Hesse and
Bavaria, Angela Merkel resigned as president of her party, the CDU, and announced that she
would not seek re-election as Chancellor in 2021. She would, however, serve out her fourth
term, to which she had been officially appointed only seven months earlier.
Putting together a coalition government had taken no less than six months following the
September 2017 federal election, in which the CDU and its Bavarian sidekick, the CSU, had
scored the worst result in their history, at 32.9 percent (2013: 41.5 percent). (Merkel's
record as party leader is nothing short of dismal, having lost votes each time she ran. How
she could nevertheless remain Chancellor for 16 years will have to be explained elsewhere.)
In the subsequent contest for the CDU presidency, the party's general secretary, Annegret
Kramp-Karrenbauer, appointed by Merkel only in February 2018, narrowly prevailed over two
competitors.
After little more than a year, however, when Merkel publicly dressed her down for a lack
of leadership, Kramp-Karrenbauer resigned and declared that she would not run for
Chancellor in 2021 either. A few months later, when von der Leyen went to Brussels,
Kramp-Karrenbauer got Merkel to appoint her minister of defense. The next contest for the
party presidency, the second in Merkel's fourth term, had to take place under Corona
restrictions; it took a long time and was won in January 2021 by Armin Laschet, Prime
Minister of the largest federal state, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). To prevent the
comeback of an old foe of hers, Friedrich Merz, Merkel allegedly supported Laschet behind
the scenes.
While Laschet – a less-than-charismatic Christian-Democratic middle-of-the-roader
and lifelong Merkel loyalist – considered the party presidency to be a ticket to the
CDU/CSU candidacy for Chancellor, it took three months for this to be settled. As CDU/CSU
politics go, the joint candidate is picked by the two party presidents when they feel the
time has come, under four eyes; no formal procedure provided.
Thus Laschet needed the agreement of Markus Söder, Prime Minister of Bavaria, who
didn't keep it a secret that he believed himself the far better choice. In the background,
again, there was Merkel, in the unprecedented position of a sitting Chancellor watching the
presidents of her two parties pick her would-be successor in something like a semi-public
cock-fight. After some dramatic toing-and-froing, Laschet prevailed, once more supported by
Merkel, apparently in exchange for his state's backing for the federal government imposing
a 'hard' Covid-19 lockdown on the entire country...
...There will also be differences on the Eastern flank of the EU, where Baerbock,
following the United States, will support Ukrainian accession to NATO and the EU, and
finance EU extension in the West Balkans. That she will also cancel North Stream 2 will
be a point of contention in a Baerbock/Scholz government.
Laschet will be more inclined towards France and seek some accommodation with Russia, on
trade as well as security; he will also hesitate to be too strongly identified with the US
on Eastern Europe and Ukraine. But then, he will be reminded by his Foreign Minister,
Baerbock, as well as his own party that Germany's national security depends on the American
nuclear umbrella, which the French cannot and in any case will not replace. (my
emphasis)
France is was denying any discomfort with Zionism for 52 years. but since yesterday
effect of
Plate tectonics are perceptible.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned on Sunday of the risk of
"long-lasting apartheid" in Israel. The veteran politician [and high rank French official
for 40 years with solid connection to French weapons trade] made the remarks in an interview
with LCI TV NewsChannel, RTL radio and Le Figaro newspaper [ three major MSM]
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned on Sunday of the risk of "long-lasting
apartheid" in Israel in the event the Palestinians fail to obtain their own state. Le Drian is one of the first senior French officials to use the term "apartheid" in
reference to Israel , which has angrily denied any policy of racial discrimination.
The veteran politician made the remarks in an interview with RTL radio and Le Figaro
newspaper in reference to the clashes between Jews and Arabs that erupted in several
Israeli cities during the latest conflict.
The violence, which revealed simmering anger among Israeli Arabs over the crackdown on
Palestinians in Jerusalem, shattered years of peaceful coexistence within Israel. "It's the first time and it clearly shows that if in the future we had a solution other
than the two-state solution, we would have the ingredients of long-lasting apartheid,"
Le Drian said, using the word for the white supremacist oppression of blacks in South
Africa from 1948 to 1991.
Le Drian said the "risk of apartheid is high" if Israel continued to act "according to a
single-state logic" but also if it maintained the status quo.
"Even the status quo produces that," he said.
He added that the 11-day conflict between Hamas and Israel had shown the need to revive the
moribund Middle East peace process. https://guardian.ng/news/france-sees-risk-of-apartheid-in-israel-paris-france/
"We have take one step at a time," he said, expressing satisfaction that US President Joe
Biden had reiterated support for creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Israel's latest offensive against Hamas killed 248 people in the Gaza Strip, including 66
children, and wounded over 1,900, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
Meanwhile, rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups into Israel killed 12 and wounded
around 357 others, Israeli police said.
@120 m - "Iron Dome system according to Israeli sources..."
The point is not the numbers taken from the sales brochure of the system. The point is,
what does the penetration of the fantasy shield do to the Israeli psyche?
Israel initiated the ceasefire, without conditions. After 11 days, it could take no
more.
Israel has failed to protect itself from the indigenous population that it was oppressing.
Palestine has won a victory that changes the game and changes the world.
The entire regional Resistance now knows that Palestine alone can hold the enemy in check.
And all the Palestinians everywhere are completely united with only the Resistance as their
leader.
Over at the Saker just now, a speech from Hezbollah acknowledges proudly that Palestine
itself is now the leading edge of the struggle to remove Israel from the Middle East, and
that Hezbollah yearns for the day when it joins side by side with the Palestinians to drive
the oppressor from the land.
Palestine as it says could keep up this barrage against Israel for six months - just
Palestine alone. And the damage from such a thing would not be measured in how few or how
many individual persons were killed by those rockets. The damage would be measured by the
scream of madness and defeat from the Zionist oppressor, thrown down by the indigenous
populace and cast out of the land in abject fear.
As barflies can see, There may be an undefined 'ceasefire' but the 100 year old ethnic
cleansing project in the rest of Palestine continues:
Israel's Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Land
(Compiled by Leslie Bravery, Palestine Human Rights Campaign, Auckland, New Zealand)
18 May 2021 {Main source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG): http://www.nad.ps/ NB:The period covered by this
newsletter is taken from the PMG's 24-hour sitrep ending 8am the day after the above
date.}
We shall always do our best to verify the accuracy of all items in these IOP
newsletters/reports wherever possible [e.g. we often suspect that names of people and places
that we see in the PMG sitreps could be typos; also frequently the translation into English
seems rather odd ~ but as we do not speak Arabic, we have no alternative but to copy and
paste these names from the PMG sitreps!] – please forgive us for any errors or
omissions – Leslie and Marian.
206 projectiles
launched from Gaza
82 air strikes (157)
Very many
Israeli attacks
158 Israeli
ceasefire violations
21 raids including
home invasions
11 killed – 261 injured
Economic sabotage
43 taken prisoner
Night peace disruption
and/or home invasions
in 6 towns and villages
Home invasions: 09:20, Nazlet al-Sheikh Zaid - 09:20, al-Arqa - 04:00, Anabta - 03:30, Madama
- 03:30, Tel.
Peace disruption raids: 14:40, Beitunya - 16:05, Um Safa village - 03:20, Bir Zeit - dawn,
Bil'in - 17:40, Tura village - 18:55, Ya'bad - 19:45, Zububa - 06:30, Tubas - 18:05, Quffin -
04:00, Tulkarem - 20:00, Aqraba - 13:45, al-Azza UN refugee camp - 13:45, Aida UN refugee
camp - 18:10, al-Khadr - 18:10, Janata - 20:15, Tuqu - 03:00, al-Ubeidiya - dawn, Husan -
dawn, al-Ubeidiya.
Ceasefire violations – Palestinian missile attacks: Gaza enclave: From 07:00 until
07:00 the following day 206 projectiles were launched towards the Green Line from Northern
Gaza, Gaza City, Central Gaza and Khan Yunis.
Ceasefire violations – Palestinian missile attacks: Gaza enclave: From 07:00 until
07:00 the following day, 206 projectiles were launched towards the Green Line from Northern
Gaza, Gaza City, Central Gaza and Khan Yunis.
Ceasefire violations – Palestinian missile attacks: Northern Gaza – 53
projectiles launched towards the Green Line.
Ceasefire violations – Palestinian missile attacks: Gaza – 81 projectiles
launched towards the Green Line.
Ceasefire violations – Palestinian missile attacks: Central Gaza – 17 projectiles
launched towards the Green Line.
Ceasefire violations – Palestinian missile attacks: Khan Yunis – 38 projectiles
launched towards the Green Line.
Ceasefire violations – Palestinian missile attacks: Khan Yunis – 17 projectiles
launched towards the Green Line.
Ceasefire violations – air strikes: Gaza enclave – from 07:00 until 07:00 the
following day, Israeli warplanes carried out 82 air strikes, launching 157 missiles onto
Gaza. There were 7 killed, 50 injured, 35 homes destroyed and much damage caused.
Ceasefire violations – air strikes: Northern Gaza – Israeli warplanes launched 21
air strikes – 35 missiles: 16 injured and 10 homes destroyed.
Ceasefire violations – air strikes: Gaza – Israeli warplanes launched 17 air
strikes – 27 missiles: 6 killed (including a child), 15 injured (including women and
children) and 7 homes destroyed.
Ceasefire violations – air strikes: Central Gaza – Israeli warplanes launched 14
air strikes – 20 missiles: 11injured and 6 homes destroyed.
Ceasefire violations – air strikes: Khan Yunis – Israeli warplanes launched 13
air strikes – 46 missiles: 1 killed, 14 injured and 10 homes destroyed.
Ceasefire violations – air strikes: Rafah – Israeli warplanes launched 17 air
strikes – 29 missiles. 3 injured and 2 homes destroyed.
Ceasefire violations – Israeli attacks: Gaza enclave: From 07:00 until 07:00 the
following day, the Israeli Army and Navy pounded Central Gaza, Khan Yunis and Rafah.
Israeli Army attacks – 18 wounded: Jerusalem – Israeli Occupation forces opened
fire, with live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters on
protesters in Shuafat, al-Zaim, al-Jib, Beit Ijza, Qalandiya, near the villages of Qatanna
and al-Issawiya, as well as in Abu Dis, al-Eizariya and at the entrances to Hizma,
al-Sawahrah al-Sharqiya, Anata, the al-Ram road junction, Bab al-Amoud area and al-Wad Street
in Jerusalem Old City. 18 protesters were wounded.
Israeli Army attack: Jerusalem – 18:00, Israeli Occupation forces opened fire on
Palestinian motor vehicles in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood.
Israeli Army attacks – 3 killed – 72 wounded: Ramallah – Israeli forces in
or near al-Bireh, Sinjil, Aboud, Ni'lin, al-Mughayer, Deir Jarir, Kafr Malik, Nabi Salih, Ein
Qiniya, Ras Karkar, Kharbatha Bani Harith, Beit Sira, al-Jalazoun refugee camp, fired live
ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards protesters,
killing 3 people, Muhammad Mahmoud Hamid (24), Adham Fayez Al-Kashef (20) and Islam Wael
Fahmy Barnat, and wounding 72. There were many tear gas casualties.
Israeli Army attacks – 4 wounded: Jenin – Israeli troops, manning the Jalamah and
Dotan checkpoints and at the southern entrance to Silat al-Dahr, fired live ammunition,
rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards protesters, wounding 4
people and causing several tear gas casualties.
Israeli Army attacks – 7 wounded: Tulkarem – Israeli forces, manning the Einav
checkpoint and troops in Tulkarem, Quffin, Zit and at the entrance to Beit Lid, fired live
ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards protesters,
wounding 7 and causing several tear gas casualties.
Israeli Army attacks – 8 wounded: Qalqiliya – Israeli Occupation forces, at the
entrances to Azun, Hajjah, and Kafr Qaddum as well as near Jayus, Hablat and at the Eyal
crossing, fired live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters
towards protesters, wounding 8 people and causing several tear gas casualties.
Israeli Army attacks – 33 wounded: Nablus – Israeli Army positions, near the
Huwara checkpoint, the intersection of Osirin and Sarra villages and near the entrances to
Qusra, Beta, Jama'in, Naqoura, Deir Sharaf, Burin, Madama, Asirah al-Qibliya, Yutma,
al-Labban al-Sharqiya, Odla, al-Sawiyah and the village of Tal, fired live ammunition,
rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards protesters, wounding 33
people and causing several tear gas casualties.
Israeli Army attacks: Salfit – Israeli troops, near the entrances to Deir Istiya,
Qarawat Bani Hassan, al-Zawiya and the northern entrance to Salfit, fired live ammunition,
rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards protesters. There were
several tear gas casualties.
Israeli Army attacks – 18 wounded: Bethlehem – Israeli forces, present at Bilal
Bin Rabah Mosque, the Aida refugee camp, northern entrance to Tuqu', western entrance to Beit
Fajar, Um Rakba area of al-Khadr and entrance to Husan, fired live ammunition, rubber-coated
bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards protesters, wounding 18 people and
causing several tear gas casualties.
Israeli Army attacks – 1 killed: Hebron – morning, Israeli Occupation forces,
positioned in the Old City, opened fire on and killed a resident: Islam Fayyad Zahida
(32).
Israeli Army attacks – 30 wounded: Hebron – the Israeli Army, positioned in the
Bab al-Zawiya area of Hebron and in the Old City, as well as near the entrances to Beit
Ummar, Bani Naim, Tarqumiya, Khurasa village, the al-Aroub refugee camp and on Halhul Bridge,
fired live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards
protesters, wounding 30 people and causing several tear gas casualties.
Economic sabotage: Gaza -- the Israeli Navy continues to enforce an arbitrary fishing
limit.
Home invasion: Jenin – 09:20, Israeli Occupation forces raided the villages of Nazlet
al-Sheikh Zaid and al-Arqa, and invaded a house.
Home invasion – boy (aged 15) abducted : Tulkarem – 04:00, Israeli troops raided
Anabta and abducted 15-year-old Muhammad Salam Wajih Rasheed.
Home invasions: Nablus – 03:30, Israeli forces raided Madama and Tel villages and
invaded a number of homes.
Israeli police and settlers' mosque violation: 23:00, Israeli Occupation police invaded the
courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, filming the Mosque and its facilities.
Israeli Army – 7 wounded – rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas
canisters: Tubas – Israeli Occupation forces, manning the Tayasir checkpoint and in the
village of Atouf, fired rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards
protesters, wounding 7 people and causing several tear gas casualties.
Israeli Army – 5 wounded – rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas
canisters: Jericho – Israeli forces, at the northern and southern entrances to Jericho,
as well as outside the Aqbat Jaber refugee camp, fired rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades
and tear gas canisters towards protesters, wounding 5 people and causing several tear gas
casualties.
Occupation settler violence: Jerusalem – 18:00, Israeli settlers stoned a family home,
on the outskirts of the village of Beit Ijza.
Occupation road casualties: Bethlehem – 16:40, an Israeli settler drove his motor
vehicle over and hospitalised a 19-year-old Abdullah Saqr Saad, near Khalet Iskarya.
Raid: Ramallah – 14:40, Israeli Occupation forces raided and patrolled Beitunya.
Raid: Ramallah – 16:05, Israeli forces raided and patrolled Um Safa village.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Ramallah – 03:20, Israeli troops raided Bir Zeit, taking
prisoner one person.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Ramallah – dawn, the Israeli Army raided Bil'in village,
taking prisoner one person.
Raid: Jenin – 17:40, Israeli troops raided and patrolled Tura village.
Raid: Jenin – 18:55, Israeli soldiers raided and patrolled Ya'bad.
Raid: Jenin – 19:45, Israeli Occupation forces raided and patrolled Zububa village.
Raid: Tubas – 06:30, Israeli forces raided and patrolled Tubas.
Raid: Tulkarem – 18:05, the Israeli Army raided and patrolled Quffin.
Raid: Tulkarem – 04:0 Israeli troops raided Tulkarem.
Raid: Nablus – 20:00, Israeli soldiers raided and patrolled Aqraba.
Raid – UN refugee camps: Bethlehem – 13:45, Israeli Occupation forces raided and
patrolled the al-Azza and Aida UN refugee camps in Bethlehem.
Raid: Bethlehem – 18:10, Israeli forces raided and patrolled al-Khadr and Janata.
Raid – 2 abductions: Bethlehem – 20:15, Israeli troops raided Tuqu and abducted
two 16-year-old youths: Muhammad Khaled Nasrallah and Sind Talal Al-Amor.
Raid: Bethlehem – 03:00, Israeli soldiers raided and patrolled al-Ubeidiya.
Raid – 2 taken prisoner: Bethlehem – dawn, the Israeli Army raided Husan village,
taking prisoner two people.
Raid – 2 taken prisoner: Bethlehem – dawn, Israeli Occupation forces raided
al-Ubeidiya, taking prisoner twopeople.
Restrictions of movement (14): 11:30, entrance to Turmusaya- 11:20, tightened procedures at
Huwara - 12:00, tightened procedures at Kifl Haris - 12:50, entrance to al-Zawiya -
11:25-12:30, al-Nashash road junction - 14:10, entrance to al-Walaja village - midnight,
entrance to Marah Mualla - 09:15, entrance to the Fahs area, south of Hebron - 18:45,
entrance to Sa'ir - Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing closed - al-Mantar-Karni crossing closed -
al-Shujaiyeh crossing (Nahal Oz) closed - Sufa crossing closed - al-Awda Port closed.
[NB: Times indicated in Bold Type contribute to the sleep deprivation suffered by Palestinian
children]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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...
@ Paul, "100 year old ethnic cleansing project in the rest of Palestine continues",
but Tectonic plates still moving, collapse of an edifice of complacency
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He previously edited The
Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
"It doesn't matter that Hamas is a repressive, misogynistic, homophobic, Islamist terrorist
organization that fires thousands of rockets indiscriminately at innocent civilians all
over the State of Israel...
[...]
It doesn't matter...
[...]
Again, it doesn't matter, because we are no longer avowedly seeking, even in principle, a
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- the currently and foreseeably
insoluble Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And since we no longer avowedly aspire to be part
of the solution, we are increasingly perceived as part of the problem, as
rejectionists.
[...]
Israel still has plenty of friends, and plenty of support, including crucially in the US.
Three EU foreign ministers chose to make a solidarity visit to bombed Israeli homes at the
height of the conflict. But the ground is shifting dangerously.
Many of us, this writer emphatically included, regard a two-state solution as essential
if we are not to lose either our Jewish majority, or our democracy, or both, forever
entangled among millions of hostile Palestinians. Many of us, this writer emphatically
included, cannot currently see a safe route to such an accommodation.
For the last time, it doesn't matter. So long as Israel does not place itself firmly and
distinctly on the side of those seeking a viable framework for long-term peace and security
for ourselves and for the Palestinians, we will be regarded as blocking that framework. And
even when facing an enemy so patently cynical, amoral and intransigent as Hamas, militarily
strong Israel will be held responsible for the loss of life on both sides of the
conflict. We may keep on winning the battles, though they will get harder if fighting spreads to
and deepens on other fronts. But we will be gradually losing the war.
Space.com reports: Because no one was certain how weightlessness would affect a pilot,
the spherical capsule had little in the way of onboard
controls ; the work was done either automatically or from the ground. If an emergency
arose, Gagarin was supposed to receive an override code that would allow him to take manual
control, but Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Soviet space program, disregarded protocol
and gave the code to the pilot prior to the flight.
Over the course of 108 minutes, Vostok 1 traveled around the Earth once, reaching a
maximum height of 203 miles (327 kilometers). The spacecraft carried 10 days' worth of
provisions in case the engines failed and Gagarin was required to wait for the orbit to
naturally decay. But the supplies were unnecessary. Gagarin re-entered Earth's atmosphere,
managing to maintain consciousness as he experienced forces up to eight times the pull of
gravity during his descent.
The BBC remembers how on his return to earth, Gagarin parachuted into some farmland several
hundred miles from Moscow â€" "much to the surprise of a five-year-old girl who was
out in the fields planting potatoes."
The BBC also published a look at
Gagarin's global fame in the years that followed â€" and Phys.org notes that
even today, there are few people more
universally admired in Russia than Yuri Gagarin : His smiling face adorns murals across
the country. He stands, arms at his sides as if zooming into space, on a pedestal 42.5 metres
(140 feet) above the traffic flowing on Moscow's Leninsky Avenue. He is even a favourite
subject of tattoos... The anniversary of Gagarin's historic flight on April 12, 1961
â€" celebrated every year in Russia as Cosmonautics Day â€" sees Russians
of all ages lay flowers at monuments to his accomplishment across the country...
Gagarin, says historian Alexander Zheleznyakov, was a figure who helped fuel the
imagination. "He transformed us from a simple biological species to one that could imagine an
entire universe beyond Earth."
Several previous studies have examined the risks across generations of radiation exposure
from events such as this, but have yielded inconclusive results. In this study, the
investigators analyzed the genomes
of 130 children and parents from families where one or both parents were exposed to
radiation due to the Chernobyl accident, and where children were conceived afterward and born
between 1987 and 2002.
There was no increase in gene changes in reproductive cells of study participants, and
rates of new germline mutations were similar to those in the general population, according to a
team led by Meredith Yeager of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, in Rockville,
Md.
*** Please Note: Russia is not weak considering that it has the ability to nuke America in
to ashes within 30 minutes, or any other bunch of idiots that chooses to step over her red
lines. Okay the US has 350 million people compared to 150 million Russians, but the US is
irrevocably divided and Russia is fully united even the Muslim minority is united with the
State in Russia. A divided house can not stand no man can serve two masters. On top of that
the US has no moral values whereas Russia is a Christian country where marriage is between a
man and a woman, by State law. Biden can fly all the queer flags he likes but he still leads
a divided nation with a corrupt State comprised of dual passport holders, amoral materialists
and deluded mentally challenged idiots like Waters and Pelosi.
Ditto. I am sure the CIA will be grinding the generals as we speak. Even the letter in
Politico could well be one of their strategies. I posted a piece in the open thread yesterday
from The HILL that was
pure propaganda.
USA is not alone in losing guerrilla warfare.
Watch for Biden announcing a 'shake up' of the military command in the next few
weeks/months.
The US military 2021 retreat from Kabul will result in a slaughter in the USA.
I see the Pentagon pulling the plug on the opium income for the CIA. Now THAT is the real
war. So the CIA now has to pay its mercenary army to defend the harvest and extraction. That
added cost to the CIA will not be taken lightly.
"... By Tom Engelhardt. Originally published at TomDispatch ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... I supported the rule of law and human rights, not to mention the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. ..."
"... In these years, one key to so much of this is the fact that, as the Vietnam War began winding down in 1973, the draft was ended and war itself became a “voluntary†activity for Americans. In other words, it became ever easier not only to not protest American war-making, but to pay no attention to it or to the changing military that went with it. And that military was indeed altering and growing in remarkable ways. ..."
"... “The dislike of government spending, whether on public investment or consumption, is overcome by concentrating government expenditure on armaments†..."
"... “The dislike of government spending, whether on public investment or consumption, is overcome by concentrating government expenditure on armaments†..."
"... “Large-scale armaments are inseparable from the expansion of the armed forces and the preparation of plans for a war of conquest. They also induce competitive rearmament of other countries.†..."
Yves here. Englehardt describes how US war-making has been a continuing exercise starting
with World War II. It’s important to recognize that before that, US military
budgets were modest both in national and global terms. But with manufacturing less specialized,
the US was able to turn a considerable amount of its productive capacity to armaments in fairly
short order.
A second point is as someone who was in Manhattan on 9/11, I did not experience the attacks
as war. I saw them as very impressive terrorism. However, I was appalled at how quickly
individuals in positions of authority pushed sentiment in that direction. The attack was on a
Tuesday (I had a blood draw and voted before I even realized Something Bad had happened). I was
appalled to see the saber-rattling in Bush’s speech at the National
Cathedral on Friday. On Sunday, I decided to go to the Unitarian Church around the corner. I
was shocked to hear more martial-speak. And because the church was packed, I had to sit in the
front on the floor, which meant I couldn’t duck out.
Here’s the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July
1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic
obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in
history up to that moment, given the sweet code names
“Little Boy†and “Fat Man.â€
I was the littlest of boys at the time. More than three-quarters of a century has passed
since, on September 2, 1945, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro
Umezu
signed the Instrument of Surrender on the battleship U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay,
officially ending World War II. That was V-J (for Victory over Japan) Day, but in a sense for
me, my whole generation, and this country, war never really ended.
The United States has been at war, or at least in armed conflicts of various sorts, often in
distant lands, for more or less my entire life. Yes, for some of those years, that war was
“cold†(which often meant that such carnage, regularly sponsored
by the CIA, happened largely off-screen and out of sight), but war as a way of life never
really ended, not to this very moment.
In fact, as the decades went by, it would become the
“infrastructure†in which Americans increasingly invested their
tax dollars via aircraft
carriers , trillion-dollar jet fighters, drones armed
with Hellfire missiles, and the creation and maintenance of hundreds of military garrisons
around the globe, rather than roads, bridges, or
rail lines (no less the high-speed
version of the same) here at home. During those same years, the Pentagon budget would grab
an ever-larger percentage of
federal discretionary spending and the full-scale annual investment in what has come to be
known as the national security state would rise to a staggering $1.2
trillion or more.
In a sense, future V-J Days became inconceivable. There were no longer moments, even as wars
ended, when some version of peace might descend and America’s vast military
contingents could, as at the end of World War II, be significantly demobilized. The closest
equivalent was undoubtedly the moment when the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the Cold War
officially ended, and the Washington establishment declared itself globally triumphant. But of
course, the promised “peace dividend†would never be paid out as
the first Gulf War with Iraq occurred that very year and the serious downsizing of the U.S.
military (and the CIA) never happened.
Never-Ending War
Consider it typical that, when President Biden recently
announced the official ending of the nearly 20-year-old American conflict in Afghanistan
with the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from that country by 9/11/21, it would functionally
be paired with the news that the
Pentagon budget was about to rise yet again from its record heights in the Trump years.
“Only in America,†as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and
historian William Astore wrote recently,
“do wars end and war budgets go up.â€
Of course, even the ending of that never-ending Afghan War may prove exaggerated. In fact,
let’s consider Afghanistan apart from the rest of this
country’s war-making history for a moment. After all, if I had told you in
1978 that, of the 42 years to follow, the U.S. would be involved in war in a single country for
30 of them and asked you to identify it, I can guarantee that Afghanistan
wouldn’t have been your pick. And yet so it’s been. From
1979 to 1989, there was the
CIA-backed Islamist extremist war against the Soviet army there (to the tune of billions
and billions of dollars). And yet the obvious lesson the Russians learned from that adventure,
as their military limped home in defeat and the Soviet Union imploded not long after
â€" that Afghanistan is indeed the “graveyard of
empires†â€" clearly had no impact in Washington.
Or how do you explain the 19-plus years of warfare there that followed the 9/11 attacks,
themselves committed by a small Islamist outfit, al-Qaeda, born as an American ally in that
first Afghan War? Only recently, the invaluable Costs of War Project
estimated that America’s second Afghan War has cost this country almost
$2.3 trillion (not including the price of lifetime care for its vets) and has left at least
241,000 people dead, including 2,442 American service members. In 1978, after the disaster of
the Vietnam War, had I assured you that such a never-ending failure of a conflict was in our
future, you would undoubtedly have laughed in my face.
And yet, three decades later, the U.S. military high command still seems not faintly to have
grasped the lesson that we “taught†the Russians and then
experienced ourselves. As a result, according to recent reports, they have uniformly
opposed President Biden’s decision to withdraw all American troops from
that country by the 20th anniversary of 9/11. In fact, it’s not even clear
that, by September 11, 2021, if the president’s proposal goes according to
plan, that war will have truly ended. After all, the same military commanders and intelligence
chiefs seem intent on organizing long-distance versions of that conflict or, as the New
York Timesput
it , are determined to “fight from afar†there. They are
evidently even considering
establishing new bases in neighboring lands to do so.
America’s
“forever wars†â€" once known as the Global War on
Terror and, when the administration of George W. Bush launched it, proudly aimed at 60 countries â€"
do seem to be slowly winding down. Unfortunately, other kinds of potential wars, especially new
cold wars with China and Russia (involving new kinds of
high-tech weaponry) only seem to be gearing up.
War in Our Time
In these years, one key to so much of this is the fact that, as the Vietnam War began
winding down in 1973, the draft was
ended and war itself became a “voluntary†activity for
Americans. In other words, it became ever easier not only to not protest American war-making,
but to pay no attention to it or to the changing military that went with it. And that military
was indeed altering and growing in remarkable ways.
In the years that followed, for instance, the elite Green Berets of the Vietnam era would be
incorporated into an ever more expansive set of Special Operations forces, up to 70,000 of
them (larger, that is, than the armed forces of many countries). Those special operators would
functionally become a second, more secretive American military embedded inside the larger force
and largely freed from citizen oversight of any sort. In 2020, as Nick Turse reported, they
would be stationed in a staggering 154 countries
around the planet, often involved in semi-secret conflicts “in the
shadows†that Americans would pay remarkably little attention to.
Since the Vietnam War, which roiled the politics of this nation and was protested in the
streets of this country by an antiwar movement that came to include significant numbers of
active-duty soldiers and veterans, war has played a remarkably recessive role in American life.
Yes, there have been the endless thank-yous
offered by citizens and corporations to “the troops.†But
that’s where the attentiveness stops, while both political parties, year
after endless year, remain remarkably
supportive of a growing Pentagon budget and the industrial (that is, weapons-making) part
of the military-industrial complex. War, American-style, may be forever, but â€"
despite, for instance, the militarization
of this country’s police and the way in which those wars came home
to the Capitol last January 6th â€" it remains a remarkably distant reality for most
Americans.
One explanation: though the U.S. has, as I’ve said, been functionally at
war since 1941, there were just two times when this country felt war directly â€" on
December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and on September 11, 2001, when 19
mostly Saudi hijackers in commercial jets struck New York’s World Trade
Center and the Pentagon.
And yet, in another sense, war has been and remains us. Let’s just
consider some of that war-making for a moment. If you’re of a certain age,
you can certainly call to mind the big wars: Korea (1950-1953), Vietnam (1954-1975)
â€" and don’t forget the brutal bloodlettings in neighboring Laos
and Cambodia as well â€" that first Gulf War of 1991, and the disastrous second one,
the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Then, of course, there was that Global War on Terror that began
soon after September 11, 2001, with the invasion of Afghanistan, only to spread to much of the
rest of the Greater Middle East, and to significant parts of Africa. In March, for instance,
the
first 12 American special-ops trainers
arrived in embattled Mozambique, just one more small extension of an already widespread
American anti-Islamist terror role (
now failing ) across much of that continent.
And then, of course, there were the smaller conflicts (though not necessarily so to the
people in the countries involved) that we’ve now generally forgotten about,
the ones that I had to search my fading brain to recall. I mean, who today thinks much about
President John F. Kennedy’s April 1961 CIA disaster at the Bay of Pigs in
Cuba; or President Lyndon Johnson’s sending of 22,000 U.S. troops to the
Dominican Republic in 1965 to “restore orderâ€; or President
Ronald Reagan’s version of “aggressive
self-defense†by U.S. Marines sent to Lebanon who, in October 1983, were attacked
in their barracks by a suicide bomber, killing 241 of them;
or the anti-Cuban invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada that
same month in which 19 Americans were killed and 116 wounded?
And then, define and categorize them as you will, there were the CIA’s
endless militarized attempts (sometimes with the help of the U.S. military) to intervene in the
affairs of other countries, ranging from taking the nationalist side against Mao
Zedong’s communist forces in China from 1945 to 1949 to stoking a small ongoing
conflict in Tibet in the 1950s and early 1960s, and overthrowing the governments of Guatemala
and Iran, among other places. There were an
estimated 72 such interventions from 1947 to 1989, many warlike in nature. There were, for
instance, the proxy conflicts in Central America, first in Nicaragua against the Sandinistas
and then in El Salvador, bloody events even if few U.S. soldiers or CIA agents died in them.
No, these were hardly “wars,†as traditionally defined, not all
of them, though they did sometimes involve military coups and the like, but they were generally
carnage-producing in the countries they were in. And that only begins to suggest the range of
this country’s militarized interventions in the post-1945 era, as journalist
William Blum’s “
A Brief History of Interventions †makes all too clear.
Whenever you look for the equivalent of a warless American moment, some reality trips you
up. For instance, perhaps you had in mind the brief period between when the Red Army limped
home in defeat from Afghanistan in 1989 and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, that
moment when Washington politicians, initially shocked that the Cold War had ended so
unexpectedly, declared themselves triumphant on Planet Earth. That brief period might almost
have passed for “peace,†American-style, if the U.S. military
under President George H. W. Bush hadn’t, in fact, invaded Panama
(“Operation Just Causeâ€) as 1989 ended to get rid of its
autocratic leader Manuel Noriega (a former CIA asset, by the way). Up to 3,000 Panamanians
(including many civilians) died along with 23 American troops in that episode.
And then, of course, in January 1991 the First Gulf War began . It
would result in perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 Iraqi deaths and “onlyâ€
a few hundred deaths among the U.S.-led coalition of forces. Air strikes against Iraq would
follow in the years to come. And let’s not forget that even Europe
wasn’t exempt since, in 1999, during the presidency of Bill Clinton, the
U.S. Air Force launched a destructive 10-week bombing
campaign against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia.
And all of this remains a distinctly incomplete list, especially in this century when
something like 2
00,000 U.S. troops have regularly been stationed abroad and U.S. Special Operations forces
have deployed to staggering numbers of countries, while American drones regularly attacked
“terrorists†in nation after nation and American presidents
quite literally became assassins-in-chief . To this day,
what scholar and former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson called
an American “empire of bases†â€" a historically
unprecedented 800 or more of them â€"
across much of the planet remains untouched and, at any moment, there could be more to come
from the country whose military budget
at least equals those of the next 10 (yes, that’s 10!) countries
combined, including China and Russia.
A Timeline of Carnage
The last three-quarters of this somewhat truncated post-World War II American Century have,
in effect, been a timeline of carnage, though few in this country would notice or acknowledge
that. After all, since 1945, Americans have only once been “at
war†at home, when almost 3,000 civilians died in an attack meant to provoke
â€" well, something like the war on terror that also become a war of terror and a
spreader of terror movements in our world.
As journalist William Arkin recently argued , the U.S. has created a
permanent war state meant to facilitate “endless war.†As he
writes, at this very moment, our nation “is killing or bombing in perhaps 10
different countries,†possibly more, and there’s nothing
remarkably out of the ordinary about that in our recent past.
The question that Americans seldom even think to ask is this: What if the U.S. were to begin
to dismantle its empire of bases,
repurpose so many of those militarized taxpayer dollars to our domestic needs, abandon this
country’s focus on permanent war, and forsake the Pentagon as our holy
church? What if, even briefly, the wars, conflicts, plots, killings, drone assassinations, all
of it stopped?
What would our world actually be like if you simply declared peace and came home?
Here in Asia, many people think the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was an act of
flaying the dying horse, since Japan was staring at defeat even without the bombs. It was a
totally callous act of the USA to drop the bombs just to “test their
efficacyâ€.
Why then the bombs could not have dropped on Germany that was still waging war at that
time? Asians smirk and say one) the “collateral†damage of
radiation etc., to neighbours like France who were Allies and two) they were (and are)
‘whites’; unlike Japan and its neighbours.
I think that you have the dates mixed up. The war against Germany in Europe ended on May
7th and the testing of the first atom bomb was not until 16th July when the first bomb went
off at Alamogordo in New Mexico. The following month the two remaining atom bombs that the US
had were dropped on Japan. In short, the bombs arrived too late to use in Europe.
The bomb was built with Berlin being the first target, but because the war ended a year
sooner than what everyone thought it would and making the very first bombs took longer than
planned, it was used on Japan. It was probably used as a demonstration for the Soviets, but
considering that sixty-six other large Japanese cities had already been completely destroyed
by “conventional†firebombing, and in
Tokyo’s case, with greater casualties than either nuclear bombing, the
Bomb wasn’t really needed. The descriptions and the personal accounts of
the destruction of Tokyo (or Dresden and Hamburg) are (if that is even possible) worse than
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Honestly, just what new and excitingly horrific ways of killing people the atom bomb used
was not clearly understood. They generally thought of it as a bigger kaboom in a smaller
package. And honestly, being pre-cremated during an entire night with your family and
neighbors in the local bomb-shelter or dying after a few days, weeks, or even a month from
radiation poisoning, is not really a difference is it?
“FOR 20 years after Harry Truman ordered the atomic bomb dropped on
Japan in August 1945, most American scholars and citizens subscribed to the original,
official version of the story: the President had acted to avert a horrendous invasion of
Japan that could have cost 200,000 to 500,000 American lives. Then a young political
economist named Gar Alperovitz published a book of ferocious revisionism,
“Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam†(1965). While
acknowledging the paucity of evidence available at the time, he argued that dropping the
atomic bomb “was not needed to end the war or to save livesâ€
but was Truman’s means of sending a chastening message to the Soviet
Union.â€
If we accept that at face value, then certainly the second bombing was unecessary. The
threat would have been enough. But the US had a second bomb design to
test…
Few things working here. The US needed Japan to surrender quickly before Stalin invaded
(which they asked him to do) so he couldn’t get his forces onto the island
where the Allies couldn’t stop him. Most Japanese feared Stalin and
preferred surrendering to the US but the Japanese government was trying to use talks with the
USSR to get better terms than unconditional surrender (little did they know Stalin was
licking his chops for more territory under his iron curtain).
The first bomb design (little man) was significantly less ambitious, it was so certain to
function they never tested it because a study had proven there was almost no chance it would
fail.
Fat boy was the scientific leap in technology needing to be demonstrated. Building little
man was mostly a matter of enriching Uranium vs Fat boy Plutonium enrichment harder and
detonation mechanism more complicated. However the end result was a bomb that could produce
significantly higher yields with smaller amounts of fissionable material where both the size
of the bomb could be significantly reduced and the yield of the device could be significantly
scaled up at the same time.
Fat boy demonstrated the USA could someday be putting nukes on V2 rockets recently
smuggled out of Germany. Even more important Fat boy is a precursor to the mechanism that
initiates the H bomb fusion devices that Edward Teller would soon be Dr Strangloving.
Even after Trinity Fat boy still had very high odds of failure. They feared looking like
fools if it failed and the USSR ended up with the Plutoniumt. As a result the US Air Force
dropped little man first because it was certain to work. After the 1st bomb dropped, the
Soviets declared war and began their invasion of Japan which forced
Truman’s hand to drop Fat boy too. Even after Fat Boy, war mongers in
Japan still refused to surrender where Emperor Hirohito finally overruled them and although
there was a military coupe attempted, it failed.
Thus ended the most bloody conflict in the history of human kind.
I’m not saying it isn’t true, but is there any
actual evidence that the bombs were dropped as “a message to the Soviet
Union†and not to speed the end of the war?
Also, who exactly wanted to send this “message� The US
generals were against it, I understand.
“What would our world actually be like if you simply declared peace and
came home?â€
a. All those families whose livelihood is based on waging war would have to find a new
job. These people will fight tooth and nail to avoid change
b. The resource grabs by the rich people behind the Oz-like curtain would fail. Their fate
would be that of the English aristocrats who have to rent out their castles in order to
maintain a roof over their head. These people will fight tooth and nail to avoid change
c. The general public would have a fire-hose of newly-available resources to direct toward
activities which benefit all the rest of the families outside A and B above
d. Fear-based leverage by the few over the many would be diminished. Attention would be
re-directed toward valid problems we all face
=====
There’s an interesting question which I see posed from time to time,
and often ask myself. It runs thus:
“Who decides who our “enemies†are, and
why they are “enemies�
This is a fundamental question which I believe very few of us can currently answer
accurately. Yet this question carries a $1.2T per year consequence. That’s
a lot of money to allocate toward something we know nothing about.
One time I asked an acquaintance â€" who spent a career at CIA â€"
that question. His reply was “Why, Congress decides who our enemies are,
and why. Congress then tells the CIA what to doâ€.
I wasn’t sure if he truly believed that. It’s quite
possible he did, of course, and I’m sure many of the people in group A
above surely do think they’re doing honorable and patriotic work.
Group B above â€" the people who are actually moving the chess pieces of
“the Great Game†â€" they are pretty clear on who
defines our “enemies†and why they are
“enemiesâ€. And they wisely don’t stand in
front of podiums and explain their actions. These people aren’t visible,
or explained, or known because it’s better for them not to be.
The way to combat manipulation by these predators is to:
a. Know them by their actions. Predators predate.
b. Don’t participate. In order for them to predate, they need minions.
Don’t be a minion. Instead…
c. Be the giver, the creator and the constructor of things that are of no use to
predators
It’s not the soldiers but the contractors who live in dumpy overpriced
holes like Northern Virginia.
As to your acquaintance, my godfather was in the CIA in the 60’s and a
bit into the 70’s, and he might not say Congress as much as the
President’s Chief of Staff as threat they choose what the President sees.
You have to remember it’s primarily an organization of boring paper
pushers looking to get promoted which requires political patronage. Imagine getting the
Canada desk. You’ll be at a dead end unless you paint it as a grave
threat. Then there is information overload and just the sheer size of the US. They would file
reports, he mentioned an incident in Africa in the wake of decolonization when y godfather
was stationed there that maybe warranted the President’s attention, but to
get information to the President’s CoS took so long, it was in the
President’s daily newspaper before the report could be handled. By then,
why care, given the size of the US? Who can get to the Chief of Staff? Congress, so everyone
else lobbies them. The CIA director is an appendage of the CoS.
When the President wants something, everyone jumps, but when the President
doesn’t care, everyone is jockeying get for patronage.
The war machine is sustained by plutocrats and their sociopathic flunkies in the national
security state. How this works is clearly depicted in “The
Devil’s Chessboard,†by David Talbot, a deeply depressing
chronicle of how Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles did the dirty work of US
corporations worldwide. The arrogance, impunity, and irresponsibility of these men
established the framework of our secret government, which remains intact to this day.
It would be pleasant to believe that this evil persists because of public ignorance, but
like the good Germans of the Nazi era, Americans accept that deception, torture, and murder
are routinely practiced on our behalf to maintain our high standard of living and to keep us
“safe.†The reverence for the operatives of the US national
security state is evident throughout our popular culture, and that is a damning judgment on
the American people.
Of course the core problems are stationed at the place hardest to get to: right between
our ears. This complicity disease runs deep and wide.
While I often succumb to that same despondency you mentioned, occasionally I interrupt the
doom tape to notice that there’s a lot of people who are paddling hard
toward a new ethos…like the posters here @ NC, for ex.
So today I’m going to indulge in a little happiness. Plant a tree. Do
something good, something durable, something hopeful.
Something that offers no real hope of rent extraction potential.
It was nice being accused of supporting the terrorists because I supported the rule of
law and human rights, not to mention the United States Constitution and the Bill of
Rights.
WTF do some people think that the Founders wanted an extremely small army, a large
organized militia, and passed the Bill of Rights? It was a reaction to what the British Army
did to them (using much of the same tactics as the current
“justice†system does today.) The ignorance and lack of
thinking is really annoying.
Much of what the British military did was not good. Even now some of it would not be
allowed in a court of law, but I do not recall them being nearly as violent, brutal, or
deadly in their tactics while enforcing the King’s Law as the current
regime or the local police are. That the milder British tactics caused a civil war with in a
decade, and that the people then had less to fear from an occupying army as we do from
“our†police is disturbing to think on.
But wars always come home, don’t they? Faux toughness on the supposed
baddies here with claims of treason and insurrections on protests and riots now that often
would hardly be in the news fifty years ago, so great was the protests and riots happening
then. The cry to use the same tactics that did not work overseas to be used here at home.
“To keep us safe.â€
There’s truth to this, but once the war was really on, British and
Tory/Loyalist brutality had decisive effects on public opinion, putting lots of people into
the Whig/Patriot camp. Tom Paine makes great efforts to publicize British sexual assaults,
looting, and general thugishness as they chase the Continental Army across New Jersey in
1776; the cruelty of backcountry British cavalry officers and Tory rangers in the Carolinas
was legendary as the war reaches its latter phases.
And there was brutality on the other side, too, especially for Loyalist elites who faced a
kind of “social death.†It was a war, after all, as well as a
social revolution. It wasn’t France in 1789 or Russia in 1917, but it was
rough, especially given the small population size.
Except as Engelhardt just pointed out, the national security state does not
“maintain our high standard of livingâ€.
It’s an immense net drain on our standard of living. The only Americans
made well-to-do or wealthy by it are those who are directly involved in supplying contract
goods and services to the system.
I don’t know if Americans “accept†it as
opposed to taking a dim view of being able to affect change.
The levers the average person has to change the behavior of the state is infinitesimal.
Add to that the scope of action and Overton window mediated by the hypernormalized press
ecosystem just means those in power get to act without restraint.
Hell, Obama literally said “We tortured some
folks†and the media and government barely shrugged. To my knowledge, no one went
to jail, no one was brought up in the Hague, and some of the same ghouls that perpetrated
such crimes got cushy commenter jobs in the media.
Right now, localities can’t even keep their police from regularly
killing citizens.
What does the average person do in the face of such things?
Hell, Obama literally said “We tortured some folks†and
the media and government barely shrugged. To my knowledge, no one went to jail, no one was
brought up in the Hague, and some of the same ghouls that perpetrated such crimes got cushy
commenter jobs in the media.
No one went to jail. Certainly no one went before the Hague. No bankers went to jail
either. Even during the nutty Reagan administration, people went to jail for financial
shenanigans. Some got long sentences. Hell, the Iran-Contra stuff was at least covered and
people were indicted, even if they all got pardoned. Not anymore. These shenanigans are the
norm and happen right out in the open. I’d imagine some of
it’s been given legal cover. It seems like it’s become
the expected behavior within these circles. To act otherwise â€" to attempt to be
honest, in other words â€" is seen as weak and is mocked as fiercely as a weaker
child on the playground might be.
It’s just a continuing regression. And as you note,
it’s an excellent career builder:
“Looking for a job in mainstream media? Research has shown that
reducing your sense of ethics and morality actually helps you get ahead.â€
Doubtless, Ms. Smith and Ms. Engelhardt have provided a key public service here. And I
speak as a veteran, decorated for service in the War Over Oil (a.k.a. the
“Persian Gulf Warâ€).
Between the vast economic inequality currently raging in our country, the social
stratification enabled by access to colleges and universities accepted as
“eliteâ€, the trashing of Constitutional protections (e.g. the
4th Amendment, now thoroughly eviscerated owing to the “PATRIOT
ACTâ€), and the rampaging rule by “intelligence
agencies†over foreign policy, I see no reason why any father should tell his
children that this is a country worth fighting and dying for. [Think: China] Of course, the
Empire â€" just as Rome did in its dying days â€" will be able to find
enough desperately poor who will take the king’s shilling and don the
uniform.
If anyone wishes to prove me wrong, let them work for a substantive
“peace dividend†for a 2-3 years. Then we can sit down and
talk; I’ll buy the ale.
In these years, one key to so much of this is the fact that, as the Vietnam War began
winding down in 1973, the draft was ended and war itself became a
“voluntary†activity for Americans. In other words, it became
ever easier not only to not protest American war-making, but to pay no attention to it or to
the changing military that went with it. And that military was indeed altering and growing in
remarkable ways.
Because, imo,
Since the Vietnam War, which roiled the politics of this nation and was protested in the
streets of this country by an antiwar movement that came to include significant numbers of
active-duty soldiers and veterans, war has played a remarkably recessive role in American
life.
Despite having already ‘pledged’ at my Uncles
Invitation, with the Draft’s End, I had great hope my future would see the
great Peace Dividand rather than 9 more Opportunity Conflicts.
Little did that then 21 year old see the brilliance in that Pentagon Strategy.
I Now firmly support a No Exemption Draft for all post HS.
Military Service being only one, and a restricted one, of many counter-balancing options
available for Public Service for that cohort.
This article reminded me of one of the best Congressional Research Service reports that
I’ve read: Instances of Use of United States
Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2020 . Despite being just a list of dates and locations with a
brief description, it comes in at around 50 pages, which I think is a testament to how
important foreign military engagement has been to the growth of the US even before 1945.
Between these foreign wars and the genocidal war against the indigenous people of the
continent I think it’s fair to say this country has been at war since its
founding.
Correct. Even the so called Louisiana Purchase was not really a purchase of land, but a
faux “option†to engage in land treaties with the native
Americans;.the US chose Indian Wars and relocation treaties that have been violated
repeatedly. (This territory is now known as the Red States.)
The rest of the land extending to the west coast was acquired through conquest with the
new nation of Mexico. I guess the only real honest acquisition would be
Seward’s Icebox.
>>I guess the only real honest acquisition would be Seward’s
Icebox.
Alaska has only been inhabited for a few tens of thousands of years. I would think that
the natives should have some say about who “owns†the land
even though the Russian Empire did say that they did. The reasons sometimes included the use
of guns. As for stealing Mexico’s territory, again that was, and in some
areas still is, inhabited by natives who somehow became under the
“governance†of New Spain or the country of Mexico despite not
being asked about it and often still a majority part of the population in many areas when
Mexico lost control.
Often, Europeans or Americans would show up somewhere, plant a flag, and say that they
claimed or owned the very inhabited land, sometimes with farms and even entire cities. Rather
arrogant, I would say.
I agree. Seward’s Icebox was not empty at time of sale. My
understanding is that Seward thought it was. So faraway, so cold; no one would be living
there, right?
As I’ve commented here many times, it was small pox not small bullets
that allowed the Old World to take the New. There were estimates of 20 million native
Americans living on the land now known as Mexico and the US. 90% were felled by Old World
disease before Custer lost his scalp to the northern Plains Indians. In a fair fight the
Indians would be enforcing the treaties.
It is amazing how the US continues to engage in war and still lose: Korea, Vietnam,
Afghanistan, Iraq. . .Ukraine?
For nearly a decade now every time I’ve read about the war in
Afghanistan I’ve thought about Tim Kreider’s mordant
2011 cartoon We
Could’ve Had The Moon, Instead We Get Afghanistan . Ten years later,
that $432 billion has ballooned to $2.3 trillion (and more) and every word he wrote still
stands. :-(
The author has retired from cartooning and now focuses on essay writing.
We are going to have to halt the production lines.
The warehouses are full of bombs already, there is no more room.
Biden to the rescue; he’s started dropping bombs already.
When you have a large defence industry, you need war.
The only purpose is to use up the output from the defence industry.
“The dislike of government spending, whether on public investment
or consumption, is overcome by concentrating government expenditure on
armamentsâ€
“Large-scale armaments are inseparable from the expansion of the
armed forces and the preparation of plans for a war of conquest. They also induce competitive
rearmament of other countries.â€
These were the lessons they learnt from the 1930s.
So now, here we are. And how do we create a peaceful world? Refit the US military for a
sustainable world. It will prove to be very useful. We and other advanced nations still have
the advantage for prosperity but we should not abuse it. The whole idea back in 1945 was for
the world to prosper. So I’ll just suggest my usual hack: Get rid of the
profit motive. It’s pure mercantilism. And totally self defeating in a
world seeking sustainability for everyone.
The Manhattan Project was an enormously expensive enterprise with two components
â€" the development of a uranium bomb (Oak Ridge) and a plutonium bomb (Hanford,
WA).
If no bomb had been used, the project would have been considered a waste of time, and
there would have been a congressional investigation. If only one bomb had been used, half the
cost would have been considered a waste.
I’m not saying these were the only reasons for dropping the bombs. The
event was, as they say, “overdetermined.â€
Biden is privatising the war in Afghanistan. 18,000 private contractors will stay behind
to maintain a landing area for U.S. aircraft should the need arise. According to war monger
Lynn Cheney the "troops will never leave". The U.S. National Guard has been fighting
undeclared wars all over the ME for twenty years and legislation is being proposed at the
state level to end the abuse. I personally know one man who has done three tours in Iraq as a
National Guardsman.
I totally agree with your comments concerning the U.S. government here at home. It is
Bolshevism 2.0.
They published another paper in 2017 predicting Russian production would hit 11,268,000 bpd
in 2018. They did not quite make it but they did average 11,252,000 bpd in 2019. They predicted
Russia to peak at 11.5 million bpd in 2020.
In our 2017 paper we identified that projects already in the pipeline, combined with
efforts to slow the
natural decline of brownfields, could push oil production from an average of below 11 mb/d in
2016 to
around 11.5 mb/d by 2020 before going into gradual decline towards 2025.
Of course, the pandemic hit and kept that from happening. But from their 2019 paper, linked
above, concerning brownfield management:
However, the success to date can be seen in the performance of six of the country's
largest production companies, all of which are subsidiaries of the Russian oil majors. (These
majors) have demonstrated a combined average rate of decline of 2 percent per annum over the
past decade, compared to a natural decline rate for fields in West Siberia of around 10-15
percent per annum.
Massive infill drilling has gotten their brownfield decline down from a natural decline rate
of 10-15 percent to 2 percent. But they do not believe this decline rate can be held:
An additional concern is that our long-term forecast for brownfield decline, of 2-3
percent per annum,
may be too optimistic if the current performance cannot be maintained as fields move further
into their
final years
And they say, concerning the below chart", bold mine.
Figure 10 below. As can be seen, the overall output figure in 2030 of just over 8 mb/d is
close to the "Brownfield+2 per cent" case in the corporate analysis above, implying that the
regional analysis assumes a more normal decline curve for average oilfields in Russia. In other
words, it confirms that the corporate analysis assumes continued technology progression,
especially in slowing the brownfield decline, and therefore it is important to assess how this
may be achieved. Indeed, an overall question is how can the Russian oil industry
achieve the target set for it by the Ministry of Energy of maintaining production at 550 mm
tonnes per
annum (11.05 mb/d) until the end of the next decade? In other words, will the Russian oil
sector be
able to fill a 2.5 mb/d gap by 2030, particularly when it seems that its major producing
regions (West
Siberia and the Volga-Urals) will be in permanent decline by then?
What they are saying here is there may be serious problems with the Ministry of Energy's
production goals. They seem to doubt it. Their brownfield production, (West Siberia and the
Volga-Urals) shown in blue in the chart below, was about 80 percent of total Russian production
in 2018 and 2019. Hey, 80% of their production will be in serious decline for the rest of this
decade. Does anyone really believe the small fields they are finding in the East Siberian
Arctic will replace that?
Terrific post. Thanks Ron. I like the candidness of the Russians on important issues. Far
more realistic than EIA et al elevation of "wishful thinking" to the status of
"data".
I totally disagree with this statement, which is very commonly made by too many.
" I suspect that combustion-only vehicles will only make a small percent of new vehicles
sales by 2030, but it will take a long time to retire the current fleet of combustion-only
vehicles throughout the world. "
Last week Honda said that by 2030. they were expecting their vehicles sales to be 40% EVs.
While I certainly respect their decision, which is less ambitious and more conservative than
other auto manufacturers, let's just do a quick and simple calculation to see what this really
means.
US EV sales, BEVs plus PHEVs, in 2020 were close to 2%. So how much of a yearly rate
increase in sales do we need to get to 40% in 10 years. How about 2*(1.3493^10) = 40. So EV
sales have to increase at the rate of a shade less than 35% each year to get to 40% by 2030.
Recent trends have been closer to 10% and slowing.
I think 40% by 2040 is more realistic. That would only take a 16% annual increase to get to
40% and even that may be a stretch.
"... Bernie Sanders in 2016, the self-described democratic socialist "showed little interest or knowledge about US-Russia relations and the attendant dangers of a new cold war." Instead, Sanders was ultimately content to mimic the juvenile and Manichean "democracies versus authoritarians" model of international relations. ..."
"... in the Obama era, as mediocre academics like Celeste Wallander were given positions on the National Security Council, and an ideologue like Michael McFaul was bizarrely appointed as ambassador. ..."
"... Under Biden – who caved to pressure from the foreign policy blob to not appoint Rojansky – the advisers who are in place or in line, including Jake Sullivan , Antony Blinken , Madeleine Albright/Hillary Clinton adviser Wendy Sherman, the German Marshall Fund's Karen Donfried , and State Department nominee Victoria Nuland represent more of the same dangerous ineptitude and strident thinking. Many of these advisers, like their predecessors, have little on-the-ground experience with contemporary Russia. ..."
"... Neoconservative ideologue Nuland, of course, is a slightly different case in that she has put her boots on the ground in the region. Unfortunately, that experience includes facilitating the dangerously divisive 2014 coup in Ukraine, without which Crimea would still be in Ukraine and the Donbass would be at peace. Competent officials would have warned Obama and Biden that the Maidan would lead to consequences like these. ..."
"... importantly, this 'perceived enemy' and its corresponding narrative sells... it enriches the military complexes, CIA etc. Even if it sounded unbelievable and outrageous, they will still be regurgitated and at best, given a new guised repackaging ..."
"... the author assumes that the mistakes made by advisors to Obama and others were because of incompetence, when in fact it should be seriously considered they were actually quite deliberate and planned ..."
"... the job was NOT to deliver facts to the public; the job was to tell the public how to think and what to believe; ie. anti-Russia propaganda. ..."
The rejection
of Matthew Rojansky's candidacy as a Russia adviser to Joe Biden represents an escalation, and
not a departure, from a pervasive bipartisan American pattern of dangerous ignorance about
Russia in the post-Soviet era.
It was reported last week that Joe Biden's government would not be hiring Rojansky, of the
Kennan Institute think tank, to help form policy towards Russia. Though the analyst is known as
a moderate realist regarding Russia issues – in other words, he is not a virulent
anti-Moscow ideologue – he was considered too controversial to be allowed a hearing
during White House deliberations on policy regarding the world's largest country.
Rojansky's sin? Unlike many of the current crop of foreign policy officials, he actually has
some expertise and experience on the subject.
While the scholar's fate may be a glaring and extreme
example of an anti-Russia mindset in Washington that is counterproductive, it represents
only a new low, and not a change from a pervasive bipartisan pattern in the post-Soviet
era.
Those who aspire to, or attain, the most powerful executive position in the United States
have shown a disturbingly willful ignorance of Russia. I learned from a former State Department
official that, in response to a renowned Russia expert attempting to brief presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016, the self-described democratic socialist "showed little
interest or knowledge about US-Russia relations and the attendant dangers of a new cold
war." Instead, Sanders was ultimately content
to mimic the juvenile and Manichean "democracies versus authoritarians" model of
international relations.
Similarly, an American business executive told me that, during a lunch with him and other
leaders of commerce at the US Embassy in Moscow in 2012, then-Vice President Joe Biden showed
no interest in his interlocutors' suggestions that it was in the US' best interests to partner
with Russia after they offered social, economic, and strategic justifications for their
view.
Biden seemed to see the meeting as an opportunity to lecture on his position rather than to
learn or seek insight on Russia.
Moreover, once a US president is in power, the advisers that are appointed to counsel the
commander in chief about Russia have been less than impressive from the 1990s onward.
Condoleezza Rice served as an expert in the George Bush Senior administration and was
wrong about the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. During her stint as secretary of
state in the second term of the junior Bush administration, her Russian counterparts who spent
significant time with her made the observation
that Rice was "a Soviet expert, and not a Russia expert."
There was little improvement in the Obama era, as mediocre academics like Celeste Wallander were
given positions on the National Security Council, and an ideologue like Michael McFaul was
bizarrely appointed as ambassador.
According to investigative journalist Gareth Porter, advisers to Obama were so utterly
incompetent that those serving in the administration really didn't think Russia had the ability
or inclination to counter Washington's provocative actions in
Syria, and therefore they did not plan for that possibility. This incompetence was also
highlighted by Obama's public comments to the Economist in 2014, in which he claimed that
Russia didn't make anything, immigrants didn't go there, and male life expectancy was 60 years
– three claims that anyone with actual expertise on Russia should have easily known were
false.
In fact, at that point, Russia was the second most popular migration destination in the
world, after America itself, while average lifespans have been converging with those of the US
over the past decade. As for manufacturing, Obama said these words at a time when the US, for
instance, was totally reliant on Russian rockets for access to space, having retired its own
unreliable Space Shuttle fleet. If he had access to a competent adviser on the subject, would
he have made these mistakes?
Under Biden – who caved to pressure from the foreign policy blob to not appoint
Rojansky – the advisers who are in place or in line, including Jake Sullivan , Antony Blinken ,
Madeleine Albright/Hillary Clinton adviser Wendy Sherman, the German Marshall Fund's Karen
Donfried , and State
Department nominee Victoria Nuland represent more of the same dangerous
ineptitude and strident thinking. Many of these advisers, like their predecessors, have little
on-the-ground experience with contemporary Russia.
Neoconservative ideologue Nuland, of course, is a slightly different case in that she has
put her boots on the ground in the region. Unfortunately, that experience includes facilitating
the dangerously divisive 2014 coup in Ukraine, without which Crimea would still be in Ukraine
and the Donbass would be at peace. Competent officials would have warned Obama and Biden that
the Maidan would lead to consequences like these.
It takes a special kind of hubris for the US political class to keep thinking they can get
away with this level of sloppiness in understanding the world's other nuclear superpower
– a country so massive that it straddles two major continents and is the sixth largest
economy in terms of purchasing power parity – without serious consequences. At what point
will God's providence run out?
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
If you like this story, share it with a friend!
Natylie Baldwin is author of "The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia
Relations," available at Amazon. She blogs at http://natyliesbaldwin.com/ .
"Washington has a dangerous & destructive pattern of wilful ignorance on Russia in
post-Soviet era" It is not just wilful ignorance per se. Without a 'perceived enemy', the
narrative for Russia will fall apart. Ditto China, Iran, N Korea et al.
But importantly, this
'perceived enemy' and its corresponding narrative sells... it enriches the military
complexes, CIA etc. Even if it sounded unbelievable and outrageous, they will still be
regurgitated and at best, given a new guised repackaging, but with the antiquated contents
remaining intact.
dotmafia 6 hours ago 6 hours ago
Good article, but, the author assumes that the mistakes made by advisors to Obama and others
were because of incompetence, when in fact it should be seriously considered they were
actually quite deliberate and planned. In the example of Obama's remarks to The Economist,
the job was NOT to deliver facts to the public; the job was to tell the public how to think
and what to believe; ie. anti-Russia propaganda.
Levin High 8 hours ago 8 hours ago
It used to be said that you couldn't be fired for buying IBM, now days in the US you seem to
be hired for blaming Russia.
apothqowejh 9 hours ago 9 hours ago
The US State Department is packed with idiots, political appointees, ideologues and globalist
nut jobs. Their lack of anything remotely like competence is as astonishing as the CIA's full
on embrace of evil.
wowhead1977 4 hours ago 4 hours ago
The cabal in America always want to blame Russia. I'm a American citizen and have no problem
with Russia. These so called sanctions on other countries is a control tactic that most
Americans didn't vote for. This race baiting tactic is from The Fabian Society play book.
Wolf in sheep's clothing is the Fabian Society logo.
We must realize that our Party's most
powerful weapon is racial tension. By propounding into the consciousness of the dark races,
that for centuries have been oppressed by the Whites, we can mold them to the program of the
Communist Party ... In America, we will aim for subtle victory. While enflaming the color
people minority against the Whites, we will instill in the Whites, a guilt complex for the
exploitation of the color people.
We will aid the color people to rise to prominence in every
walk of life, in the professions, and in the world of sports and entertainment. With this
prestige, the color people will be able to intermarry with the Whites, and begin a process
which will deliver America to our cause." ~ Israel Cohen - Fabian Society Founder
Wodehouse, that most perfect of stylists, was not as lost in his imaginary world as
all that. I suppose his main sources for pastiche or parody were the Bible,
Shakespeare, American gangster idiom and such novelists as Ethel M Dell. That's where
he got his square jawed characters who went out to often unspecified parts of the
Empire and did often unspecified great things. Wodehouse rips them to pieces, as he
also shreds the English Blut und Boden Fascists of the pre-war years. I suppose I,
courtesy of old second-hand bookshops, must be one of the few who've read Ethel M Dell.
Often wonder what people who haven't make of Wodehouse.
Dickens is I think misrepresented in the article. His extraordinarily vivid
characters derive from his personal and first hand experience. He knew little of Empire
or had little contact with it, but knew enough to rip apart Mrs Jellyby's misdirected
do-goodery in Borioboola-Gha. I thought of Mrs Jellyby when President Biden's
philanthropic schemes for South Amrerica were being discussed on the Colonel's site
recently.
In fact the British Empire, for all the harm it did, is a transient affair not to be
confused with the great continental land empires. Disraeli got going with the "Queen
Empress" braggadocio in the late nineteenth century and barely twenty years later
Kipling was writing the prophetic obituary of that chapter of English history.
It's an accurate article as far as I know – the exploitation of the Indian
peasant, for example, was shocking in its ruthlessness. We get a more balanced account
of the Irish famine from modern Irish historians though in my view, for all Victoria's
munificant £5,000, the failure to get to grips with that famine was not only a
condemnation of the neo-liberals of that era. It removed for all time any prospect of
peaceful union between Ireland and England. Don't forget Dr Johnson's remark when Union
was being mooted many decades earlier. ""Do not make an union with us, Sir. We should
unite with you only to rob you. We should have robbed the Scotch, if they had had
anything of which we could have robbed them".
-The Greens, if they "win" will not win with a majority. That means they will need
coalition partners. Neither the CDU or the SPD is going to go along with their plan to stop
NS2. The Greens, in order to form a govt. will cave in on NS2 and probably other things.
-The Ukies are still fleeing the country to avoid going to the front. The Ukie brass says
as much. These are not soldiers. They are farm kids. At the 1st sign of serious war, they
will all head for the russians with hands in the air.
-V. Putin handled the western MSM narrative quite well, imo, when he said "Those behind
provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done
in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time." It can't be clearer than that.
And that tells me that the ussa is in the crosshairs. This may be the 1st time in history
that the oceans will offer no protection for the warmongers that have been at war for 222
years of 237 years of their existence
The comedian is still flaying about and now trying to play the SWIFT card (last week it
was nuclear weapons, before that it was...). Which, of course, the west will not honor
because it would cripple the west as much or more than RU. I would imagine he needs to change
his undershorts on an hourly basis these days. He is literally caught between a rock and a
hard spot. No more support from DE, FR, US, NATO, TR except good wishes. And demands from his
brain-dead Banderites are only growing more shrill. What's a poor comic to do?
The west is basically done with him and with the show of force by the russians they are
more done with him than before. For his sake, i hope his khazarian passport app has been
approved.
Another failed state compliments of the khazarians in DC. And the beat goes on.
Eighthman @10 North Stream 2 will be the last mayor cooperation between Russia and Europe
for the next 10, 20 years. If you had to choose where to put your money, would you put it in
a gas pipeline to China (Power of Siberia) or a gas pipeline to Europe (North Stream2)?
Putin will be the last Russian president who looked west, to Europe; the next president
will look east, to Asia. It's where the money is.
I know how the German system works. Yet I am not seeing the Greens win or compose the next
government if they threaten to cancel NS2. The NS2 is not about the CDU/CSU but about the
German elite interest. No way they are going to give green light to the Greens. Speaking of
someone which city is on the border.
There is ONE little thing Mike Whitney missed, or maybe it developed as/after he wrote
this, the State Department told Germany last week there would be no further sanctions on
Germany or her companies as regards Nordstream II. I believe also that a four-Euro-country
coalition told the U.S. a couple of weeks ago that this was for Germany's energy security,
Nordstream that is and they sounded like they're serious about any further American
interference in the matter.
On the subject of LNG, is it even possible to transport enough LNG from the United States
to Germany in quantity equal to the flow of Nordstream II? That pipe they're laying looks of
sufficient diameter to walk through standing up, it's going to pass a LOT of gas. I don't
know what the flow rates and pressures are, but I know one thing; Boston has a large LNG
terminal and it's a dangerous setup. Pipelines seem to me a safer enterprise.
-The Ziocorporate globalist NATO/EU terrorists: We supported Chechen terrorist separatists
and KLA organ-harvesting Jihadis, dismembered Yugoslavia and bombed Serbia, used your Russian
airspace that you opened for us to invade Afghanistan after the 9/11 Zioterrorist
self-attacks, instigated Georgia into war with Russia, used your UNSC vote to destroy Libya
with ISIS, turned EUkraine into a NATO satellite complete with an bloody massacre in Odessa
and yet another massmurderous war on Russia's border and blamed and sanctioned you for it,
shot down your planes in Syria; and we're gonna be taking Belarus the moment Lukashenko
blinks. But we're really good business partners, and need some gas, you know...
To my American readers I'd say that the US is very strong and the people of the US can
have a wonderful life even without world hegemony, in fact, hegemony is not in their
interests at all. What they should seek is a strong nationalist policy that cares for
the American people and avoids wasteful foreign wars.
The problem here, is that the American people are crushed and powerless, and in the grip
of something morphing into a Neo-Bolshevik style dictatorship. Similarly to the mid 1930's
this dictatorship wants world power – and from this perspective Ukraine looks more like
Spain 1936 (the first act of a much bigger show).
Biden's recent phone call to Putin suggests that the administration has decided not to
launch a war after all. The unconfirmed report of two US ships turning away from the Black
Sea fits this assessment. However, we cannot be sure about this since the Kremlin refused
to agree to Biden's offer for a meeting. The Kremlin's response was a frosty "We shall
study the proposal". Russians feel that the summit proposal might be a trick aimed at
buying time to strengthen their position.
Except that the US ordered two British warships to go there instead.
TASS, April 18. Two British warships will sail for the Black Sea in May. According to
The Sunday Times, a source in the Royal Navy indicated that this gesture is intended to
show solidarity with Ukraine and NATO in the region against the background of the situation
at the Russian-Ukrainian border.
According to the newspaper, one Type 45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles and
an anti-submarine Type 23 frigate will peel off from the Royal Navy's carrier task group in
the Mediterranean and sail through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea.
It is reported that the decision was made in order to support Ukraine after the US
cancelled its plans of sending two destroyers to the Black Sea in order to avoid further
escalation in the region and tensions with Russia. It is noted that in case of a threat on
the part of Russia, the UK is ready to send other military equipment to the region.
I would guess that the US Trotskyites plan to push the Ukrainians into a war and then
launch a massive international media barrage, "heroic Ukrainian patriots", "Russian
atrocities", "killer Putin" etc. sufficient to finish with Nord Stream 2 and scare France and
Germany back into the US fold.
If this is right, then they're not expecting Russia to retake the whole of the Ukraine,
and they're not planning to start WW3.
However, Russia's lowest risk strategy would probably still be to only defend their
existing positions making it difficult to claim a "Russian invasion". They've probably
already lost Nord Stream (which is really a German loss – and the Germans know what the
ZioGlob are doing here). This buys time, and given that the US is already on a fast downward
slope, lets them keep sliding.
@Anonymous
point the finger and shriek about 'Russian aggression' in order to pressure the Germans into
cancelling Nordstream 2 and any other Russian supplied energy.
Of course if the Europeans weren't run by (((banker))) stooges and if they had any balls
between them they would force the US to call the whole thing off and pressure the Ukrainian
fascists to honour the Minsk 2 agreement. Sadly we are just going to have to prepare for the
worst and hope it doesn't go nuclear.
I see my own government (I am from the UK) has decided to send some sacrificial ships to
the Black sea (the US apparently doesn't want to risk theirs) What else can we expect when
2/3 of our parliament are in 'Friends of Israel' groups?
The Ukrainians who would the hardest to pacify are in the Ukie Diaspora in US, Canada and
Western Europe. These folks still maintain a WW II mentality, act as if the Holodomor (which
was terrible) only happened the other day and have a fair number of Banderists among their
number. They do not wish to acknowledge that the Holodomor was orchestrated by the same Jews
who launched the Bolshevik Revolution and killed millions of Orthodox Russians more than a
decade beforehand. The ideal would be for Ukraine to maintain it territorial integrity minus
perhaps the Donbas and go forward with a positive relationship with Russia.
@Anonymous
refugees, including tens of thousands of Russian passport holders, trek into Russia, creating
a nightmare for Putin. Ukranazistan is enormously emboldened, joins NATO de facto if not yet
de jure, Russia is tremendously weakened, loses all allies and prospective allies. Win for
Amerikastan.
Scenario 2: Putin intervenes.
Result: Amerikastan leaves the Ukranazis high and dry, but shrieks about Evil Russian
Invasion; NordStream II and all other economic connections with Europe are severed.
Amerikastan immensely reasserts its control over Europe, sells its LNG to Germany at much
inflated prices, and its useless weapons to everyone to "defend against Russia". Hands Russia
the unenviable burden of the ruin of Ukranazistan, which Amerikastan has looted for 7 years
till there is nothing left. Win for Amerikastan.
@Fiendly
Neighbourhood Terrorist ttlement of Disputes". Hopefully it will direct the attention of
the Security Council or the General Assembly to realize the Russian Federation and permanent
member of the UNSC, see no other path to peace if the representatives of the UN fail to make
a just and fair decision on this particular matter that has gone on for far too long.
This in itself does not necessarily mean the armies of Russia will pour over Ukraine's
western border and over their northern border from Belarus. But the declaration of defensive
war puts US-NATO in a Hobson's choice predicament and that is to choose peace. If they choose
to cross the Rubicon then the necessity of defense war as theoretically stated will happen to
preserve the sovereignty of Mother Russia.
Less than 11% of ukrainians are Catholic -- less than 1% "Latin Rite" and 10% Uniate
Catholic -- and they are concentrated overwhelmingly in the oblasty bordering Poland and
Slovakia etc. in the west. Catholicism does not exist in the Donbass region and has almost
zero presence or influence in the rest of the Ukraine excluding the far west.
Russian and Ukrainian are even more similar than you make out, albeit not nearly-identical
like Russian and Belarussian.
In any event, many Ukrainians consider BOTH Russian and ukrainian to be their native
languages.
Moreover, a large minority of people, especially around Kiev, use the Russian-Ukrainian
mix called Surzhyk.
If the MIC/Banksters like the brinkmanship games so much, it would be interesting to see
Russian nuclear submarines emerging near Patagonia (Jewish "retreat") and Cuba. A piece of
leaked information about the City of London being on a crosshair of Kinzhal will be a bonus.
Add to that the publication of a detailed map of underground luxury bunkers for the
"deciders;" that would be super nice.
The cannibals – the "globally-oriented elites" – need to feel the flaming spear
directed towards each of them (and their progeny) personally. The confrontation has indeed
become personal: the ZUSA's "elites" against humankind.
@Miro23
re it fit best how would that be a bad thing?
Some to Russia, some to Poland, some to a rump State.
I would love to see Putin, Lavrov and Shoigu cook up a feast for Bidet Joe and Camel Toe tbat
would see them humiliated. Bidet is a fraud and anything that makes him and his little goblin
Blinkenfeld look like idiots is great.
We can only hope!
P.S. It must really suck to be a Ukrainian. Here we are in the 21st century and these guys
can't get out from being stuck in the mud. The young have to leave for Poland to get jobs.
And for what reason, so American Jews can get their Hate On for the Czar?! All the
Greenblatts need war crime charges. Convict and execute the next morning. All legal. Force is
all these vermin understand.
@Anonymous
oke Putin into overreacting, thus, proving that Russia poses a threat to all of Europe. The
only way Washington can persuade its EU allies that they should not engage in critical
business transactions (like Nordstream) with Moscow, is if they can prove that Russia is an
"external threat" to their collective security.
Shamir unfortunately became fixated on Whitney's use of the word "overreact" (though I agree
it's not the right word) and mostly failed to address the substance of the question and its
underlying premise.
And, as a postscript, I agree with animalogic. Your kindergarten language is embarrassing. I
mean, if you're going to insult Escobar et al., at least use adult insults.
In the unlikely event that Ukraine does try to take back the Donbas by force, Shakespeare
has already devised the appropriate stage direction for the Zelensky government:
"Get your hands off my country," Zimerman told the stunned crowd in a denunciation of US
plans to install a missile defence shield on Polish soil. Some people cheered, others yelled
at him to shut up and keep playing. A few dozen walked out, some of them shouting
obscenities.
I've played hundreds of Russians at chess, and they prefer what chess players call "quiet
moves." (Unlike US players, who are more impetuous). Same for Putin; quiet moves. But if
provoked, he will finish the job. (Adm Spruance, after Pearl Harbor: By not attacking the tank
farms, sub base, and machine shops, they had not "finished the job.
The "western" Ukraine you cite may have been culturally Ukrainian/Russian/eastern Slavic,
several hundred years ago. But as they were under Polish and later Austro-Hungarian
overlordship for many generations, they became westernized–culturally deracinated. They
are Galicians, NOT Ukrainians.
If Ukraine retains some level of political independence, they need to divorce these
culturally undigestible Uniates and their fascistic leadership. Currently that group poses a
toxicity to the body-politick of Ukraine, however else you may wish to define Kievan Rus.
@Bombercommand
> In some ways your take is apropos, particularly regarding potential Russian overextending.
You do place a lot of reliance on "International Law". With little incidents like Trump's
overturning of the uranium-processing accords with Iran, plus numerous other violations by the
U$/British consortium working as the intel and military enforcement arms for the Bank$ter
Cabal; international law has been constantly and consistently violated.
Geopolitically speaking, in terms of realistic "real politick", as per Bismark, no national
regime regards such nice-sounding accords as valid and inviolable. At some unknown future time,
genuine International Law may become a reality. At present, it is primarily a smiley-faced
mask.
A bear has never been a "Russian totem animal". Eagles, falcons, wolves – but never
bears. "Russian bear" is a product of the British russophobic propaganda of the Crimean war of
the 19 century.
The ukies are not Russians. Russian society looks forward demolition of the ukronazi
statehood, but without any form of integration of the Northern Somalia into our country. A few
million insurgent anarchists on top of all our problems would finish us.
The fanatics who actually live in Ukraine can be easily traced and kept under control. Their
funding would be cut off. They are a tiny portion of the population.
In the last elections that were won by Zelensky, the parties that wanted peace with Russia
represented over 95% of the population. Zelensky deceived everyone by continuing exactly the
same policies of Poroshenko. In fact, he was worse as he recently shut down all opposition TV
stations.
1n 2019, the only area in favour of continuing the war was brick-red on this map. Today, due
to the collapsing economy and the lockdowns, there are even fewer people in favour of war. The
Russians would be welcomed almost everywhere.
Fraud Bidet and little goblin Blinkenfeld; amusing but true nevertheless.
And I couldn't agree more when it comes to what you say about Ukraine, i.e. the borderland.
According to my sister who lives in Poland, Ukraincy (in Polish "those from bordeland) are
everyplace.
I would add that the western part of Ukarine "released" to join Poland would just allow the
evil empire to occupy that much land even closer to Russia. I don't see that as desirable.
Perhaps that western
extremity is something that needs to be made "independent" and demilitarized, perhaps with UN
peacekeepers present. At any rate, it needs to be rendered as no danger to Russia.
I have thought that by making Ukraine unavailable to the native neo-nazies there, they are
forced to relocate, and then become a major headache for their damaging and dangerous influence
in Europe.
Call it "blowback" . just another reason for the Europeans to defuse any American smart ideas
in their neighbourhood.
Canadian, British and hand-picked nazi battalions attempt to enter the no mans land, come
under mortar fire, go to ground and ask their artillery to save them.
Ukrainian/nato artillery battalions get counter-batteried into oblivion by ru artillery
regiments stationed in range.
Commanders at battalion level ask for a cease-fire, evacuate their troops back to the starting
line.
V.V. Putin, being merciful and kind, agrees.
Russia wins.
Fifth variant
Nothing happens except for a lot of hot air, troop movements and wails from Lugenpresse.
Status quo is maintained, zato keeps paying for the Ukrainian Project.
Russia wins.
They are already being treated as an outlaw state, and although Russians are inhumanly
patient, as I've seen for too long firsthand, this may figure into any looming brinkmanship
– as Lavrov's recent exasperated remark about the US being incapable of negotiation may
indicate.
True, There is zero need for the US to play Imperial Global Overlord because of the
natural resources on North America. It is only the greed and hubris of the Elites, who cannot
ever be satisfied.
The Anglo-Zionist Empire is very much an Evil Empire.
BIDEN-PUTIN. At the US request, a phone call:
White
House take
,
Kremlin
take
. Biden talked tough (Ukraine, “cyber intrusions and election interferenceâ€), Putin mentioned Minsk agreement. No
mention of Navalniy; I guess he’s passed his best-before date. Biden proposed a face-to-face meeting in a third country; I can’t
believe that he will dare meet with Putin: look at his
carefully
scripted press conference
. Probably won’t happen any way after this “national emergency†stuff.
ARCTIC. CNN excitedly discovers “
huge
Russian military buildup in the Arctic
“; amusingly says “The Russian build-up has been matched by NATO and US troop and
equipment movements.†Nope: Russia is far, far ahead of all the others: other than nuclear submarines,
none
has anything to compare
.
SILENCE. Will be the sound that we
hear
in response to Lavrov’s call
for a treaty banning weapons in space. (Not presumably to include the many communications and
geo-locating satellites Russia and others already have up there. Bit of hypocrisy there: not weapons as such but necessary for
many.)
COVID. The EU’s vaccine rollout has been a
dud
and
many countries are trying to obtain the Russian vaccine. CNN, for once, covers the
issue
reasonably evenly
: reactions range from a welcome solution to the problem to those pesky Russians trying to divide us again.
A
German
news outlet says Washington is trying to pressure Berlin
and
Korybko
speculates
that the tension in Ukraine may be related. One watches, somewhat dumbfounded â€" more evidence of things falling
apart.
RUSSIA-TURKEY. I guess it’s time to teach Ankara another lesson: flights to Turkey have been
severely
restricted
. Because of COVID; nothing to do with Ankara’s fiddling around in Syria or Ukraine. They say. Russian tourism is
a big part of Turkey’s GDP. Moscow’s last
shutdown
brought results
.
UKRAINE/USA. Foreign interventions have
a
nasty habit of coming home
. “Far-right extremists see the war zone there as a laboratory where they can gain actual combat
experience to bring back home.â€
Department of State
@StateDept, United States government organization, @SecBlinken: Standing for people’s freedoms and dignity honors America’s
most sacred values. At our best, we stand for freedom and justice for all. Not just here at home, but around the world.
Standing for Freedom and Justice for All?
Setting the Scene for Global Destruction. Now It’s the Arctic, Brian Cloughley, April 13, 2021, Strategic Culture
The
scene-setting by Washington’s military-industrial complex and in the Pentagon’s sub-office in Brussels includes warnings
about a Russian “buildup†in the Arctic, as reported by CNN which quoted a Pentagon representative as saying “Russia is
refurbishing Soviet-era airfields and radar installations, constructing new ports and search-and-rescue centres, and
building up its fleet of nuclear and conventionally-powered icebreakers.†This activity is indeed taking place, and is
happening in Russian sovereign territory, which has nothing to do with the Pentagon or anyone else. It’s not in any way
similar to the U.S. military’s overseas “forward military presence†of some 200,000 troops in over 800 bases around the
world.
USA Today
states that Trump “opened additional bases in Afghanistan, Estonia, Cyprus, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Latvia,
Lithuania, Luxembourg, Niger, Norway, Palau, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Somalia, Syria and
Tunisiaâ€, which seems pretty impressive, but in reality-land is entirely counter-productive. And it seems that Uncle Joe
isn’t going to close down any of them.
“SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS
As a result of today’s designations, all property and interests in property of these targets that are subject to
U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.
Additionally, any entities 50 percent or more owned by one or more designated persons are also blocked. In addition,
financial institutions and other persons that engage in certain transactions or activities with the sanctioned
entities and individuals may expose themselves to secondary sanctions or be subject to an enforcement actions.â€
All credit cards we use in “the Westâ€, presently, are issued are American institutions, basically. PayPal is American too.
Can’t be that difficult to order institutions, who are within US jurisdiction, to collect whatever James et al. tries to
give to whoever.
Technically all they needed to do is an algorithm that automatically collects everything going to a some person or
institution.
That wouldn’t be the first time US laws are meant to apply extraterritoriality. Maybe based on US law the money didn’t even
need to be returned to the sender? Extraterritorial forfeiture?
Putin promises 'asymmetrical' response to any threats made against Russia, promises those
provoking Moscow will come to regret it
Russian President Vladimir Putin has given a stern warning to anyone threatening the
national security of Russia, telling officials that those responsible will "regret their
actions like they have never regretted anything before."
IMHO NATO and D.C. need to pull their heads out of their arses, for mankind's sake.
The Ukraine Crisis Recedes - But A False Narrative Of It Leads To Bad Conclusions
Some two month ago we discussed how the
U.S. focus on narratives will let it collide with reality . It is certainly not only the
U.S. government that creates narratives, comes to believe in them, and then fails when it is
confronted with reality. Carried by think tanks and media the narrative mold has grown
throughout the wider 'western' world.
On the danger of this development the above piece quoted Alastair Crooke who wrote
:
[B]eing so invested, so immersed, in one particular 'reality', others' 'truths' then will
not – cannot – be heard. They do not stand out proud above the endless flat plain
of consensual discourse. They cannot penetrate the hardened shell of a prevailing narrative
bubble, or claim the attention of élites so invested in managing their
own version of reality .
The 'Big Weakness'? The élites come to believe their own narratives –
forgetting that the narrative was conceived as an illusion, one among others, created to
capture the imagination within their society (not others').
They lose the ability to stand apart, and see themselves – as others see them. They
become so enraptured by the virtue of their version of the world, that they lose all ability
to empathise or accept others' truths. They cannot hear the signals. The point here, is that
in that talking past (and not listening) to other states, the latters' motives and intentions
will be mis-construed – sometimes tragically so.
Over the last weeks we passed through a crisis that easily could have had a tragic
ending.
Since February the Ukraine built up a force to retake the renegade Donbas region in
east-Ukraine by military force. After waiting several week to see the situation more clearly
Russia started to assemble a counterforce backed up by statements that were sufficiently strong
to deter the Ukraine from continuing its plans. The danger of a Ukrainian assault has now
receded.
Today the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu gave orders for the troops to return to their bases.
Much of the equipment though will stay on training grounds near Ukraine until the regular fall
maneuvers later this year take place. That minimizes transport costs and gives a little time
advantage should someone in the Ukraine again have silly ideas.
Russia has clearly won this round.
But that is not how it looks when seen from the 'western' narrative. In that version the
Ukrainian plans and its assembling of heavy weapons and troops near the Donbas border never
happened. The narrative says that the whole incident started as a 'Russian aggression' when
Russia very publicly showed its potential force.
Only a few
analysts on the 'western' side have rejected that narrative and stuck to reality. Dmitri
Trenin of Carnegie's Moscow Center is one who got it right :
In February, Zelensky ordered troops (as part of the rotation process) and heavy weapons (as
a show of force) to go near to the conflict zone in Donbas. He did not venture out as far as
Poroshenko, who dispatched small Ukrainian naval vessels through the Russian-controlled
waters near the Kerch Strait in late 2018, but it was enough to get him noticed in Moscow.
The fact of the matter is that even if Ukraine cannot seriously hope to win the war in
Donbas, it can successfully provoke Russia into action. This, in turn, would produce a
knee-jerk reaction from Ukraine's Western supporters and further aggravate Moscow's
relations, particularly with Europe. One way or another, the fate of Nord Stream II will
directly affect Ukraine's interests. Being seen as a victim of Russian aggression and
presenting itself as a frontline state checking Russia's further advance toward Europe is a
major asset of Kyiv's foreign policy.
Russia intentionally over reacted to Kiev's opening move. It demonstrated its overkill
capability and made it clear to Zelensky's western sponsors that any further provocations would
have extremely harsh consequences.
Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what
they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time.
Zelensky's plan did not work out. While he did get verbal statements of support from Biden
and NATO everyone knew that those were empty promises.
But for people who have fallen for the false narrative the situation looks different.
Consider this reaction to Shoigu's return-to-barracks order today from a member of the
European Council On Foreign Relations (a U.S. lobby shop in Europe):
I have to congratulate (Flag of United States) @JoeBiden to deterence success and crisis
management. The right warnings were sent to Moscow, the right intelligence to Ukraine. (Flag
of Russia) could not extort concessions, could not provoke. Let's see w. these forces aren't
just redeployed to (Flag of Belarus).
Indeed Biden's order last week to
pull back two war ships that were supposed to go into the Black Sea to support Ukraine was
really great deterrence. But that was not a warning to Moscow. It did not deter Russia from
doing anything. But it did end Zelensky's illusions of U.S. support.
But for Gressel, who like others is stuck to the 'western' narrative, the sense is
different. He really seems to believe that the U.S. deterred Russia from some nefarious plans
which it never had. He ignores that Russia reacted to a Ukrainian provocation in a way that, in
the end, has made NATO and the U.S. look weak.
The danger is that Gressel, and other 'political scientists' like him, may once take up
government positions and use their learned illusions to handle the next crisis. Stuck in the
idea that Russia will retreat if only 'deterred' enough they will lean to measures that are
outright hostile to Russia and may have indeed very tragic consequences. To repeat Crooke's
warning
:
The point here, is that in that talking past (and not listening) to other states, the
latters' motives and intentions will be mis-construed – sometimes tragically so.
Posted by b on April 22, 2021 at 17:25 UTC |
Permalink
The Russians have only partly gone. Heavy weapons will remain in place which can be
reactivated easily. (Particularly in Crimea). However the Russian "Threat" to Zelnsky is
still there. Logically he should now have more difficulty in stirring up the EU and US for
cash and weapons as the "obvious and visble" threat is diminished. I don't think his troops
can stay indefinitely where they are. How can he continue to pay for all his new mercenaries,
new arms?
So how is the MSM going to react? They have a lot of "journalists" around there, waiting
for something to happen.
One obvious factor is that the supply lines of both are within their own countries
(Ukraine for Ukrainians, and Russia for the Russians). Those that have the longest supply
lines are NATO, the UK and US.
An earlier ploy (Attempted violent assasination of Lukashenko and most of the Belarussian
parliament), with Georgia and other close by countries getting involved too, is now unlikely.
BUT the US is desperate to cut the Russian-Chinese access to Europe by any means. What's
next? Plan ....F?
The Western narrative was also very clearly visible in the latest printed "Der Spiegel"
16/2021 (News magazine in Germany). They had a 4 page article about Ukraine with the title
"On the edge of war". They reported at length about russian troops near the border.
Explicitely they wrote about sabre rattling from russia and generally gave the impression
that all action is solely on the russian side and must be seen negatively or with grave
concerns.
But they failed completely to mention Ukrainian troop movements, bellicose rhetoric or even
the Zelensky's decrete 117/2021 from march 23rd with the translated title "Strategy of
de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous
Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol".
b... thanks.. yes - narrative and controlling the narrative is what so much of this is
about.... people in the west are not told of ukraines role in any of this or how they are
encouraged by the west... instead what they are told is how russia is building up along the
ukraine border.... in other words only one side of the story is told, and not both..nor is
the timing of all of it shared either... people are literally given a script or narrative
tailor made for brainwashing.. and indeed it works on most...
for an example of this today - i was listening to cbc radio - national news show ''the
currenct''.. the host matt galloway discusses the situation with Mark MacKinnon, senior
international correspondent for the Globe and Mail; Nina Khrushcheva, professor of
international affairs at the New School in New York; and Michael Bociurkiw, global affairs
analyst, formerly with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
I am not so sure that this is over. The Belarus coup was intended to be around May 9.
Zelensky has called up the reserves who ever they might be. He just floated the idea of
banning Russia from the SWIFT so that it is on everyone's mind when Ukraine claims they were
attacked. The NS2 will likely be initially complete in May. The USS Cook and Roosevelt are
waiting for the British boats and will likely enter together. They have not yet given notice
that I have seen. Two frigates are transiting the Suez to join their fellow yanks. I see a
perfect storm yet coming. Shoigu is bright and knows that it looks good to announce the
return to barracks, but he has access to my data plus a ton more. He knows that the situation
is still fluid and volatile.
... But for Gressel, who like others is stuck to the 'western' narrative, the sense is
different. He really seems to believe that the U.S. deterred Russia from some nefarious plans
which it never had. He ignores that Russia reacted to a Ukrainian provocation in a way that,
in the end, has made NATO and the U.S. look weak.
This delusion reminded me of a retort, from an astute observer, to a dopey remark made by
Bush II soon after the start if the Iraq Fake War. Bush said "We're gonna turn EyeRack into
fly-paper for ter'rists! To which the observer responded...
"If Iraq was fly-paper then the only bug that got stuck to it was Bush."
I'm one of the most ardent proponents of the "imbecilization of the West" hypothesis, but
this is clearly a diplomatic style face-saving plausible deniability exit by the West.
The West knows time is not on its side in the Ukrainian issue, and its puppet president
threw a Hail Mary. Russia correctly didn't swallow the bait, and the West fell back as it
knew it would have to, since this was a long shot.
NS-2 is now getting finished, and the Ukraine will consolidate itself more than ever as a
black hole of American resources. The West, however, has one last ace in the hole: the German
Green Party, which is well positioned to form the next government after the December national
elections. The NS-2 certainly won't be finished by then, if the American diplomacy is to do
its job properly, and the Greens will have all the tools at hand to implode the project, thus
giving the Ukraine some more years to ride on American finance by its gas leverage (over
which all its sovereign T-bonds rest at this point).
The key to Ukrainian success is in Germany, not in Russia.
Thank you b.
More and more interesting links for a great nightshift!
Every body must read in UNZ an interview of Israel Shamir (posted it in the afternoon)
Who cares their narrative? Dummkopft
On the decision level a lot of people know the facts.
And Putin and al. ability to build fact is impressive. A lot more than "1962 Cuba missile
crisis".
And Russia got good countermeasures with RT, VK...
One advantage that Ukraine has in military terms is the number of people who willingly and
enthusiastically want to join the army for the sake of de-occupation (interesting why they
invented a replacement of "liberation" that has at least two equivalents with Slavic roots,
perhaps they do not like their current occupations). The best proof is that through their
democratically elected representatives they voted for a huge increase of punishments for
avoiding conscription.
The other proof is that, temporarily at least, Ukrainians abolished the system of rotation
in which units were staying on the fortified lines literally dying of boredom and related
risk (alcohol poisoning, explosions of stills making moonshine, drug overdoses, suicide,
stepping over their own mines, to mention a few), instead the troops to be rotated stayed in
place and the other units joined them nearby.
However, Russian conscripts without the advantage of Ukrainian enthusiasm have better
weapons. Modernizing Ukrainian military is a tall order. The budget barely supports the
troops without modernization, the domestic industry in its better years relied to selling
parts to Russia and buying other parts, remnants of industrial integration of Soviet times.
Supplying them with NATO weapons would require huge gifts that (a) could be unpopular in the
West (b) raise risk of getting the best toys of NATO to Russian in exchange for non-toxic
alcohol, fresh Afghan heroin etc. Did I mention mind-killing military service? And with not
so best toys, like missile boats that are about to be de-commissioned, say, in Canada, they
do not really change the strategic balance.
Thus Zelensky had to be saved from his own rhetoric and gestures -- the aforementioned
change in "rotation". Kiev authorities have a good practice in "never mind". For example,
they utilize fascist radicals to intimidate opposition, but they are what I call "pet
cobras", biting the hand that feeds them is what is programmed into their reptilian minds
that do not have circuits for "friends" and "gratitude". And because of some grievances they
trashed the Presidential place of work, insulting graffiti, broken windows, a broken and
burned door, so three ringleaders got arrested, Parliament spent a few hours being appalled
(after thinking for a week what to say), and now one ringleader was let free, with the
remainder probably joining him soon (one at the time, I think). See folks: nothing
happened.
It is possible that Napoleonic rhetoric and gestures were planned to get a "street cred"
with those hoodlums, or that they were discreetly encouraged by an embassy (some people think
that UK is the leader here, USA having mental problems and distractions). Or some
combination.
Imagine a drunken red nosed music hall comedian having to be taken so seriously. It really
grates that the West has been reduced to this; a Spam headed sham, so pilled up he rattles,
as a President of the FSOA. This obvious, self professed clown, Zelensky as head of an SS
Totenkopf militia. A tiny appendage of Russia called Europe being a colony of a country based
on genocide and slavery, that is reputedly anti-colonial. and a parcel of rogues spanning
three continents and two oceans that gobble up lies like dung beetles on excrement lean back
on their laurels, ill gotten gains, genocide and lies, and feel themselves morally superior
to the victims, actual and future.
Our problem here in the U$A is still the same as always. Mr. Z's announcement on 3/24 about
his nation's intentions to take back the Crimea, were NEVER mentioned on our MSM. It's always
Russian aggression, or China's aggression. It's NEVER our fault.
listen from 22:48" for a good example of script writing and narrative control here... CBC The
Current for April 22, 2021
Posted by: james | Apr 22 2021 18:19 utc | 4
Do you care to take responsibility for our mental health? I did provide a summary of a
"narrative control" article once, I can do it once in few months, should we also have some
rotation here?
@ 14 piotr.... for your mental health i recommend unplugging from all western news outlets
especially with regard to topics like russia, china, venezuala, syria, ukraine and etc.
etc... free! no charge for you piotr! and okay - you're on next shift!
Just a couple of notes:
-The Greens, if they "win" will not win with a majority. That means they will need coalition
partners. Neither the CDU or the SPD is going to go along with their plan to stop NS2. The
Greens, in order to form a govt. will cave in on NS2 and probably other things.
-The Ukies are still fleeing the country to avoid going to the front. The Ukie brass says
as much. These are not soldiers. They are farm kids. At the 1st sign of serious war, they
will all head for the russians with hands in the air.
-V. Putin handled the western MSM narrative quite well, imo, when he said "Those behind
provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done
in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time." It can't be clearer than that.
And that tells me that the ussa is in the crosshairs. This may be the 1st time in history
that the oceans will offer no protection for the warmongers that have been at war for 222
years of 237 years of their existence
The comedian is still flaying about and now trying to play the SWIFT card (last week it
was nuclear weapons, before that it was...). Which, of course, the west will not honor
because it would cripple the west as much or more than RU. I would imagine he needs to change
his undershorts on an hourly basis these days. He is literally caught between a rock and a
hard spot. No more support from DE, FR, US, NATO, TR except good wishes. And demands from his
brain-dead Banderites are only growing more shrill. What's a poor comic to do?
The west is basically done with him and with the show of force by the russians they are
more done with him than before. For his sake, i hope his khazarian passport app has been
approved.
Another failed state compliments of the khazarians in DC.
And the beat goes on.
Being seen as a victim of Russian aggression and presenting itself as a frontline state
checking Russia's further advance toward Europe is a major asset of Kyiv's foreign
policy.
Wait...what?
I think B takes the "administration" too literally -
We know they are lying, they know they are lying, everyone knows they are lying but they are
creating a virtual world in which their behavior is rational and justified. I am not sure why
exactly such an artificial construct is seen as helpful. I suppose you could blame it on the
voting public in the democratic west but we all realize by this point that the west is in no
way democratic in a literal, functional sense - they less than do not give a damn what the
little people think in fact they could well do with a lot fewer of them and really without
the need of actual vote counting.
Possibly to their dog at night under the covers and after many martinis to help them
forget what they are, they admit something like their best attempt at the truth.
Eighthman @10 North Stream 2 will be the last mayor cooperation between Russia and Europe for
the next 10, 20 years. If you had to choose where to put your money, would you put it in a
gas pipeline to China (Power of Siberia) or a gas pipeline to Europe (North Stream2)?
Putin will be the last Russian president who looked west, to Europe; the next president
will look east, to Asia. It's where the money is.
The militias with their supposed morale -- These are the grandkids and great grandkids of
WWII collaborators. Middle class and hipsters. In a country where there basically is no
middle class. Ukraine's economy is at African level. Only source of funds for anything is the
US embassy. There is no agenda but the agenda of 1945. Any from the 2014 crop who had
anything on the ball whatsoever is now my neighbor. What is left in Uke is the dregs.
Hipsters do not hang around in failed states.
Entire political landscape is now centered on US Embassy. Oligarchs might have some input
still, their wealth is out of country and so are they most of time.
Pure political vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. CIA and their hired actors will fill the
stage, journalists will report their antics. They are playing to an empty house. Ukraine
could exist in same zone as Libya or Iraq for a long time. In end nothing fills the vacuum
but Russian Federation.
The Russian military's policy is not to use conscripts on the front lines, that role is
far too important to trust to what are partially trained soldiers, they are used in support
functions. The frontline is manned by professional soldiers.
Zelenski has got $300M of 'stuff' out of Congress this week so that was a result for
him.
Russia might be pulling back but the Ukrainians haven't got the message. My understanding
is there are 50,000 Ukrainian army and 20,000 Ukrainian security forces normally in the
Donbass on the frontlines against 30,000 or so NAF. This crisis came when another 30,000
troops plus heavy weapons were moved into the area. Two days ago OSCE reported that two
artillery battalions of self propelled 122mm and 152 guns have been moved up to the front.
Then apparently earlier this week, two battalions of the Azov were moved up from Mariupol
(their normal area) to the front lines facing Donetsk City. Most of these 20,000 security
forces would be your Nazi wannabe's with the Azov unit being the largest. For those of you
not watching in 2014/5 Azov are the evil bastards that make the Red Army in WW2 Germany look
like angels.
So Kiev is still building an overpowering strike force with a probable objective of a
thrust through the center to the Russian border, splitting the two 'rebel' states. Both US
and UK and no doubt other advisors are on site. The Global Hawk is sucking up data overhead
most days. There is NATO pride on the line here planning and directing. We await a false
flag.
I think b is being a bit too optimistic. Somehow they have to stop NS2, in many ways their
futures depend on transit gas and, as before, they won't care how many have to die to save
their skins and wallets.
@ vk | Apr 22 2021 19:14 utc | 7
I agree Once again Deutschland :
أم كل المعارك
"The Mother of all Battles"
Germany, the biggest Tabaqui, surrounded by many petty tabaquies...
But
Germany, playing the two side...
Germany, so stark and so weak...
Germany, "So jung und doch so alt"
How long can Germany resist the narrative?
How long before the end of the show?
Scroll up on that to the original Aslund post. He is talking about his friends getting
ready to flee to Western Ukraine (or further). Sounds likely enough. Maybe they know
something. And if it is just a routine panic in a failed state amongst a nervous elite, it
only repeats so many times before they all do get out of town.
LOL The greens will not win in Germany. Wait to September and tons of pedophilia scandals to
appear on the media about Robert Habeck, and they will be toast
There's no question that if and when push comes to shove, and the first hints of defeat waft
from the frontlines despite all attempts to spin it otherwise, the Ukrainian people will drop
any sense of unity, fold like a wet napkin, and demand peace. Only a small sector of the
population is highly motivated to fight or turn out the vote for bellicose policy against
Russia.
Do the Greens have vote in Bavaria, Nordrhein-Westfalen and Eastern Germany? I don't think
so. Greens are popular Baden-Württemberg due Kretschmann charisma. If they haven't vote
in Bavaria, Nordrhein-Westfalen and Eastern Germany , so they aren't going to win..
I'm seeing a lot of anglo and america media trying to boost these guys. But I have a bad
feeling that the child book writer Robert Habeck will get a 'Sebastian Edathy'
treatament.
1) Germany has a proportional representative system. You don't have to win it all to
compose the government. The Greens are going to compose the next government; Germany, as a
First World country, is socially stable enough so that we can already consider this a fait
accompli .
2) Laschet's choice as Merkel's successor
apparently backfired . The CSU-CDU will probably lose some 10% more on top of what
they're already projected to lose in these next general elections, mostly to the Greens.
I know how the German system works. Yet I am not seeing the Greens win or compose the next
government if they threaten to cancel NS2. The NS2 is not about the CDU/CSU but about the
German elite interest. No way they are going to give green light to the Greens. Speaking of
someone which city is on the border.
"One advantage that Ukraine has in military terms is the number of people who willingly
and enthusiastically want to join the army for the sake of de-occupation "
Not nearly as motivated as Russians who have dealt with Nazi Fascists once before. What
happened last time is seared into their heads.
Russia has closed the Kerch Strait.
It is reported that the two US destroyers which were to have transited the Bosphorus are
awaiting a pair of Britsh destroyers intended to join them with the flotilla of 4 ships to
enter the Black Sea.
What happens if the UK and US decide on a FONOP which involves a transit of the Kerch Strait
to make a port visit to Ukraine on the Sea of Azov?
Does Putin keep the Kerch closed?
If he stops the flotilla does this become "interference with international right of
navigation?"
Does this asserted interference then result in Ukraine attack? Or a combined NATO / Ukraine
action?
President Putin consulted with Minster of Defense Shoigu and asks if the troops can be scaled
back from the lines of contact without significantly reducing tactical capability. Shoigu
runs the numbers and delivers the answer that Putin was looking for.
Putin is offering an olive branch to Zelensky knowing full well his military can roll over
the eastern and southern borders of Ukraine with impunity.
Does Zelensky do the same? No, instead he calls up reserve boys to make himself look
tough.
A Russian proverb that is most appropriate in this case is this:
Дурна́я
голова́ нога́м
поко́я не даёт.
Translation: The stupid head doesn't leave feet in rest or in other words, no rest for the
wicked.
Sushi @32
How does Putin close the Kerch strait?
The same way as last time, park a largish ship or two in it.
FONOPS don't work so well as battering rams, and the straight is very narrow.
If all of this sound and fury is just to cancel North Stream 2, then it strikes me as a
demonstration of terrible impotence, using a lot of leverage to achieve a fairly small end.
Maybe it is exactly this. But I prefer Rostislav Ischenko's
outline of several actions in several neighboring theaters as a concerted attack on
Russia - with the objective of levering EU away from Russia. And the note here is that this
is not over yet, the game is still afoot.
This larger ploy seems like a far more desirable objective for the US, given the
expenditure of resources, rather than simply the NS2. But it still reeks of impotence, given
how decisively Russia has countered each move (of the ones that are visible - no telling
about the ones beneath the surface).
I have read somewhere, probably here, that if Germany were to cancel NS2 she would owe
Russian billions of dollars in penalties. This project is after all, a matter of contract.
And Germany must abide by its contracts if it is to remain in the business world. Or so it
seems to me. Is Germany going to flout contract obligations with Russia, which supplies it
with fuel for its industry and to stay warm in winter? It seems unlikely.
So, while the US acts to try to split Europe away from Russia, Germany is actually taking
the least divisive path if it finishes NS2. Because if it is forced to cancel, and then to
pay the billions in penalties, surely this causes a far greater split from the US and toward
Russia than otherwise? Simply a split that plays out over a longer time, but much more
finally.
If the US were capable of thinking all this through, it might understand how it pushes
away everything it attempts to grasp. But we have watched for years, with some gladness, to
see that this is exactly the fatal weakness of the US now. It simply doesn't understand
reality, and simply cannot learn from it. Which I guess is b's point. Agreed.
For whomever may be under any illusion whatsoever,
Please,
Do not decieve yourselves,
The truth and the fact of the matter is very readily apparent.
All one must do is look objectively upon the reality of the situation in an honest
manner.
Please do so.
Thank you.
The Sea of Azov is the shallowest sea in the world and has a maximum depth of 45 feet. An
Arleigh Burke destroyer has a draft of 30 feet. Even if somehow NATO ships entered the Sea of
Azov, there are not many places that they can go unless they are very small ships.
The situation around these unplanned military drills reminded me of 8 unplanned military
drills by Iran during the last few months of Mr. Trump's government.
A likely preemptive responses, in both cases, to planned acts of aggression, nullifying
them. Someone might have alerted them too.
b, thanks for this post and thanks for the link to the excellent Alister Crook SCF article. I
am sick of being told what to think and what opinions I should hold by the corporate and
public MSM.
Narrative control is even more pervasive these days and the disconnect with the actual
reality is more obvious.
How can the Anglo/Zionist captive nations talk about 'our values' while the grotesque
horror show and slow motion genocide continues in occupied Palestine?
How can the Anglo/Zionist captive nations politicians talk about 'free trade' and
'liberalised trade'
while enforcing illegal trade embargoes on sovereign nations?
We were told by President Nixon that trade with China was good. Now the BRI railroad is
portrayed as a 'threat' and 'controversial.' Ditto the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia
to Europe.
What is threatened is the cushioned pashas position to dictate hegemonic power throughout
the world.
Australia is among the worst offenders of this moronic groupthink as shown by
distinguished veteran correspondent Hamish McDonald:
During the Siege War against Iran, as well as during the hard times of the pandemic,
Germany established herself to be of no consequence in the political arena or in the
humanitarian one.
If Ukrainian government has indeed mobilized or otherwise has planned a war against
Russia, then her life expectancy in her current format or within her current borders will be
measured in years and not decades.
Russia will not tolerate an armed camp of enemy soldiers in Ukraine, she will be
neutralized as an independent actor shortly.
The 3 Westernmost oblasts might survive as a rump Ukraine but she is finished now.
Yes Fyi, it is shameful. What is not so well known is Australia and the US have a long
history of bullying New Zealand with loud megaphone diplomacy on cherished policy issues. One
example was when the Muldoon [NZ] government recognised the PLO as the legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people many decades ago. Muldoon told them to F off,
diplomatically, of course.
The NZ superannuation fund recently decided to divest from Israeli banks citing
'repetitional damage.' among other relevant things. Another win for BDS but ignored by the
MSM. How could they spin that together with the prevailing narrative? So they ignored it.
At least NZ has some self respect intact. In business it is a good idea to speak the
language of the buyer. I prefer NZ white wine and Australian red wine, particularly Barossa
Valley reds. Now Australia complains about coal fired power stations in China, forgetting it
is Australia selling the coal. NZ can sell the wine.
My guess is that the Russians will create the conditions whereby the US/UK flotilla will
be forced to get stuck in the shallow waters of the Azov Sea. Thus they will achieve their
objective without firing a shot. The Russians know the spots with shallow waters. US/UK not
so much.
I have known, during my life, one single individual from New Zealand. He was the only
English-speaker who could pronounce my name at first try. Very fine chap.
I do not know much about that country except that it is populated by serious Anglicans and
is currently being led by a real statesman, unlike so many other countries.
I wish that country well, they are trying to do the right thing where larger more powerful
countries, such as Germany, UK, or Italy, sold themselves for the proverbial 30 pieces of
silver.
Agreed, your proposition for an immediate fast rush to the Russian border to split the
region is just as likely as a stand down. I would never be trusting NATO or FUKUS.
I am actually an Australian living in New Zealand. Lucky me. The two countries used to
have a deal. Now that deal is observed by NZ but not observed by Australia. I tell some
Kiwis, sometimes young in cheek, 'I am an Australian refugee boat person, fleeing from an
oppressive government.'
As for the population, someone told me years ago ' it doesn't matter which party is in
power, the country is always governed by Scottish Presbyterians so it always has some money
put away'.
Most people can pick my Australian accent.
Race relations is far better in NZ than Australia. Australia is dysfunctional and utterly
corrupt at all three levels of government. My American friend says that is like America. He
moved to NZ. Both countries have rotten bureaucracy, perhaps a British hangover.
Posted by: Grieved | Apr 23 2021 1:48 utc | 37
(Germany will not walk away from NS 2)
Thanks for fleshing out the NS 2 'controversy' with additional "inconvenient truths". My
confidence that NS 2 will proceed as planned is based 90% on Sarah Kelly's 2020 DW Conflict
Zone interview with Niels Annen, Heiko Maas's 2IC. Annen pointed out to (deaf-in-one-ear,
can't-hear-with-the-other) Sarah that Germany's trade relationship with Russia is
"complicated" but works for both. By the end of the interview it looked as though he felt a
bit sorry for Sarah being stuck in the awkward position of being obliged to argue that black
is white.
I thought Zelensky was the Real Deal, a kind of Trump echo. But he ran into the same problem
as Trump - a painful collision with the reality that the President is just a figurehead with
very little Leadership autonomy, if any.
There's a new post-Trump 3-part BBC documentary series called Trump Takes On The World.
Last night, ABC.net.au broadcast the first 1-hour Episode. It begins with Theresa May's visit
to Trump's Washington. There's a formal meeting to discuss UK-US attitude to NATO. Before the
meeting gets into stride, someone in Team Trump mentions that Putin phoned the White House
and Team Trump is working out a schedule for the conversation to take place. Trump hits the
roof.
"What!!?? Are you telling me that Putin, the only man who can destroy the United States,
phoned the White House and you didn't tell me about it!!??"
Trump let's it slide, in deference to the presence of Ms May, but as the implications sink in
he can't leave it alone and delves deeper into this weird event, Ms May's presence
notwithstanding...
I think Zelensky ran into exactly the same problem - believing that the Prez is in charge
of something important but realising that's just theatrical window-dressing. 'Democratic'
window-dressing.
And with the Biden family having influence in Regime-changed Ukraine, it's probably safe to
assume that the same Swamp Creatures which keep POTUS in check also 'manage' Zelenski's
Presidential daydreams.
.. why ..artificial construct ... Passerby @ 18 < deep state reprograms what people
remember about events. planting
misinformation 30 year study
Reprogamming what you remember about an event is technology embedded deep in MSM propaganda.
Passerby goes on to say "we all realize ...the west is in no way democratic in a
literal,
functional sense - they .. do not give a damn what the little people think .. ..fewer of them
.." <=is desirable.
Not true, the west is ~2.6 billion people [+ .010 billion can understand what you posted],
but
<1,000,000 people are in the group you classify as the West. The governed masses are
victim to
Oligarch owned nation states. The nation states are 1) tools, Oligarch's use, to compete in
the
national and international markets (Article II), 2) each nation states includes a
political
system (basically a consumer complaint department) to control the behaviors of the
domestic
flocks and to keep the flocks distributed into their respective pastures.
Basically, the legislative and law making nation states are open air prisons that oversee
the
domestic masses, but in foreign affairs, the nation states are economic weapons used by
Oligarch
to engage in national and international profit making competition.
In other words,the only benefactors of the nation state system are the Oligarchs.
The 21st Century problem humans must resolve: "How to impose democratic principles,
human rights, and self-determination on the nation state system?"
It does not matter if we are talking East or West.
The nation state is the structure that confines the sheep so Oligarch can shear the wool.
A comment elsewhere alleged Lukashenko, of Belarus revealed how the world bank coerced
sovereign nations to engage Corona virus lock down and vaccine scenarios; the same comment
alleged Lukashenko fined the Soros foundation in Belarus 3.0 million for currency violations,
and that the foundation left Belarus?
I am not sure about those claims. Can anyone authenticate those facts or elaborate on them .
?
Biswapriya Purkayast: if the comment isn't the recent one you wrote in the "Kipling" Russia
thread it has probably been snagged by the link-checker and will appear later. It happens to
everyone once in a while, a good idea to write and save any comment in a text editor before
copying and posting it, unless it's short like this one :)
All this fuss around Crimea and Donbass was simply meant to distract attention from
Belarus. (Did the Americans inform Zelensky or did they just manipulate him?)
The destabilization, collapse, invasion of Belarus failed (When did the Russians
understand?), so the players disengage from this point of confrontation to find another one
(Where?).
A key aspect of propaganda is reversing the actual order of cause and effect to make the
enemy falsely look like the aggressor. We see this in the recent case of Ukraine. The western
pressitutes cynically ignored, and failed to report, the unprovoked Ukrainian military build
up on the border, to which the Russian build was a defensive reaction. So that now, as far as
the average western consumer of this propaganda is concerned, the Russian 'aggressor' 'bad
guys' have been forced to back down. All BS of course.
The anti-imperialist movement needs to establish popular online hubs that
aggregate/syndicate the writings of small blogs like this. It is beyond the abilities of any
single blogger to keep up with news events to counter imperialist lies in real time but
collectively they can do it if their work is made available at bigger hubs.
Searched for some info on that fine but that's an old story, the Soros Fund was fined and
expelled from Belarus in '97. But recently there was a debate about the influence in
education by the Soros foundations in the former soviet countries. Probably this has a lot to
do with the comments made by Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly, he remarked that
some history text books do not even mention the Stalingrad Battle while at the same time
enhancing the second front influence in WWII outcome. In other words, the foundations might
be out, there influence is not, money buys wills, and if anything else is missing in those
influence institutions money is not one of them.
UK was hoping to provoke an incident with its ships in Black Sea.
Russia has unilaterally withdrawn, leaving the British ships to cruise about at their
leisure. Pardon me, but might you have any Grey Poupon?
@43 Fyi
To my knowledge Germany has several times delivered medical equipment to Iran during the
ongoing pandemic. I`m not familiar with the details, though. Germany is also heavily involved
with COVAX which is one of the main sources of vaccines for Iran.
It bugs me how even well-informed critics of North Atlanticist regimes and their foreign
policies write and talk of them as "western demoracies". The "Founding Fathers" of the USA
feared nothing more than 'democracy' -- by which they thought of ancient Athens, or the
ancient republic of San Marino or some Swiss Cantons. What they wanted was a republic in the
mold of Ancient Rome, Venice, or like the Netherlands before Wilhelm of Orange, i.e. roled by
rich men's clubs and throuh inherited wealth, be that from land ownership, slave-holding or
from commercial gains and prate privatering -- plus of course exploiting colonies and
controlled marketing opium and its derivats (plus cocaine).
None of the present-day Atlanticist nations call themselves "demomracies" in their name or
constitutions. Only Greece does -- and only because they don't have the romance word
"republic" in their language.
In observation of these linguistic and political facts, the governments of Central Europe
east of Nato, China, Viet-Nâm and Chosôn ("North Korea") all called themselves
"people's republics" -- as opposed the the states further west that were ruled by the elected
representatives of Capital and Big Banking.
@7 vk
I don't know how you come to that conclusion:
he West, however, has one last ace in the hole: the German Green Party, which is well
positioned to form the next government after the December national elections. The NS-2
certainly won't be finished by then ..
In fact, the elections will take place Sep 26. The newly elected parliament will gather
fist time ("constituting") 3-4 weeks after that date, so end of October. After that,
coalition agreement has to be negotiated, usually taking 6 weeks or more (last time, it was
nearly 5 months). If the outcome is as the polls indicate at the moment, with the Greens as
the strongest faction, they will get the task to strike a coalition deal, negotioting
probably with CDU, and SPD plus FDP, for a couple of weeks. A new government, elected by the
Bundestag, is not to be expected before end of December.
Before anybody could act upon NS2, it will be 2022. If the project is not stopped at the
last kilometres, it will be finished by May, 2021. Once operational, the government does not
have much leverage to shut it down.
Yes, I can confirm reports of Australian racism against Indians, Iranians, Lebanese,
Chinese, and Greeks.
One person told me that she was reluctant to travel to the United States because she had
feared similar treatment there.
On the other hand, I know of a case of an abandoned Sikh mother & child (by her
husband) in New Zealand - the social services stepped right in and helped stabilize their
lives.
I think all of these evils start from the top.
The late General MacArthur tolerated racism and the African-Americans under his command
suffered.
Some other Flag Rank officers did not tolerate racism and that made a huge difference to
the experience of the African-American soldiers and sailors under their commands.
Addenda to Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 23 2021 8:11 utc | 53
(BBC doco Trump takes On The World)
Episode 1 spans events from Ms May's Trump White House visit, to Helsinki and Trump's
'betrayal' of AmeriKKKa in his private meeting with Putin.
During the closing moments of the doco (minute 55 - no ads on ABC) a bloke who looks like
Mitch McConnell (R) Kentucky/Tel Aviv, says "That'll be the lar-yest time we ever have a
President meet a foreign leader in private."
Russia has not been idle as the US and allies have been pumping plane loads of weaponry to
the ukropa army, this 'training deployment' was an opportunity for Russia to check, train and
equip the Donbass militia. I would assume that an operation room is already setup, with
spetnaz remaining in place to monitor the lines.
Nato is stumped at both the heavy response and language used by Russia, they are a paper
tiger, and many of their members, would have opted out. The 'Belarus attempted coup' is
another Red line for Russia, thus VVP stressed that Russia has the resources to put a stop to
it.
The Czech hyenas have started walking-back(US State department word) accusations about the
2014 explosions https://www.rt.com/russia/521514-czech-blast-not-state-terrorism/
@B could you look into the issue of the Damona explosion, I believe a poster somewhere
mention a retaliatory attack by Iran on missile factories in Jerusalem, I also doubt it was a
stray AA missile.
All the open source evidence does indeed point to it being an S-200/SA-5 missile.
The Israeli Defense Minister Beni Gantz has officially acknowledged that the attempt to
shoot down the S-200PMT missile failed. Saying that 4 US and 6 Israeli Patriot SAMs & 2
Israeli SAMs "David Sling" missed the S-200 at 17 km.
So, not just IAF but US operated systems as well by the look of it.
This is now a huge problem for the US. At least when the Yeminis hit Saudi the US can
mutter about the quality of the Saudi AD crews but here, in Israel they will be skilled and
well trained crews from both countries i.e. the 'best'. This is very embarrassing for the US
MIC. Their SAMs couldn't even down a Soviet era errant SAM.
No doubt today many countries will be re-evaluating their Patriot AD systems. Indeed,
should existing customers be demanding their money back as the system is clearly shown to be
faulty (it has to be a fault, it can't possibly be a design error)? Turkey and India must be
feeling pleased.
I meant to say that for a while now the Syrian rules of engagement have changed and they are
now able to 'chase the launcher aircraft' home. Before that they were only targeting the
incoming munitions. Putin confirmed the change.
The radars attached to the Syrian S-300s, plus freestanding units, give them a very good
view of where the IAF aircraft are. Even better if they are plugged into the Russians
IAD.
In a way this was a very good warning shot. It did no real damage so no excuse for Israel
to seek revenge yet it must be giving the IAF second thoughts about their current attack
strategy.
I think along with Pres Putin address credit is also due to Lavrov's statement that Ukraine
would cease to exist....a real dose of blunt sober reality.
Here come the englanders turn Zelensky into David the Goliath killer. He will be all fired up
by the British Embassy squad. Black Sea battle next week.
Speaking of dangerous narratives... this is what scares the hell out of me...
"the plan which had been first described publicly in America's two most prestigious
international relations journals, as being a suitable replacement for "M.A.D.": "Nuclear
Primacy". That's the goal for America to blitz-nuclear attack Russia so quickly that Russia
won't have enough time to launch a retaliatory response."
... that there are people who are so deluded they actually believe a nuclear war can be
"won."
Biden's Western Hemisphere foreign policy is not much different from that of Obama's,
Wayne Madsen writes.
Like proverbial bad pennies, the neocon imperialists who plagued the Barack Obama
administration have turned up in force in Joe Biden's State Department. Secretary of State
Antony Blinken has given more than winks and nods to the dastardly duo of Victoria Nuland,
slated to become Blinken's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the number three
position at the State Department, and Samantha Power, nominated to become the Administrator of
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Nuland and Power both have problematic spouses who do not fail to offer their imperialistic
opinions regardless of the appearance of conflicts-of-interest. Nuland's husband is the
claptrappy neocon warmonger Robert Kagan, someone who has never failed to urge to prod the
United States into wars that only benefit Israel. Power's husband is the totally creepy Cass
Sunstein, who served as Obama's White House "information czar" and advocated government
infiltration of non-governmental organizations and news media outlets to wage psychological
warfare campaigns.
True to form, Blinken's State Department has already come to the aid of Venezuela's
right-wing self-appointed "opposition leader" Juan Guaido, whose actual constituency is found
in the wealthy gated communities of Venezuelan and Cuban expatriates in south Florida and not
in the barrios of Caracas or Maracaibo.
Blinken and his team of old school yanqui imperialists have also criticized the
constitutional and judicially-warranted detention of former interim president Jeanine
Áñez, who became president in 2019 after the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS)
government of President Evo Morales was overthrown in a Central Intelligence Agency-inspired
and -directed military coup. The far-right forces backing Áñez were roundly
defeated in the October 2020 election that swept MAS and Morales's chosen presidential
candidate, Luis Arce, back into power. It seems that for Blinken and his ilk, a decisive
victory in an election only applies to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, not to Arce and MAS in
Bolivia.
It should be recalled that while Blinken was national security adviser to then-Vice
President Biden in the Obama administration, every sort of deception and trickery was used by
the CIA to depose Morales in Bolivia and President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. In fact, the
Obama administration, with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, claimed its first Latin
American political victim when a CIA coup was launched against progressive President Manuel
Zelaya of Honduras. Today, Honduras is ruled by a right-wing kleptocratic narco-president, Juan
Orlando Hernández, whose brother, Tony Hernández, is currently serving life in
federal prison in the United States for drug trafficking. For the likes of Blinken, Power,
Nuland, and former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, who currently serves as
"domestic policy adviser" to Biden, suppression of progressive governments and support for
right-wing dictators and autocrats have always been the preferred foreign policy, particularly
for the Western Hemisphere. For example, while the Biden administration remains quiet on
right-wing regimes in Central America that are responsible for the outflow of thousands of
beleaguered Mayan Indians to the southern U.S. border with Mexico, it has announced that Trump
era sanctions on 24 Nicaraguan government officials, including President Daniel Ortega's wife
and Nicaragua's vice president, Rosario Murillo, as well as three of their sons –
Laureano, Rafael, and Juan Carlos – will continue.
Biden's Western Hemisphere foreign policy is not much different from that of Obama's. Biden
and Brazilian far-right, Adolf Hitler-loving, and Covid pandemic-denying President Jair
Bolsonaro are said to have struck a deal on environmental protection of the Amazon Basin ahead
of an April 22 global climate change virtual summit called by the White House. A coalition of
198 Brazilian NGOs, representing environmental, indigenous rights, and other groups, has
appealed to Biden not to engage in any rain forest protection agreement with the untrustworthy
Bolsonaro. The Brazilian president has repeatedly advocated the wholesale deforestation of the
Amazon region. Meanwhile, while Biden urges Americans to maintain Covid public health measures,
Bolsonaro continues to downplay the virus threat as Brazil's overall death count approaches
that of the United States.
Blinken's State Department has been relatively quiet on the Northern Triangle of Central
America fascist troika of Presidents Orlando of Honduras, Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala,
and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Instead of pressuring these fascistas to democratize and stop
their genocidal policies toward the indigenous peoples of their nations, Biden told Mexican
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that he would pump $4 billion into supposed
"assistance" to those countries to stop the flow of migrants. Biden is repeating the same old
American gambits of the past. Any U.S. assistance to kleptocratic countries like those of the
Northern Triangle has and will line the pockets of their corrupt leaders. Flush with U.S. aid
cash, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador will be sure to grant contracts to greedy Israeli
counter-insurgency contractors always at the ready to commit more human rights abuses against
the workers, students, and indigenous peoples of Central America.
Biden is also in no hurry to reverse the freeze imposed by Donald Trump on U.S.-Cuban
relations. Biden, whose policy toward Cuba represents a fossilized relic of the Cold War,
intends to maintain Trump's freeze on U.S. commercial, trade, and tourism relations with Cuba.
Biden's Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, a Jewish Cuban-American expatriate, is
expected to reach out to right-wing Cuban-Americans in south Florida in order to ensure
Democratic Party inroads in the 2022 and 2024 U.S. elections. Therefore, even restoring the
status quo ante established by Barack Obama is off-the-table for Biden, Blinken, and Mayorkas.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Cuban-American and
ethically-challenged Democrat Bob Menendez, has stated there will be no normalization of
pre-Trump relations with Cuba until his "regime change" whims are satisfied. Regurgitating
typical right-wing Cuban-American drivel, Mayorkas has proclaimed after he was announced as the
new Homeland Security Secretary, "I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the
protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for
themselves and their loved ones." The last part of that statement was directed toward the
solidly Republican bloc of moneyed Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Bolivian interests in
south Florida.
While Blinken hurls his neocon invectives at Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba, he
remains silent on the repeated foot-dragging by embattled and highly unpopular right-wing
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on implementing a new Constitution to replace that put into
place in 1973 by the fascist military dictator General Augusto Pinochet. The current Chilean
Constitution is courtesy of Richard Nixon's foreign policy "Svengali," the duplicitous Henry
Kissinger, an individual who obviously shares Blinken's taste for "realpolitik" adventurism on
a global scale.
While Blinken has weighed in on the domestic politics of Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and
Cuba, he has had no comment on the anti-constitutional moves by Colombian far-right
authoritarian President Ivan Duque, the front man for that nation's Medellin narcotics cartel.
It would also come as no surprise if Blinken, Nuland, and Power have quietly buttressed the
candidacy of right-wing banker, Guillermo Lasso, who is running against the progressive
socialist candidate Andrés Arauz, the protegé of former president Rafael Correa.
Blinken can be expected to question the results of the April 11 if Lasso cries fraud in the
event of an Arauz victory. Conversely, Blinken will remain silent if Lasso wins and Arauz cries
foul. That has always been the nature of U.S. Western Hemisphere policy, regardless of what
party controls the White House.
...The view from Moscow is very different, fueled by a sense of grievance that the West is
determined to weaken Russia and stoke a pro-democracy "color" revolution to topple Putin. By
this reading, the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have repeatedly
betrayed Russia, abandoning missile treaties and expanding ever closer to its borders, since
Putin became the first foreign leader to offer help to Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001
terrorist attacks in the U.S.
"The Kremlin feels in a fortress, under sustained pressure from the U.S. and the West in
general. With its aggressive actions, Russia is trying to deter the U.S., but Washington is
just responding with stronger measures," said Oksana Antonenko, a director at Control Risks in
London. "We are certainly at the most dangerous point since the Soviet Union collapsed."
... ... ...
On Wednesday, the day before Russia announced its troop withdrawal, Putin warned rival
nations not to cross Russia's "red line" in his annual state-of-the-nation speech, saying
pressure on his country had become "a new form of sport." But he also held out an olive branch
of talks on strategic security.
... ... ...
Prosecutors this month asked a Moscow court to declare Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation
and his campaign offices to be extremist organizations, which could subject staff and
volunteers to criminal prosecution and imprisonment. They accused them of plotting to stage a
"color" revolution in Russia on the instructions of unnamed foreign states.
A top Putin ally, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament,
described Navalny as a "tool of American policy" that allowed himself to be used for
interfering in Russia's domestic affairs.
... ... ...
In his call with Biden, Putin raised an alleged plot to stage a coup against Belarusian
President Alexander Lukashenko hatched in consultation with the U.S., according to the Kremlin.
Lukashenko, who's ruled Russia's neighbor and closest ally since 1994, has faced months of
pro-democracy opposition protests since disputed elections last August.
"The practice of organizing coups and planning political assassinations, including of top
officials, that's going too far," Putin said in his annual address. "They've overstepped all
boundaries."
In talks with Lukashenko in Moscow next day, Putin said Russia is tightening military and
security cooperation with Belarus.
... ... ...
Putin insisted in Wednesday's address that "we really don't want to burn bridges" with the
West, before adding that anyone who mistakes Russian intentions for weakness "must know that
Russia's response will be asymmetrical, swift and tough."
Browder's grandfather is Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA. Now
freely admitted that he held that post on the payroll of FBI and Office of Naval
Intelligence. Bill merely continues the family business of damaging Russia by any means
possible.
Don't make simple things complicated the irony of starting this way for this post lol :D
(of course everything is complicated as well as simple, language betrays us all).
· The people of the Warsaw pact and then the Russians did what they did for
themselves and not for others, and they did it by themselves. It went well as long as the
people were in charge (ie. the initial actions) but the politicians then soon messed it up as
politicians anywhere are bound to do.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin didn't want or wish for disasters due to the results they got (and
maybe their tasks were impossible in their context). Clear mistakes were made and crimes
"allowed", far too much was rushed and ill thought out. The politicians had no way of being
prepared any more than they would be in the US right now.
· The US is out-competed, dysfunctional, and trapped in a cycle of excuses
in order to shoehorn their labyrinth of lies into their current reality. All people lie
despite this clear lesson as to why no one should, it is the lies one tells without realizing
they are lies that are the worst. This is much like the USSR was but easily even worse.
Will people in Europe and the US manage to duplicate the fall of the Warsaw pact and the
USSR? Right now it looks unlikely but remember or be aware that no one predicted the fall of
the Iron Curtain or the Politburo and most if not all outsiders in "the west" had trouble
believing it and understanding it when it happened or even now (and especially people
on both/all sides that are running on ideological biases as fuel).
(Our systems and models do not capture reality and can not, not even theoretically, a
different bigger discussion which boils down to the Shannon limit in the end (but I notice
thermodynamics is contentious among some so why would I invite that much work?)).
A repeat of history is not necessary nor automatic; the US isn't doing anything to stop
its own ongoing fall, at least not anything that I have noticed.
Because b is right.
(I really hope the CPC has a better grasp on this than that article vk posted hints at
because I want a stable prosperous China and that includes/demands the continuation of the
CPC and the way they have shaped and structured the Chinese system which is noticeable for
not taking the USSR approach that worked itself into a blind alley despite decades of
repeated attempts at reform (hell even Stalin tried)).
This was Bush racket. Invasion on false pretenses to establish a foothold
and get to former USSR republic. This move was initially a big success (and
Putin helped by using his influence on Northern Alliance) but later
backfire. In other words this was typical imperial policy.
I would guess 2 things, 1. He's hoping if he ends the war then none
of the terrorists that just snuck in won't attack. 2. He plans on
starting a war elsewhere.
"Obama may have gotten (U.S. soldiers) out wrong, but going in is,
to me, the biggest single mistake made in the history of our
country." -- Donald J. Trump
The policies of the Biden administration towards Russia and China are delusional. It
thinks that it can squeeze these countries but still successfully ask them for cooperation.
It believes that the U.S. position is stronger than it really is and that China and Russia
are much weaker than they are.
It is also full of projection. The U.S. accuses both countries of striving for empire, of
wanting to annex more land and of human rights violations. But is only the U.S. that has
expanding aspirations. Neither China nor Russia are interested in running an empire. They
have no interest in planting military bases all over the world. Though both have marginal
border conflicts they do not want to acquire more land. And while the U.S. bashes both
countries for alleged human rights issues it is starving whole populations (Yemen, Syria,
Venezuela) through violence and economic sanctions.
The U.S. power structures in the Pentagon and CIA use the false accusations against Russia
and China as pretense for cold military and hot economic wars against both countries. They
use color revolution schemes (Ukraine, Myanmar) to create U.S. controlled proxy forces near
their borders.
At the same time as it tries to press these countries the U.S. is seeking their
cooperation in selected fields. It falsely believes that it has some magical leverage.
Consider this exchange from yesterday's White House
press briefing about Biden asking for a summit with Putin while, at the same time,
implementing more sanctions against Russia:
Q What if [Putin] says "no," though? Wouldn't that indicate some weakness on the part of
the American administration here?
MS. PSAKI: Well, I think the President's view is that Russia is on the outside of the
global community in many respects, at this point in time. It's the G7, not the G8. They
have -- obviously, we've put sanctions in place in order to send a clear message that there
should be consequences for the actions; the Europeans have also done that.
What the President is offering is a bridge back. And so, certainly, he believes it's in
their interests to take him up on that offer.
The G7 are not the 'global community'. They have altogether some 500 million inhabitants
out of 7.9 billion strong global population. Neither China nor India are members of the G7
nor is any South American or African country. Moreover Russia has
rejected a Russian return into the G7/8 format:
"Russia is focused on other formats, apart from the G7," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov
said in a brief statement ..
Russia has no interest in a summit which would only be used by the U.S. to further bash
Russia. Why should it give Biden that pleasure when there is nothing that Russia would gain
from it. Russia does not need a 'bridge back'. There will be no summit.
... ... ...
If Biden wants cooperation with Russia or China he needs to reign in the hawks and stop
his attacks on those countries. As he is not willing or capable of doing that any further
cooperation attempts will fall flat.
The U.S. has to learn that it is no longer the top dog. It can not work ceaselessly to
impact Russia's and China's military and economic security and still expect them to
cooperate. If it wants something it will first have to cease the attacks and to accept
multilateral relationships.
Posted by b on April 17, 2021 at 17:53 UTC |
Permalink
"It can not work ceaselessly to impact Russia's and China's military and economic security
and still expect them to cooperate"
You have to understand the USA. They're doing it against Europe on a daily basis, and it
actually works... Get them confused why it doesn't always work against others.
It's interesting what's happening right now (in the past hour or so).
First: Russian and Belorussian news about the arrest of leaders (or key participants) of
an attempted military coup in Belarus, planned by the US security services.
Then, 30 minutes later: the Czechs expel 18 Russian diplomats, accusing them of spying and
of connection to some explosion back in 2014.
I could've been skeptical about the details of the first story, but the second one seems
to confirm it. The second story appears to be an obvious attempt to squeeze the first one out
of the news. And who else could order the Czech government to do this with a 30 minute
notice?
Wouldn't Oceania rulers love to print more of their own currency to buy up all the paper
rights to industrial output without having to invest in the factories or anything else! They
love this kind of business model.
"The secret of success is to own nothing but control everything."
Because of what's at stake and how little I trust Oceania, I confess I no longer have an
opinion about global warming. Even if many of its scientists are *earnest*, who obtained,
processed, and stored the data before they started building models? Those institutions are
capable of anything.
Bellingcat is in the middle of the GRU/Czech arms depot explosion story from 2014 - now
being described as "defacto act of Russian state terrorism on a NATO soil."
It appears the GRU were following closely a movement of arms from the Czech depot to a
Bulgarian middleman, meant to be then delivered to Ukraine. The explosion is now attributed
to the GRU because of the Petrov/Boshirov ID, and their presumed signature ineffectiveness
failing to destroy the arms cache and later failing to kill the Skripals.
Now that we've established who the aggressor is, let's take a look at Tsereteli's and
Carafano's next brilliant takeaway point. The dynamic duo of war strategies says cosmetic
measures against Russia will not do! The "west" (meaning NATO), they say, needs a more
clear strategy. Which certainly means a massive arms buildup west of the Siverskyi Donets
River. The Zelensky government is being pushed from Washington to take even more drastic
measures to force Russia into a war stance. The editorial board of the Washington Post
recently advised Zelensky:
"Mr. Zelensky now has the opportunity to forge a partnership with Mr. Biden that could
decisively advance Ukraine's attempt to break free from Russia and join the democratic
West. He should seize on it."
So, now that we've shown who is doing the pushing here, let's turn to the final takeaway
from Heritage Foundation master strategists. Tsereteli and Carafano come right out and say
"countries left outside of NATO will remain targets of Russian aggression and
manipulations." So, the purpose of all this supposed spread of militaristic-based democracy
is to expand NATO to? I mean, seriously. Washington is not reaching out with the Peace
Corps to shore up a budding Eastern European democracy. The United States is kidnapping
another former Soviet republic on the way to the big score. My country has military bases
in almost every country in the world, has had more wars than the Mongols, and spends more
on weapons than everybody else combined – but Russia is being aggressive!
"I'd like to know how Zelensky and the Kiev authorities are supposed to get out of
this situation without falling apart."
Well, if I were Zelensky I might imagine getting myself out of this mess by the
following steps:
1. Keep raising the ante. Scream about an imminent Russian invasion, keep your population
panicked (by concocting a list of "bomb shelters" in Kiev, for example). Keep actual violence
against the Donbass republics at just low enough a level to not be enough provocation for a
Russisn intervention, for now .
2. Keep acquiring missiles from NATO, and trainers in how to use them. Negotiate with
Sultan Erdoğan for headchopper mercenaries (especially Chechens and other Russian
speakers).
3. Arrange for NATO exercises in Ukranazistan this summer.
4. Under cover of those exercises, using the NATOstanis as human shields in fact, attack
the Donbass Republics, and only the Donbass Republics. Use the headchoppers as shock
troops to minimise own losses. Capture the Donetsk and Lugansk main urban areas, leave slices
right on the Russian border. Do not touch Crimea.
5. Present this as a huge victory, like Ilham Aliyev did in Nagorno Karabakh.
As I said, this would be my plan if I were Zelensky. Whether it would work depends on how
much "restraint " Putin is willing to give up on, and how much risk he's willing to take.
The present stand-off cannot last forever, so it is a question of time before something
falls apart.
Russia used the aggressive move by NATO/Ukraine to perform a judo-like move
The speed of execution of the manoeuvre also calls for admiration when NATO can't even
move an armoured division in Poland (inadequate road infrastructure)
But Evil is in the details. And as the greatest french dialogue writer: "Les conneries
c'est comme les impôts, on finit toujours par les payer."
[Bullshit is like taxes, you always end up paying them.]
"The British training program, Operation Orbital, has trained over 17,500 Ukrainian
service members since its inception in 2015. Last year British Defence Secretary Ben
Wallace confirmed that the training mission would be extended until 2023. It is explicitly
designed to transform the Ukrainian military in order to meet NATO standards: to be a NATO
proxy army on Russia's western border."
To which my own response was:
"I strongly agree with Igor Strelkov: war now is preferable for Russia than (inevitable)
war later. I also completely agree with him that the Ukranazi cancer should have been
eliminated in 2014, or, failing that, the Donbass armies should have been permitted by the
Putinist regime to liberate Slovyansk and Mariupol, or, even better, liberate Odessa and
advance to the Dneiper. If that had been done then, there would have been no problem now.
The Empire is trying to surround and castrate Russia. Russian interests are being hit
every day. Sanctions for ever, more and more.
Putin has to come up with something exceptionally crazy and unexpected. another level of
asymmetry. Russian stockpile is "officially" of about 6.400 nuclear heads of which 1600
operational, probably more than that. This Nuclear Capital should be "invested ". Putin
should convince Iran to change policy and accept donation or lease of 200-300 nuclear heads.
Siria,Venezuela and maybe Korea should be given a number of tactical nuclear weapons for self
defence. China,as well,with Russian help,should double the Nuclear Potential. A political
Earthquake would shake the Empire. Russia survival
is the Stake.
USA givesall its manufacturing to then moans about China carbon emissions. Chine is worlds
largest solar panel manufacturer, us moans about China carbon. USA blocks Nord Stream 2 gas
supply to Germany then moans about Russian carbon emissions. USA hasthe poorest house
insulation regulationa and moans about others carbon emissions.
China achieves major reafforestation targets and reclaims huge tracts of desert and USA
ignores it, continues to strip forests at home and everwhere else.
USA needs to build a bridge to its future and to common sense.
@ pnyx -- It's not only that USians are unaware of much of what's happening in other
countries, it's the fact they are misinformed and misled about current events by propaganda.
This is also the case in Europe because their MSM also have been co-opted by the coordinated
Intelligence Apparatus (CIA - MI6 - FiveEyes) that controls the flow of information in the
U.S. MSM. We are witnessing censorship/control of Social Media, Search Engines, and formerly
independent websites as well.
This is an all-out effort of Class War. One aspect of this is to broadcast a hidden
personal message that if I feel oppressed, "it must be my own fault" because "success"
supposedly is within everyone's grasp (note the emphasis on celebrity 'culture').
Russia has shown an astonishing amount of 'strategic patience' in the face of racism,
lies, insults, seizure of diplomatic property, obstruction of officials coming to the UN,
possibly a hand in the murder of their high rank military landing in Syria, perhaps the
downing of their choir, US silence of US radar data 'highly likely' showing Ukraine downing
the Malaysian aircraft, fabrications everywhere, and so very much more.
Well, the cup of patience runneth over.
"These steps represent just a fraction of the capabilities at our disposal. Unfortunately,
US statements threatening to introduce new forms of punishment show that Washington is not
willing to listen and does not appreciate the restraint that we have displayed despite the
tensions that have been purposefully fuelled since the presidency of Barack Obama.
Recall that after a large-scale expulsion of Russian diplomats in December 2016 and the
seizure of Russian diplomatic property in the US, we did not take any response measures for
seven months. We responded only when Russia was declared a US adversary legislatively in
August 2017.
In general, compared to the Russian diplomatic missions in the United States, the US
Embassy in Moscow operates in better conditions, enjoying a numerical advantage and
actively benefitting from the work of Russian citizens hired in-country. This form of
disparity frees up "titular" diplomats to interfere in our domestic affairs, which is one
of the main tenets of Washington's foreign policy doctrine.
...the reality is that we hear one thing from Washington but see something completely
different in practice... a proposed Russian-US summit. When this offer was made, it was
received positively and is now being considered in the context of concrete
developments. "/BLOCKQUOTE>
The last bit is deliberately ambiguous. Ha ha ha ha ha!
Posted by: Bernard F. | Apr 17 2021 21:21 utc | 38
I suspect Sullivan and Blinken's next gig will be something like that. "We came here to
forget", but instead of the French Legion, it will be PMC Wagner.
Personally what I would do would be a Operation Bagration 2.0 at the slightest misstep by
Ukraine. There is may too much on the table here. Bio labs, nests of NATO rats, nuclear power
plants, NATO missiles on the Ukrainian and Belarus borders with Russia. Time to clear out the
rats including Lviv. After disinfecting this part of eastern Europe (again) of that other far
more dangerous virus, Nazism, life will be much more peaceful in that part of the world, and
likely by the domino effect (yes I actually said that!) to other places in the world plagued
by US exceptionalism.
The U.S. has leveled sanctions on Russia over election interference and cyberattacks,
including barring U.S. financial institutions from buying new domestically issued Russian
government debt.
The Biden Administration went where Presidents Obama and Trump had not, barring U.S.
financial institutions from buying new domestically issued Russian sovereign bonds. The move
excluded the secondary market, though. Anyone can still trade the so-called OFZs already in
circulation. And it was matched by a substantial carrot: a dovish speech on Russia by Biden,
floating a potential summit with Putin this summer.
The market had feared worse, says Vladimir Tikhomirov, chief economist at BCS Global Markets
in Moscow. The ruble is still down 4%, and stocks 3%, since Russia stoked tensions a month ago
by massing troops on Ukraine's border. That is despite buoyant oil prices that should benefit
Russia. "Everyone was discussing direct punishment of Russian companies or a cutoff from
SWIFT," he says, referring to the backbone for global financial transactions. "The actual
sanctions turned out to be relatively mild."
Global investors have been fleeing the OFZ market without any push from the White House.
Foreigners' share of outstanding bond holdings have fallen to 20% from about a third last
summer, notes Aaron Hurd, senior currency portfolio manager at State Street Global
Advisors.
Political risk still depresses the value of Russian assets by 15%, Tikhomirov
estimates. That is reasonable considering Biden's options for escalating sanctions, says
Daniel Fried, an Atlantic Council fellow who was the State Department's sanctions coordinator
under Obama. "He could move into the secondary debt market, restrict state-owned energy
companies' ability to raise capital, or go after the money hidden by Putin and his cronies," he
says. "It could get to be a pretty tight squeeze."
To close the political risk gap, Putin needs to at least restore calm with Ukraine, risking
domestic political face after a month of hyping the alleged threat from Russia's southern
neighbor. The coming week offers two opportunities for Putin to move toward Biden's proffered
stable relationship, Tikhomirov says. He could sound friendly in an annual state of the nation
address scheduled for April 21, and he could turn up (virtually) for the global climate summit
Biden has called on April 23-24.
These may be far overshadowed by Alexei Navalny, the
Russian opposition leader who is on hunger strike in a maximum-security prison outside
Moscow. Navalny-allied doctors said April 17 he could "die within days" without outside medical
intervention. Backing off from its merciless treatment of Navalny would also look like an
embarrassing climb-down from the Kremlin's point of view.
Hurd expects a stalemate where Russian assets could nudge higher as oil prices remain firm
and the Central Bank of Russia raises interest rates. Putin will make few concessions with his
party facing parliamentary elections in September, he predicts. Washington will be constrained
by the European Union's reluctance to stiffen anti-Russian measures. "The ruble could still go
higher from here, but we remain tentative over the next six months," he says.
Putin has essentially accomplished the goal he set after his 2014 invasions of Ukraine, a
self-sufficient Russia that can pursue its perceived security interests without worrying what
the rest of the world thinks, says Yong Zhu, portfolio manager for emerging markets debt at
DuPont Capital Management.
Government debt amounts to a mere 18% of gross domestic product, and in a pinch can be
serviced domestically. That keeps yields too low to pay for the country's geopolitical
turbulence, he concludes: 10-year Russian domestic bonds pay about 7% annually, compared with
9% for Brazil or South Africa. "Russia doesn't really need anything beside the iPhone," Zhu
quips.
Self-reliance has also spelled isolation from the capital and talent that could lift Russia
to its proper place in global innovation and growth. But Putin and his regime seem to like it
that way.
The danger here is that the US and the EU vassals push Russia into having nothing to lose.
I don't see how NS2 can be finished if Navalny dies. I hope Russia/Putin are working to
prevent this, if they can.
Dementia Joe and his coterie of enablers have embarked on a foreign policy that is likely to result in a new war that will
endanger America and further a growing perception that the United States is weak and divided. There are three troublesome
flashpoints (Ukraine, China and Iran) that could explode at any time and catapult our nation into a costly, deadly military
confrontation. Topping the list is the Ukraine.
The corrupt dealings in Ukraine over the last four years by Joe and Hunter Biden leaves them completely compromised and
subject to coercion, even blackmail. With this as a backdrop the decade long effort by the United States to weaken Russia's
influence in eastern Ukraine has been revived with Biden's arrival in the White House.
Let me first introduce you to some essential facts:
Larry Johnson,
If the Ukraine blows so will Syria! Then the situation might transition from nemesis to tisis in short order. Here is a
strangely appropriate analysis with just one word blanked out.
In the
years ahead, _____________ will assuredly find itself in new international crises involving nations or groups that have
powerful leaders. In some cases, these leaders may have a special, dangerous mindset that is the result of a
"hubris-nemesis complex." This complex involves a combination of hubris (a pretension toward an arrogant form of
godliness) and nemesis (a vengeful desire to confront, defeat, humiliate, and punish an adversary, especially one that
can be accused of hubris). The combination has strange dynamics that may lead to destructive, high-risk behavior.
Attempts to deter, compel, or negotiate with a leader who has a hubris-nemesis complex can be ineffectual or even
disastrously counterproductive when those attempts are based on concepts better suited to dealing with more normal
leaders.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR461.pdf
We, too, pray for sanity.
Ishmael Zechariah
Reply
Larry, I unfortunately agree with your observations and conclusion.
I would add that in my opinion, the Russians are a lot more determined, as are the Chinese and Iranians, then the
generally self absorbed younger generations in the West. "Woke" culture has no answer to sunken warships, downed
aircraft and body bags. Do the SJWs want to die for LBGTIQ rights in Russia or another of their pet obsessions de jour?
I don't think so.
My concern for President Biden and America is that, if Ukraine attacks, unless President Putin succeeds in delivering a
very short, sharp and successful lesson to Ukraine there is not going to be a clear path forward to a negotiated
armistice. If that doesn't happen through bad luck, the fog of war, etc. Then I don't think Biden has the intelligence
to get us out of the mess.
If you add to that the possibility that Zelensky may demand American support "or else" when he starts to lose then we
are in very very dangerous territory. If I were the Chinese, I would just stand back and watch. Taiwanese independence
is a meaningless concept without American military backing and I'm sure the Taiwanese know it.
The wild card to me is what is Israel's attitude? Is it possible that they might be a moderating influence for a change?
Reply
Oh, yeah .!!!!!! The country that shoots women and children who get too close to the fence they have constructed in
PALESTINE on other people"s land will be the moderating party. Or maybe Mad Dog Bolton.
Try getting real, and come up with real world situations. Not some fantasy of killers acting like kittens. The
Russians seem more balanced in responding to such provocations than the U.S. & it's gang of follower- puppets. How
long would any of the these follower-puppets be able to go toe to toe with Russia in all-out-war situation. I'd bet
less than 24 hours, probably far less. Or as a Chinese General once asked: would you want to give up Los Angeles to
save Tiwan? The U.S. doesn't seem to have any sort of reliable anti-missile defence system. Would Ole Uncle Joe
really like to get into such pissing contest so early on in his term of presidency? Maybe I am wrong, but from what I
have seen so far, he just seems to be throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. In this game, if one
blunders, the walls vanish, an the lights go out.
Reply
Russia moves cannon boats and amphibious vessels from Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, but in reality these combatants are
perfect for operations in shallow waters and that means Azov Sea and Ukraine's South-Western flank. These ships can form
both a surface group capable of dispatching anything Ukraine may have on Azov Sea, plus form excellent tactical
amphibious group which can land a battalion or two of marines and support them with fire from the sea, both artillery
and MLRS. Of course, there are other forces Russia has there but it is a good way to give Caspian Flotilla a chance for
yet another combat deployment, after its missile ships spearheaded first salvos of 3M14 cruise missiles at ISIS targets
in Syria in 2015. Here are some of those ships:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Caspian_Corvette_Astrakhan_2.jpg
Russia has an overwhelming firepower in the Black Sea proper and whatever the US is sending there is primarily for ISR
purposes in case Ukies go bananas and decide to attack Donbass in death by cop scenario. The US will not interfere in
any meaningful way other than supplying Ukies with recon data.
Reply
It is bigger than Biden or even the Military Industrial Complex. The establishment foreign policy apparatus transcends
political parties and has a continuity that survives changes in administrations. It is obsessed with Russia. It opposed
not just communism but Russia itself so when the Berlin wall fell for it the Cold War never ended and it successfully
pursued the the break up and looting of the Russian Empire and the relentless eastward march of NATO. Putin pushed back
on this resulting in him being demonized by the orchestrated Western media. Trump for all his faults had at least a
halfway rational view of these matters but now the Borg is back and spoiling for a fight. I never cease to be amazed by
the stupidity of these people, their apparent lack of understanding of the importance of Ukraine and Sevastopol in
Russian history and their inability to read a map or know the basics of military operations to see the obvious
indefensibility of Ukraine's eastern border. The danger now is that Ukraine's leaders will overestimate the support they
think they have from the United States and start something they can't stop. This has the feel of 1914.
Reply
Or the Georgian/Russian of 2008 when Georgia attacked on Russian territory. President Bush was talking tough, saying
he would send aid to Georgia on warships. But the rules governing ships entering the Bosferus proscribed such stuff,
aND Bush ended doing nothing. The Russians quickly neutralized the Georgian forces and pushed deeper into Georgia
where they currently remain. The odiot who started the mess was forced out of Georgia & was afterwards appointed a
governor or some such in Ukraine. But I think that too went bad. Such is the level of governance in Ukraine.
Reply
The last 5 Ukros killed were killed by mines. The contact line has many zones where minefields are employed by both
sides. It appears some were killed in their own minefield according to local reports. Civilians in the LPR and DPR have
been killed by incoming fire, most recently a 5 year old boy. Of course OSCE is worthless except as a "bean counter";
who fired what and where is too much to record..
Reply
US defence attache with a group was up at the front yesterday as well as the comic.
Ukraine really has its back up against the wall financially. This year with big interest payments due and no way to get
the funds as the IMF seems to hit its limit on their 'we're never getting it back' budget. Their only steady source of
funds is ironically Russia with the gas transit fees guaranteed at $7B total over the next four years, much of which
will go to the EU and IMF as interest payments. After that the gas fees will drop to zero as the gas transits move to
TurkStream and NS2. With nothing to pay Russia, apart from the little mentioned oil transit fees, Russia may stop
shipping gas/coal/electricity for local consumption as well. At that point either Ukraine crashes or someone else has to
pick up the bill.
Although Kiev will lose dramatically there are very good reasons why Kiev would push the button. Will they ever again
have this PR opportunity to play the innocent victim?
Reply
Earlier this morning I saw a pic of Zelenskiy visiting the front, behind him was a makeshift field tent with a sign on
it, the sign is in Ukrainian but translates as "Vietnam". Is Biden serious about backing Zelenskiy, I guess we'll find
out soon enough.
Reply
wondering if anyone can point me to a fairly, anyway, reliable, (assuming one exists) 'war games scenario' document on
an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China. Intuitively, it would seem a difficult challenge, especially given China's
lack of any appreciable experience in seaborne invasion. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide, and my
apologies upfront LJ if you deem this offtopic.
Reply
Not meaning to be a smart-alec about it, but why assume that an invasion has to be "seaborne"?
In WW2 the Royal Navy had total control of the waters around Crete. So the Germans simply went over the top of them
and invaded the island from the air.
It was very definitely touch and go for a while until German paratroopers managed to capture an airfield, and from
that point it was all over.
No idea how well defended Taiwanese airfields are, but the PLA would only need to capture one and, again, the final
result will not be in doubt.
Reply
well, the quick answer to your question would be 'fine, alter my initial question to include war games scenarios
on airborne attacks on Taiwan. The glib answer might be, Taiwan is not Crete. And the Chinese PLA are not the
Wehrmacht. Who, by the time of the Crete attack had built up a record that included many successful airborne
attacks. I see no such history with the PLA. That, by no means rules it out. But, in any event, I can't imagine
the PLA would role the dice, SOLELY, on an airborne attack. They would have to have a seaborne plan of attack, in
case Plan A failed. So, in any event, I would be still be in search of that war games scenario.
Reply
Absent any new evidence, I am going to continue to assume that this is really about Nordstream II. The Biden Junta are
probably planning on having their Ukrainian cat's paw make a lunge at DNR/LNR, forcing the Russians to intervene
directly. Ukraine, of course, is not actually a full NATO member, so no Article 5 will be triggered. Instead, Washington
just self-righteously hollers 'Russian aggression!' and demands that Merkel immediately shut down Nordstream II -- the
Russian pipeline into Germany -- just before it's ready to go online.
And then, as a lush reward for their undying loyalty, the Germans get to import frack-gas and oil all the way from the
US at four or five times the market rate. Problem solved!
Reply
you are correct – the Ukraine state does not really want the return of the Donbass region let alone Crimea as it
would result in a complete change in the balance of power in the Ukraine with the Russian-speaking population being
able to form the government, as it had done pre 2014. They really want to push the Germans into stopping Nord Stream
2 by provoking Russia
Reply
Struggling to understand how a Ukraine with such supposedly strong ties to National Socialists of a century ago managed
to end up with a Jewish comedian as President.
Reply
Here's the viewpoint of Ukraine Army's snipers who are primarily composed of volunteer housewives. While to D.C. and
Moscow, it's part of their sphere of political chess, however to those on the front lines, it is survival and protection
of their loved ones.
Almost half a century ago, I took a course in the German language as a refresher during the summer session at my local
junior college. The woman who taught the course was a native Ukrainian. She told the class a little about her
background.
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, she was in her mid- to late-teens. She had an intense dislike (hatred) of the
Russians and took a job working for the German military government of occupation as an interpreter. She said they had
welcomed the Germans as liberators from the oppression of the Soviet Communists.
Later, when the Red Army juggernaut was rolling west through Ukraine, she realized that it would not be good for her
long-term prospects to remain at home. She chose to move west with the retreating German army. Subsequent to the end of
the war in Europe, she rattled around for awhile in displaced person camps, and ultimately made her way to the United
States.
I have no reason to doubt the veracity of her story. This was my first introduction to the enmity between the Russians
and the Ukrainians.
Reply
Biden is a tin-hat emperor moving tin soldiers in his bathtub at play time. Surrounded by self-selected idiots who make
him dangerous as hell. This is what his "return to decency" looks like? May he be struck down deaf and dumb.
Reply
Two front war – Russia moving into Ukraine at the same time China moves on Taiwan. They put their wet fingers up to the
wind to see which way the Biden operation blows.
And they could not escape the conclusion this was the time to strike if there is any fortuitous time to strike. Biden
and his new team muddle deeply into reckless ineptitude. And Kamala Harris doesn't have anything to wear.
Reply
An odd thesis. The Russians are signally very, very strongly that they do not want the Ukraine to start a war by
attacking the rebels in Donbass.
They could not be more explicit if they sent a hypersonic cruise missile through Zelensky's office window with a sign
on it that reads "Don't start something you won't even live to regret".
They very clearly do not think that this is "the time to strike", nor even that they think there is a "fortuitous
time" for them to go to war with Ukraine.
If Ukraine strikes first then, sure, they'll strike back. But I fail to see how anyone can come to the conclusion
that the Russians are provoking this when it is very clearly the Ukies and their promoters in the White House who are
pushing these buttons.
Similarly with Taiwan.
The Chinese are not provoking this. They made their red lines clear to everyone as far back as Nixon's trip to China
i.e. if the USA sticks to a one-China-policy then the mainland will refrain from using force against Taiwan.
But the USA is not sticking to the one-China-policy. Recent US diplomatic moves look exactly like what it is:
maneuverings to prepare for when the Taipei government declares independence.
Which is crazy.
But in both cases the USA may well provoke a conflict and then dump their patsies like a discarded toy.
Which would be beyond crazy. It would be an outcome so loopy that there isn't even a word to describe it.
Reply
Thank you for setting it straight.. it seems pretty evident Russia does not want a war but is sure as hell ready
to finish this business if a war is pushed on to them and pushed on to them by the Americans. Ukraine has been
armed by the U.S , funded by the IMF, and cheered by NATO. They will not do a single thing without their owners
permission.
Reply
Back in December 2020 Putin had an expanded meeting with his Defense Ministry Board. In it he laid out several items and
agendas to be carried out by the Military Staff.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64684
March 24th saw Ukraine's Zelensky virtually declaring war against the Russian Federation. One can not rule out Zelensky
using the trade deals with Doha and use the direct flights between Kiev and Doha to smuggle in Jihad's from Syria and
Libya to fight in Donbas. Zelensky on March 3rd in a joint press conference with the European Council President in Kiev
stated that the retaking of Crimea from Russia was now Ukraine Official Policy.
https://asiatimes.com/2021/04/ukraine-redux-war-russophobia-and-pipelineistan/
Reply
Speaking of 'foreign policy', question is who will win out -- D.C. or Tel Aviv?
'The model' is headed to D.C. to try and convince our IC's head-cheeses that the Iran JCPOA isn't such a good deal, and
Tel Aviv is trying to get him an audience with his high-arsed the 'King', China Joe. If D.C. swallows 'the model's'
spiel, then they're bigger suckers than they already appear to be.
Assume this Mossad meeting will take place between Kackling Kamala who will be channeling Obama-Jarrett; or will it
be Stinking Liar Susan Rose channeling Obama-Jarrett? But the Big Guy will be out to lunch.
Reply
"Why was all of this allowed to happen in the first place?"
The apparent change in stance is unlikely a ruse because a ruse presumes that Russia would
take the bait.
The change is unlikely due to a miscalculation on Ukraine's part because Ukraine was well
aware of the strength of the juggernaut just to the east before Ukraine sent men and materiel
that way.
The change is unlikely due to a miscalculation on Washington's part because a likely
drubbing of Ukraine with Washington sitting on the sidelines would result in a loss of
prestige vis a vis Russia and China.
I'd suggest the change -- if there really is such a change -- is more likely the result of
Germany, and maybe France, exerting simultaneous pressure on Washington and Kiev, coupled
with leading sectors of the bureaucracy in both Washington and Kiev agreeing with Merkel
(Washington for its own reasons and Kiev because of Washington's instructions) that a war
does not advance their interests.
Washington is in a position similar to that of Britain prior to the Suez Crisis: one loss
away from losing its preeminence on the world stage. Losing that position over a conflict
involving, essentially, a gas pipeline to Germany is not worth the risk.
It's likely that Washington's apparent stance is symptomatic of significant discord
between the Neocons and the less belligerent of the foreign policy establishment. It appears
that the Neocons may have lost this round. One can expect the schism to continue to play out
over the coming years
vk@29 writes "[My comment@24] is nonsense: if Ukraine takes back the Donbas basin, it will
have full control over Crimea. The option of
'trading' the Donbas for Crimea doesn't exist."
It's hard to know how seriously this is meant. Luhansk and Donetsk are not *the* Donbas.
Kharkiv is culturally and economically as much Donbas, for a start. And Odessa is a major
center of Russian population, too, even if not part of the Donbas. At any rate, insofar as
the "Donbas" is essential to control Crimea, though, it is Kherson and Zaporizhye provinces
that control the water supply. And it is Mariupol's port that contests the Sea of Azov.
That's the part of Donbas that vk implies to be essential for full control of Crimea. But if
Mariupol is essential for full control, then Putin neither has full control now, nor does he
want it, because it is apparently Putin who pressured the rebels into leaving Mariupol in
Ukrainian hands. By the criteria vk uses here, Putin doesn't have full control of Crimea now.
This could be understood to show that in the long run Luhansk/Donetsk are untenable too,
trapped in a race to collapse with Kyiv. And it would show too that Putin needs a genuine
peace in Crimea, needs to do something, because in the long run, time is not on his/Russia's
side. The thing is of course, is that either vk doesn't mean what is actually written, or vk
won't draw the conclusions vk's own premises require.
Ukraine's leadership doesn't care about their civilians and soldiers. US and NATO
leadership care even less for them. In the current context actions speak far louder than
words.
Even the dimmest and most senile leaders can figure out some of the following:
• Russia is not bluffing. Bluffing is not their style.
• Neither the US nor NATO will put boots on the ground of Donbass or Crimea.
• Against Russia the US surface ships in the Black Sea are floating targets, as they are
anywhere else in the world.
• There won't be a Minsk3 agreement.
• Nord Stream 2 will be completed no matter what. For the respect, Russia doesn't need
the revenue so much.
If in fact Ukraine backs down, it will be a Biden continuation of Trump's off-repeated
stunt of walking to the edge and then backing off. You can't expect innovation from senile
players.
Crimea needs water badly with summer coming on.
Any Ukrainian or Russian advance cannot happen across bogs and mud. Wait until the rain
stops, or sink.
I saw somewhere that Zelensky actually thought of opening the canal sometime ago but was
"stopped". It was never made clear WHO ordered him not to, or who ordered him to start an
anti-Russian drive, or.....etc.
b's post undelines that the previous lines of cultural/liguistic division have not gone
away, and have probably hardened. The Nasty brigade are actually in lands that probably do
not appreciate them being there. (ie, the Russian speaking areas under Ukie control are
probably not overjoyed to become "permanent collateral damage")
*
Anyone else notice the large movement of Chinese ships in the South China Sea?
Doubled trouble for the Empire? They hardly get the time to concentrate on claiming "rights
of passage" through Indian territoral waters, or in the Black sea, or in the Artic, without
someone stirring the pot. Whatever next?
A diversion or just taking advantage of the limited scope of the attention span of whoever
is in command in the US ?
@vk "And that's the objective truth: if the Ukraine conquers the DPR and LPR, it will
essentially cut off Crimea from Russia."
How so? It doesn't seem to me that a hypothetical merger of DPR, LPR, and Ukraine would
have any effect on Crimea.
In fact, if DPR and LPR join according to the Minsk2 conditions, it could help, as they
would (theoretically) become a significant political factor on the national level. Which is
why Kiev is not interested in a peaceful unification.
And even a military conquest (which is what you're talking about) would create problems
for Kiev, as disenfranchising (or expelling) most of the population there might be somewhat
problematic.
"One should therefore consider that the sudden call for a renewed ceasefire might be a
ruse." --our host
Precisely. The US prefers to start its conflicts with a sucker punch, but that is only
possible if the target is unprepared and looking the other way. Russia only needs to let its
guard down and look away for a moment for the empire to take advantage of it. Notice how the
ukrops are not moving their attack forces back? They will attack while the US ships are in
the Black Sea to monitor the fighting and provide direction.
Donbass does not have strategic depth. The plan is to hit the republics with a suicide
bum-rush. America doesn't care how many of the ukrop aggressors are exterminated in the
attack so long as some units survive to take up positions in the city centers. The empire's
strategists figure that with a sudden enough and massive enough assault, and given at least
some element of surprise, this can be accomplished overnight. The ukrop cannon fodder will be
given orders to not bother securing any areas they overrun and instead continue to charge
forward.
Suicidal? Absolutely, because any Novorossiya troops that are overrun will regroup behind
the ukrop aggressors and pull back, cutting off the units that penetrated into the cities.
That's when those advance ukrop units will go all "Shock & Awe™" on the
urban civilians to draw the Novorossiya units away from their established positions and
demoralize them.
So long as the Russians are not caught with their pants down they should be able to easily
repel the ukrop assault. If they are thinking this through clearly then the Novorossiya
troops, with the Russians at their backs, should push for the Dniper in order to acquire that
much needed strategic depth. At the same time the Black Sea should be completely cleared of
any hostile vessels, and obviously that means the American ships.
I disagree about DNR and LNR are of importance for Russia to keep hold on Crimea. Crimea
secession was prior to the insurrection in eastern Ukraine, they tried to copy Crimean
secession (even held referenda in 2014) To the frustration of DNR/LNR activists as well as
many russian nationalists, the russian government has rejected all pleas to incorporate the
breakaway regions or Ukraine into Russia. On contrary, it has repeatedly tried to broker a
compromise, and the Minsk accords are part of. Putin even ostensibly bound his hands by
forcing a Duma decree in 2015, revoking the "Medvedyev doctrine" from 2008 Georgian conflict
which authorized use of force when ethnic Russians were threatened, Anyway, the russian
government could not abandon the insurgency in Donbas without risking to be toppled by
nationalists.
One should keep this in mind: Russia does not want the ethnically russian parts of Ukraine
which would comprise of most of it. It was not Russia who escalated the inner ukrainian
divide. And militarily, LNR and DNR are in no way helpful for Crimea. Normal relations
between the RF and Ukraine would be in Russia's interest, would belp both countries. But that
is what the West prevents at any cost, to the last Ukrainian. Only the dumb ukronazis don't
realize that.
@53 vk Ukraine will never get back DNR and LNR by military means, but, if at all, only via
a compromise alongside the Minsk accords. And if you speak to realistic Ukrainians (there are
not few, even in the nazi infested galicia and volyn), they all realize that Crimea is gone,
and that it always only grudgingly agreed to be an autonomous republic inside Ukraine until
2014.
Its not just the Fortuna laying pipe now, the Akadamik Cherskiy has been on the job for
about 10 day and she can lay pipe faster. According to the plans submitted to the Danes, in
whose waters they are laying, Fortuna is expected to finish in May whilst the AC has
permission until September but is expected to finish early.
As to the USN ships (Black sea regular USS Ross passed Gib inbound Med today) are not due in
until the start of next week and will leave early May. What their role, apart from being a
gesture of support for Ukraine, is is not clear. An obvious job of one, if not both, could be
to be tied up at a berth in Odessa harbour as a poison pill to try to make sure that Russia
does not attack that part of the coast. Were there to be an attack of course.
Seems to be a big mistake by the US to me. I can understand what they are trying to do
but, given the option above, if they stay at sea it will be a clear statement that they don't
want to get that involved. I'm sure it is not their intention to be so open in showing their
true objective.
Another possible reason for a delay until May is that the Orthodox Church celebrates its
Eater Sunday on the 2nd May.
William R Henry 52
There is no need to go to the Dneiper to gain sufficient strategic depth, not only would
that be a political nightmare but just stopping at the oblast borders should be sufficient.
Included in that would be Mariupol, the only Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov. That would
make Donbass economically viable.
No need to clear the Black Sea, Russia totally dominates over, on and under it.
Wouldnt this be the second time that Zelinski used thread of conflict to help himself in
election?
It seems an important point. Why would B over look it, I wonder.
Declaring war and then declaring peace. I guess one cannot chose ones neighbors.
I thought Russia stood to benefit from war. They should keep pressure on Zelinski -
training, preparations and support of Donbass. Seems Russia is very measured with
assistance.
b. :
"It seems that order has come from Washington to stand down - at least for now."
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Bloomberg:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to return to Brussels next week for more meetings
with NATO and European officials, according to people familiar with the matter, as the U.S.
grows increasingly concerned about Russian troop movements near Ukraine.
The meetings will take up most of the week,[...]
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will be in Brussels at the same time, for a meeting with
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
"Frank muses that just as the postman always rings a second time to make sure people
receive their mail, fate has made sure that he and Cora have both finally paid the price for
their crime.
"Schöne Wochenende". Next week will be interesting as last 3 were.
Maybe I missed it but there were elections in Ukraine last Sunday and
"The new Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of the Ukraine, elected on Sunday, will have an
overwhelming national mandate to negotiate peace terms to end the five-year civil
war.
You misssed it....
Those elections were in 2019....
Zelenski has been compromised since then... most notably via loss of his plutocrat
mentor...
The CIA/NSA/RightSector are firmly in charge, because Zelenski did not use his mandate to
throttle them.
The best he could have done, was to invite Russia in for the purpose of "stabilizing"
ukraine.
Western nations chided Russia for failing to turn up at talks in Vienna on Saturday aimed
at defusing tension over Ukraine, where a Russian troop buildup close to the border between
the two countries has sparked fears of renewed conflict.
MOSCOW, February 5. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference
Friday following talks with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Josep Borrell.
"Therefore, we organize our life coming from the premise that the EU is not a reliable
partner, at least at this stage,"
"I hope that the strategic review which is coming will finally pay attention to vital
interests of the European Union in its closest vicinity " Lavrov stressed.
"I hope that today's talks will help us reach a more constructive trajectory. We are
ready for it."
@b - "...why was all of this allowed to happen in the first place?"
J Swift offered a good clue in his
comment in the previous thread:
"the Nuland crowd have played right into Russia's hands, because the Ukraine is definitely
a place where Russia has escalation dominance. I suspect that when some of those famous
military channels began chatting, the Russians were not so friendly, and made it clear that
an offensive by the Ukies would not only free Russia's hand toward the Nazis and provide a
perfect excuse to rid the East and South of them, but that Russia would be specifically
targeting US/NATO "advisers," command centers, resupply aircraft or any aircraft entering
Ukrainian airspace, and would be just waiting for any US ship in the Black Sea to do
something remotely involving it in the conflict, such that it would be on the bottom in
minutes."
We know from Pepe Escobar's latest article ,
presenting highlights from the recent important interview with Nikolai Patrushev (Secretary
of the RF Security Council), that Patrushev, a very dangerous and serious man, enjoys
undiminished communications with Washington, including a March phone discussion with Jake
Sullivan, White House security advisor. If his interview is anything to go by, his candid
discussions with US leadership could have scared them totally awake.
Once again, it could well be that the neocons talked up a blazing firestorm that the
generals and security professionals ultimately had to pour water on.
Patrick Armstrong in his
latest article gives us ample evidence that Victoria Nuland, back in power and riding
high, is also vastly ignorant and imperceptive, incapable of learning or reflection, and
mediocre in her intelligence. The neocons, as Armstrong points out, have always failed. And
they have led the US down a path of loss.
If in fact this Ukraine adventure is over for the moment (if in fact it ever was real in
the first place), then it bears total resemblance to every other neocon stupid idea, that
goes as far down the path to ruin as it can, sometimes being stopped by wiser heads,
sometimes simply charging over the edge, into the abyss.
If Russia gets to choose, one assumes Russia would prefer no military activity in Ukraine.
And if Russia is forced into military action, one also assumes as best guess that Russia will
reshape the map to a better end for all. It could just be that Russia managed to communicate
this to the US, and that the US managed to hear.
@74 Yes but that doesn't really address b's question. Why was this allowed to happen in
the first place? We know all about Nuland and her cookies and encouragement from Washington.
But why was the Minsk agreement broken? Why do the Ukies keep lobbing shells into
Donbass?
Those troops are bored. I'm sticking with my vodka theory.
Just to clarify: Russia has already officially stated (many years ago) that it doesn't
want any other piece of the Ukraine (i.e. any other piece beyond Crimea). It wants the
Ukraine to survive in the form of a federalized State with the DPR and LPR enjoying high
levels of autonomy (a la Spain).
Ukraine is not profitable to Russia. It would drain its coffers were it to have to conquer
and absorb it entirely.
Time is in Russia's favor: let the Ukraine continue to serve as a financial black hole to
the IMF. Let the Western Ukrainians continue to emigrate en masse to Poland and then to the
rest of the EU and the UK. Russia has already received some 1 million Eastern Ukrainian;
those are probably the more well-educated, more productive Ukrainians, and they gave it some
relief from its chronic negative population problem - all of that without having to advance
one inch over continental Ukraine.
Germany vetoed any more provocations by the US or nato against the Donbass/Crimea that
would clearly call in massive Russian support. Crimea is now part of the Russian Federation;
an end of that part of the story - and there are several hundred thousand people in the
Donbass that now have Russian passports. Russia won't stand for any of it. No matter how much
the dumb Ukrainians or the lackey Poles or their US/nato masters huff and puff and
bellow.....
it is also not in the slightest German interests for a war to break out right in the
middle of Europe that might escalate into a nuclear confrontation, nor is it in their
national interest to lose the Nord Stream 2 project... at all.
I don't know about France's position in all this but either France or Germany could/would
exercise veto over any nato troops/intervention in the Ukraine.
time to return to the Minsk agreements. in spite of the incredible stupidity of the US
foreign policy Establishment and those jackass war-mongers Blinken, Nuland and Austin et.
al.
Do you really expect the Amerikastani Empire's puppet Ukranazi coup regime to say "we will
attack"? Instead it will attack and then claim Russia attacked it. Just like Hitler's
Gleiwitz radio station false flag attack that started WWII.
Zelensky in Istanbul. Erdogan to refuse to recognize Crimea as Russian territory..
Saw a tweet today saying something along the lines of Russia preventing flights to Turkey
this summer for "Covid" reasons, read between the lines..
Time is in Russia's favor: let the Ukraine continue to serve as a financial black hole to
the IMF. Let the Western Ukrainians continue to emigrate en masse to Poland and then to the
rest of the EU and the UK. Russia has already received some 1 million Eastern Ukrainian;
those are probably the more well-educated, more productive Ukrainians, ...
Posted by: vk | Apr 11 2021 1:20 utc | 77
This is rather sketchily related to reality.
1. Ukraine is not a "black hole for the IMF". They got a smallish credit, and now they are
being denied extensions on rather preposterous grounds, and Ukraine is charged for the unused
credit line. Contrary to Nulands boasting, the West keeps Ukraine on a leash with a rather
skimpy budget.
2. There is no clear distinction between migration patterns. The one time I was in Russia,
the tourist guide on a one-day bus trip was from Rivne -- in Poland in years 1918-39. And as
Polish medical workers go to Spain etc., Ukrainian once fill the vacant positions, and they
may come from any place. Ditto with the "quality of workers". Poland has more of seasonal
jobs in picking crops (while Poles do it further West) than Russia, Russia perennially seeks
workers ready to accept extra pay in less than benign climes. The closest to truth is
scooping engineers and highly qualified workers from factories that before worked for Russian
market, including military, replaced with Russian factories and, when needed, Ukrainian
know-how. That is pretty much accomplished -- predominantly from the Eastern Ukraine. As a
result, the remaining workforce is so-so from east to west.
It's been made clear that a Ukrainian attack on the D & L republics would be met with
a direct Russian intervention into the conflict and likely would result in the loss of the
whole of the disputed oblasts to the separatist republics. Russia has no intention of
eliminating Ukraine or occupying Kyiv, but that kind of defeat in the east would spell the
end of what political stability remains in Ukraine and likely lead to a new Maidan against
Zelensky and possibly further secessions. That's the real downside of this for Russia.
Ukraine is threatening to immolate itself as a form of brinksmanship.
Failing that death wish, only if Moscow somehow agrees to stay out of the war does this
have the remotest possibility of achieving what the Kyiv government needs. Otherwise it will
not attack.
@ Lozion | Apr 11 2021 2:18 utc | 81 with the link about the Ukraine/Turkey meeting
today..thanks
Interesting position by Erdogan and I would think it would effect Turkey's purchase of
Russian defense equipment but who knows where the complexity balance resides in the ME.
Lots of tinder just waiting for a spark to point the blame at for world conflagration. I
will believe this situation is cooling when I read about the US ships turning around and not
going into the Black Sea.
Erdoğan has several goals in Ukraine. Show Russia that he is strong and important for
Russia as he has influence on Ukraine. Show the USA that he is an active participant of NATo.
Sell his military drones to whoever wants them as well as other turkish products.
He appears as a king maker and gets business and approval from russia,the EU and the Usa to
avoid a war. A very successful move needed to rehabilitate Erdoğan seriously in trouble
with both the usa and the EU...
The western press is portraying the events of the past few weeks as representing an
unmotivated unilateral Russian troop buildup.
Canada's Globe and Mail yet again deliberately deceives its readers with omission-plagued
reporting which the author must know is wrong. This includes describing the Minsk agreements
as "the Kremlin's version of how to make peace" which are being utilized in an "enforcement
operation" featuring a "coercive use of force" meant to "induce Kyiv, Berlin and Paris" to
accept "Moscow's terms." Awful reporting by any objective measure.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-ukrainian-commander-sees-parallels-with-2014-as-russian-military-build/
Meanwhile, a Heritage Foundation flunky describes "spontaneous" Russian deployments
designed to "keep Ukraine out of organizations such as the EU or NATO".
Russia should be opposed because: "Modern Ukraine represents the idea in Europe that each
country has the sovereign ability to determine its own path, to decide with whom it has
relations, and how and by whom it is governed." https://www.arabnews.com/node/1840341
Both reporters make the same observation in opening paragraphs, supporting the notion that
these pieces are derived from a distributed script or collection of talking points:
1) "For weeks, Russian social media accounts have been flooded with videos showing long
convoys of tanks, troop trucks and artillery pieces "
2) "Dozens of videos in social media posts show hundreds of Russian tanks and armored
vehicles pouring into the region."
I have a feeling, it's only a feeling right now, that the looted black hole that's
Ukranazistan after 7 years of "freedom " is such a drain that the EUNATO gangsters behind the
Maidan would love to palm the ruins off to Russia. "Here, you broke it, you own it."
"
MOSCOW, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Russia does not seek a war with Ukraine but is concerned for the
Russian-speaking population in the country's eastern Donbass region, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov said Sunday.
"No one is going to move towards a war, and no one at all accepts any possibility of such
a war," Peskov told a Russian TV program.
"Russia has never been a party to this conflict (between Kiev and insurgents in Donbass).
But Russia has always said that it will not remain indifferent to the fate of Russian
speakers who live in the southeast of Ukraine," he added.
According to the spokesman, Kiev refuses to fulfill its responsibilities under the Minsk
agreements on a Donbass settlement, with government forces intensifying "provocative actions"
in the region.
Russia, Germany and France are "bewildered" by Kiev's recent claims that the Minsk
agreements are useless, Peskov said, adding that there are no alternatives to the pacts for a
peaceful settlement of the conflict.
Political advisers of the Russian, German, French and Ukrainian leaders are working
towards holding a summit on eastern Ukraine, he said.
"
but I do see this situation more as having put the Maidan-coalition on the back-foot and
having to disentangle themselves, rather than a carefully pre-planned and coordinated
operation.
Thank you and I humourously appreciated your allusions to the asylum that has captured
Ukraine. The Maidan Murder Coalition has discovered its karma that was always lying in wait.
These villainous rsoles will seriously collapse under the weight of it all, particularly the
sniper trick shooters on the Maidan crowds.
I loved this line: "Everyone can recall a wide-spread (spread most likely by some overly
zealous, but not very literate, Russian "patriots") rumor about DDG-75 USS Donald Cook having
her electronics "burned" by a couple of intrepid Russian Su-24s in April of 2014, who
allegedly forced this American ship to fast return to Constanta, where, allegedly some of her
crew expressed a desire to abandon the ship. NYT and other US media, not without
justification, called those rumors to be Russian "propaganda". They have a point."
Which seems as good a moment as any to plug my new product (!!). Since that picture of
Col. Brittany visiting Donbass in uniform of 72th mechanized division with a prominent skull
badge reminded me so of the sketch 'Are we the Baddies' it is time to market my new velcro
badges with rainbows and BLM logos. Stick them anywhere to show you're part of the right
camp! If you shoulder badges may offend leftist softies, just stick these badges on top of
them for the perfect photo op! HTS already ordered a large batch. Now 20% off and buy two get
one free!
Turkey wants to build on its successes in Nagorno Karabach to sell its weapon systems to
Ukraine. Whether they also explicitly wish the conflict to explode is less clear.
Erdogan needs money, cash. The same seems to be true of most if not all Western
politicians. But some, like Erdogan and Bibi, need lots of money.
Putin on the other hand, does not need cash. He has a healthy fiat currency at his
disposal and sells a lot of food, oil, lumber, weapons etc. internationally.
I don't think Ukraine is going to be a good source of cash for Erdogan, or Bibi. They need
a lot of cash too.
So there is a massive build-up on both sides in Ukraine? ( The following comment was
provoked by info from a tweet that the Ukrainians have "found" a secret plan by the Kremlin
for a union with Donbas .. unconfirmed )
What if......?
... The Russians and the Dondbas/Luhansk actually DO declare a union with Russia? There is no
"need" for the Russians to physically "invade" the area. They can just sit there and wait for
the Ukrainians to do something. Then IF Zelensky decides, it is he who has to "start"
the conflict. As a plan it is the perfect reversal of the usual Russian "aggression".
Zelensky's bluff called?
A "union" is just another way of saying "it is ours EVEN IF the title is nominally someone
elses, stuff you".
The massive forces on the "frontlines" are there to remind the Ukes and their backers what
"might" happen, IF they "invade" Donbas/Luhansk. What can they do about it? Make rude noises
in the background?
The US, Israel and Turkey are all examples of one country simply "taking over" parts of
another country - without any legality whatsoever. US in NE Syria, Turkey with it's advance
of 32km all along a new frontline, with a wall between itself and Syria. Israel with the
Golan. None of them have the slightest legal reason to be there. (Chinese claim the
Spratleys, which is a legal fig-leaf).
Lateral thinking by Putin? Would he even need a legal fig-leaf?
It is an interesting idea, and I would not want to say it will not happen, but it seems
un-Putin-like to me based on past performance. He's been very comfortable with frozen
conflicts in the past. And I think he probably still wants Ukraine as a buffer, friendly but
not Russia, and to keep it whole minus Crimea.
This way he would still "keep" Ukraine on a tether, and avoid being accused of
aggression.
OK, it may go that way but the silence (from Putin) and the refusal of the Russians to
give more than vague reasons for their actions, does mean that the west's MSM have nothing to
froth at the mouth about- Let Zelensky stew in his own juice.
As well as the regular Army and volunteers, He is going to end up with seven thousand
ex-jihadists employees, multiple "mercenaries" from the US and the other parts of the world,
orders for Drones, arms etc. BUT he is losing $3 billion revenue from gas (the transit of
which has been "slowing down") since the 1st April. I don't know what he has contracted to
supply to those futher along the pipeline. Plus the debts to the WB and IMF.
So how long can he keep up the expense of having a standing army of 105'000 or more at the
ready?
The Russians can wait them out. If they just don't "talk" or give any PR leeway to the
west, then with the attention span of the goldfish in the EU and US citizens, it will drop
once again from view. (20 seconds for a goldfish otherwise they would get bored going round
and round in a bowl ?)
Diesen in his book, Russia's Geoeconomic Strategy for a Greater Eurasia , provides
the rationale for the Outlaw US Empire's actions in Ukraine, that are actually aimed at NATO
members, which it fears will be enticed by Russia and fracture the alliance:
"This susceptibility to outside sabotage of regional unity [NATO] can be mitigated by
centralizing power by, for example, instigating more overt military tensions to strengthen
alliance unity." [Pg. 22]
This also serves to provide additional energy to the Russophobic Narrative and the
unfounded rationale for anti-Russian sanctions. The Empire must at all costs continue NATO's
viability for that ensures the Empire's geoeconomic and geopolitical control of the EU. The
same is true in East Asia where the anti-China narrative must be continued to keep Japan and
South Korea under the Empire's thumb, although South Korea is slowly slipping away.
Time is in Russia's favor: let the Ukraine continue to serve as a financial black hole to
the IMF. Let the Western Ukrainians continue to emigrate en masse to Poland and then to the
rest of the EU and the UK. Russia has already received some 1 million Eastern Ukrainian;
those are probably the more well-educated, more productive Ukrainians, ...
Posted by: vk | Apr 11 2021 1:20 utc | 77
This is rather sketchily related to reality.
1. Ukraine is not a "black hole for the IMF". They got a smallish credit, and now they are
being denied extensions on rather preposterous grounds, and Ukraine is charged for the unused
credit line. Contrary to Nulands boasting, the West keeps Ukraine on a leash with a rather
skimpy budget.
2. There is no clear distinction between migration patterns. The one time I was in Russia,
the tourist guide on a one-day bus trip was from Rivne -- in Poland in years 1918-39. And as
Polish medical workers go to Spain etc., Ukrainian once fill the vacant positions, and they
may come from any place. Ditto with the "quality of workers". Poland has more of seasonal
jobs in picking crops (while Poles do it further West) than Russia, Russia perennially seeks
workers ready to accept extra pay in less than benign climes. The closest to truth is
scooping engineers and highly qualified workers from factories that before worked for Russian
market, including military, replaced with Russian factories and, when needed, Ukrainian
know-how. That is pretty much accomplished -- predominantly from the Eastern Ukraine. As a
result, the remaining workforce is so-so from east to west.
Interesting interview. Apparently, Yuri Andropov had a contingency plan on the event of
the disintegration of the USSR - and yes, it included the partition of the Ukraine into two
("east bank Ukraine" and "west bank Ukraine" - probably West of the Dnieper, East of the
Dnieper). It's in Russian, so maybe inconsistencies with automatic translation may exist:
The interview is with Russian neoliberal banker (of the circle of Yeltsin and Gaidar, St.
Petersburg intelligentsia) Viktor Loshak, from "Alfa-Bank group" (machine translation). He
was a working under Shatalin in the 1980s, so he's allegedly an eye witness (primary source)
of the alleged plans.
He also claims that the St. Petersburg neoliberals never intended to end the Union, and
that what really happened in the 1990s wasn't intended. Smells like revisionism to me, but
ok, the St. Petersburg circle was never known for their intellectual prowess, so it's
possible.
--//--
@ Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Apr 10 2021 21:07 utc | 51
It has in the sense that the Ukraine wants to restore its entire territory, not just some
part of it. There is no scenario where, it being able to reconquer LPR-DPR, it would leave
Crimea with Russia.
Now it looks more and more like a deliberate provocation. With Ukraine striving to get
attention and the USA striving to stop NS2.
Notable quotes:
"... The new 2020/2024 Russia/Ukraine transit gas contract is 'pump or pay' in that Russia pays $7B over 5 years regardless of whether gas is shipped or not. So it doesn't matter if the volume drops. I am actually surprised that it has given the still harsh weather in Europe. ..."
"... Meanwhile more figures are out on NS2 and it looks, given good weather, that both Fortuna and AC could finish pipe laying in both Danish and German waters by the end of May. So operational by the end as of year as stated by Gazprom looks on the cards, if not earlier. ..."
"... I suspect that the US and its NATO lapdogs are playing a distraction game. And I think that the Russian government knows this; but also realizes that the Western nations are cirrently in the grips of madcap rulers. Thus Russia is not taking any chance. One can bet that, as the whole empire crashes, it would like to bring down as much of humanity down with it as it can. The future of the earth is not bright. ..."
"... The Oil Shock only added to the 1973-75 recession. The Oil Shock was political in nature, and somewhat coordinated with the USG itself. The deeper causes of the early 70s economic crisis, and of the end of Bretton Woods, was declining profitability across all advanced capitalist states. See Robert Brenner's book, The Economics of Global Turbulence. ..."
"... Nuland et al may be trying to show themselves loyal agents of Israel, testing whether Russia can be distracted from Syria, or pretending to raise the cost of NS2. Russia and China could make balanced moves in the Caribbean to tame the bullies, but may see no advantage in counterthreats. ..."
"... This will be followed by an attack on the two Republics, dead bodies everywhere, un indisputable reason to convince the Germans with to scrap Nord-2. ..."
"... I am wondering if this might be an advantage for Russia and other countries in the mid to long term, that their companies are forced to master all the complex technologies involved as fast as possible? Maybe they will even become competitors to their western equivalents? ..."
First the Ukraine said it would use force to
recover the renegade Donbass region as well as Crimea. It then moved heavy troops towards the
contact lines. The ceasefire at the contact line was broken multiple times per day. Several
Ukrainian soldiers died while attempting to remove a minefield in preparation of an
attack.
It became clear that a war in Ukraine's east was
likely to soon braek out. A successful war would help Ukraine's president Zelensky with
the ever increasing domestic crises. A war would also give the U.S. more
influence in Europe . The U.S. and NATO promised "unwavering support for Ukraine's
sovereignty".
Russia gave several verbal warnings that any Ukrainian attack on the renegade provinces of
Luhansk and Donetsk or Crimea would cause a serious Russian intervention. There was never a
chance that the U.S. or NATO would intervene in such a war. But it was only after Russia
started to move some of its troops around that sanity set in. It dawned on the Ukrainian
leadership that the idea of waging war against a nuclear armed superpower was not a good
one.
Late yesterday it suddenly decided to file for peace (machine translation):
KIEV, April 9 - RIA Novosti. "Liberation" of Donbass by force will lead to mass deaths
of civilians and servicemen, and this is unacceptable for Kiev, said Commander-in-Chief of
the Armed Forces of Ukraine Ruslan Khomchak.
"Being devoted to universal human values and norms of international
humanitarian law, our state puts the lives of its citizens in the first place," the General
Staff's press center quoted him as saying.
According to Khomchak, the Ukrainian authorities consider the political and diplomatic
way to resolve the situation in Donbass a priority. At the same time, he added that the
Armed Forces of Ukraine are ready for an adequate response both to the escalation of the
conflict and to "the complication of the military-political and military-strategic
situation around the country."
MOSCOW, April 9 - RIA Novosti. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the
need for a new truce in Donbass after visiting the contact line.
The head of state wrote on Facebook that shooting at the front lines had become "a
dangerous routine." "After several months of observing a complete and general ceasefire, we
returned to the need to establish a truce," Zelensky said.
As the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Ruslan Khomchak emphasized
earlier, the use of force to "liberate" Donbass is unacceptable for Kiev, as it is fraught
with casualties among the civilian population and military personnel. At the same time,
last week he said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will strengthen the grouping of troops
in the Donbass and in the Crimean direction - in response to the "build-up" of Russian
forces on the border with Ukraine.
It seems that order has come from Washington to stand down - at least for now. U.S.
reconnaissance flights near Russia's border continue . One should
therefore consider that the sudden call for a renewed ceasefire might be a ruse.
But if it is not why was all of this allowed to happen in the first place?
Posted by b on April 10, 2021 at 14:44 UTC |
Permalink
It would be so beneficial to Russia in so many ways to fix the Ukraine
problem once and for all, that America is now backpedalling fast and hoping the Russians do
not get their fix. They want this to continue to be a set of problems for Russia. Avoiding a
war would be great for all, but if the West thinks they can resume this contentious scenario,
they will find they are wrong. I am willing to bet that most common citizens of ukraine are
sick of all this vitriol and tension, crashing economy, and other hardships. Maybe the
majority will finally speak up and get their say.
The new 2020/2024 Russia/Ukraine transit gas contract is 'pump or pay' in that Russia
pays $7B over 5 years regardless of whether gas is shipped or not. So it doesn't matter if
the volume drops. I am actually surprised that it has given the still harsh weather in
Europe.
Meanwhile more figures are out on NS2 and it looks, given good weather, that both
Fortuna and AC could finish pipe laying in both Danish and German waters by the end of May.
So operational by the end as of year as stated by Gazprom looks on the cards, if not
earlier.
At the same time, last week he said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will strengthen
the grouping of troops in the Donbass and in the Crimean direction - in response to the
"build-up" of Russian forces on the border with Ukraine.
If war is really unacceptable to Ukraine why aren't they pulling back their forces?
1) Because the "Russian aggression' propaganda must continue until Nord Stream 2 is
terminated.
2) Because the threat of a war with NATO-supported Ukraine must be sustained to deter
Russia in Idlib and elsewhere.
The only deterrent US ships provide is the type that Russia wants to avoid engaging the US
directly for fear of an eventual nuclear exchange. Otherwise, those ships provide no
challenge to their military capabilities.
I submit the ships are there to encourage Zelensky to take a risk thinking the US has his
back. But it appears even he isn't this dumb and this whole thing is going to blow over as I
predicted a week or two ago.
So, was it always about bluff, theater and optics? ... Or did they simply lose their will
to die young? I guess Zelensky is a bad-joke comedian after all. He gets the local nazis off
his neck (for a while) by being a bold bad-ass boy and passing ideological laws (far from
reality); and then goes listen to the frontline generals as they explain the suicidal meaning
of his comic bluster. Being an actor, it's all just a stage for a gig, it seems. So, now he
tells his pet nazi thugs that Ruslan Khomchak has their phone numbers. Perhaps now that
Phil-the-(UK)Greek has died the Nato biolabs will be working on the next 'Plan B'
reincarnation-virus pandemic mix. Sputnik-V 2.0 better be ready soon.
Maybe I missed it but there were elections in Ukraine last Sunday and
"The new Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of the Ukraine, elected on Sunday, will have an
overwhelming national mandate to negotiate peace terms to end the five-year civil war.
"Sluha Narodu ("Servant of the People"), the party of President Volodymyr Zelensky, having
won more than 43% of the votes countrywide, will now command majorities of both the
party-list and the single-constituency seats in the new parliament; 253 seats altogether out
of 422, or a "mono-coalition" as the party is calling the result, or as the hostile Ukrainian
media term it, "a landslide [which] has never occurred in the contemporary history of Ukraine
and it is more typical for post-Soviet Asian dictatorships..."
"...This beats earlier pollster predictions that Zelensky would be forced into a coalition
with Holos ("The Voice"), a US-invented spoiler organization of Lvov region (Galicia) led by
pop singer, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. He ended up with less than 6% of the national votes, fewer
than forecast. Holos has proved to be neither the voice of youth, nor an organization without
oligarch support (it was backed by Victor Pinchuk), nor a political party at all.
"Polling better than predicted was the Donbass (Donetsk, Lugansk regions) party,
Opposition Platform led by Victor Medvedchuk, which ended up with 13% nationally; 48% in
Lugansk; 42% in Donetsk; 24% in Odessa; and 19% in Nikolaev. If the additional votes of the
eastern Opposition Bloc of Boris Kolesnikov and Vadim Novinsky are counted with Medvedchuk's
aggregate, together they have drawn majorities of 53% to 54%, putting Zelensky's party in the
east in a minority.
"This is the first time democracy has defeated a US Government-installed putsch and junta
in Europe since the election of Andreas Papandreou's Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK)
in 1982."
According to John Helmer "President Volodomyr Zelensky (right) is suffering from memory
failure, mood swings, and other neurological disorders after his hospitalisation for Covid-19
five months ago..." The obvious theory is that Zelensky was playing for time while giving the
ultra fascists and their Canadian sponsors free rein until the elections gave the Ukrainian
people- powerless political flotsam and jetsam, tossed around by Ottawa Nazis, Anglo
imperialism and a corrupt oligarchy which has been robbing everyone in sight, blind since
time immemorial a chance to indicate that it would be an extremely dumb move to attack
Russia. Amongst other reasons, because the average Ukrainian would very likely side with the
Russians against their ancient persecutors the Poles and Balts.
b wrote
"
It seems that order has come from Washington to stand down - at least for now. U.S.
reconnaissance flights near Russia's border continue. One should therefore consider that the
sudden call for a renewed ceasefire might be a ruse.
But if it is not why was all of this allowed to happen in the first place?
"
Good question. It fits with the characterization of late empire flailing at trying to
exert/maintain control over global narratives. Empire keeps hoping that Russia and China back
down because they have no other options than bullying. This is just the latest example of the
bully being faced up to.....thank you Mr. Putin!....we just hope the bully goes down without
taking all the rest of us with it.
I suspect that the US and its NATO lapdogs are playing a distraction game. And I think
that the Russian government knows this; but also realizes that the Western nations are
cirrently in the grips of madcap rulers. Thus Russia is not taking any chance. One can bet
that, as the whole empire crashes, it would like to bring down as much of humanity down with
it as it can. The future of the earth is not bright.
If Ukraine doesn't start their self-destruction by launching war before end of June then I
will believe the danger has passed this year and only because the crazies in the US are
hesitating to push the final button.
But if it is not why was all of this allowed to happen in the first place?
The only plausible explanation is that time isn't in favor of the Ukraine (and maybe the
USA). Time is running up.
We should stop seeing capitalism as this unmovable, eternal and indestructible system, and
the USA as this eternal and indestructible empire with endless resources. Both
presuppositions are entirely false: capitalism and the USA are historically specific
phenomena, and they will - 100% certainty - collapse and disappear eventually.
In politics, time is always relative. You know you won't last forever, but you know you
don't need to: you just need to last longer than your political enemy. The fact that USA
outlived the USSR gave it almost 17 years of incontestable supremacy, even though, analyzing
the numbers, we know that the economic apex of the American Empire (its "golden age") was
between Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson. The absence of its geopolitical rival resulted in
the fact that the American Empire reached its pinnacle during Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush, not at the time its people was the most happy, during 1945-1969.
But geopolitical apex doesn't always translate automatically to economic apex. The USA
also suffered a lot with the Oil Crisis of 1974, after which it quickly started to
financialize and deindustrialize, in a process that was best symbolized by the Nixon Reforms
(the creation of the Petrodollar in 1971 with the secret talks with the Saudi royal family
and the deal with China in 1972). This crisis was masked solely by the fact that the USSR
suffered even more with the Oil Crisis than the USA, resulting into a relative
ascension. This relative ascension can be verified by the fact that Ronald Reagan was the
most popular POTUS of the post-war USA: his reign was, by all economic metrics, a monumental
failure, but it was during his watch that the USSR started to collapse.
Signs of cracks in the USA were already evident when George H. W. Bush wasn't re-elected
because of a tax revolt by the electorate. During Bill Clinton, the American Empire gained a
lot of breathing space thanks to the absorption of the vital space left by the ex-USSR
countries, which were ransacked by the American and, to a lesser extent, German, capitalists
(Victoria Nuland's husband, for example, got extremely rich with the privatization of the
communications services in ex-Yugoslavia, hence her particular interest in Eastern Europe
affairs). But even during Bill Clinton we could already see some dark clouds, e.g. the
infamous "twin deficits" increase. Bill Clinton also governed long enough to see the crisis
of the Asian Tigers (1997) and the Dotcom Crisis (2000). The dark clouds that would result in
the storm of September 2008 were already there, gathering.
Analyzing the economic data, we can clearly see that the USSR wasn't the only one in an
age of stagnation: since 1990, only China and SE Asia genuinely grew. If the 21st Century is
to be consolidated as the "Asian Century", then a historian of the 22nd Century will have to
go back to that year (or even earlier, to the mid-1980s) to try to understand the Asian rise.
Growth elsewhere (when it happened) was either vegetative or fruit of a relocation (i.e. rise
in inequality, bankruptcy of some sectors in favor of others) of wealth. During the 2000s,
almost all the economic growth can be exclusively traced back to China (Russia's and Brazil's
commodity booms, SE Asia's continued dynamism due to China's outsourcing or financing of
American debt).
The 2008 crisis ended Neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. Today's world is still very
much neoliberal, but only because the global elites don't know what to do and, either way,
it's being implemented in a very distorted way, very far from its ideological purity of the
1990s. No one takes neoliberalism seriously anymore, even among the high echelons of the
economics priesthood. Some remnants of neoliberal thought are still alive in the form of some
living fossils in Latin America, but its end if fait accompli.
It is in this world that the Ukraine chose to align with the American Empire. To put it
simply, it chose the wrong side at the wrong time: it chose the West in an era that's
shifting to the East. The euphoria of the fall of socialism masked the degeneration of
capitalism that was started at the same time and it particularly impacted the Warsaw Pact
(Comecon) and the Western ex-USSR nations.
The Ukraine debacle has two aspects. First of all: the Maidan color revolutionaries
clearly envisioned a neonazi, pro-Western Ukraine in its territorial integrity, i.e. with
Crimea, Luhansk and Donbas. They didn't see the pro-Russians being well-organized enough to
be able to quickly fall back to Russia (Crimea being the most spectacular case, rapidly
organizing a referendum and fully integrating with Russia). Those losses are big: without
Crimea, Ukraine essentially lost any significant Black Sea influence, and without Donbas +
Luhansk, it practically lost all its industry and economy. Donbas specifically was a huge
blow to the Ukrainians: since the Tsarist era, it was the most industrialized and advanced
region of the Russian Empire (even more than Moscow and St. Petersburg) and it continued to
be so during the Soviet Era - three of the main Soviet General-Secretaries of the post-war
era came from the region (Krushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev).
Secondly, Ukraine, by choosing capitalism, has put itself withing the capitalist metabolic
clock. The era of the Marshall Plan is gone. The USA needs wealth and it needs now. It will
have to pay tributes to its new metropolis, and the price is high. The USA will settle for
nothing less than the entire Ukraine - including the rich regions of the Donbas basin, plus
the Crimea (over which its powerful Navy will be able to project into Russian territory). It
also won't settle for anything less than a fully NATO-integrated, IMF-controlled Ukraine.
That's the price for a full accession to the capitalist club post-2008.
In this sense, Ukraine's time is very short, as it is sucking the IMF dry (financial black
hole) and it will collapse soon. The patience of the Empire is short and is getting shorter.
As is common with capitalist societies, the Ukraine is also starting to devour itself as it
collapses with the lack of vital space: the liberal elites governing it are having to ask
themselves how can they get out of this mess without being murdered by the neonazi base that
sustains it; at this point, they're more worried about avoiding another Night of the Long
Knives than in reconquering the Donbas and Crimea.
The only good aspect I see in the dissolution and extinction of the Ukraine is that it can
finally put to rest the myth that Nazism is a brutal, but highly efficient, "system": there's
not such a thing - and never was - as a "Nazi system". Germany already was the second
industrial superpower by the time Hitler rose to power; he never elaborated any kind of
economic theory or even policy, instead delegating it to the already existing (Weimarian)
industrial elite. Hitler was just a very powerful cheerleader who dreamed in being an epic
movie. There was never such a thing called "national socialism" - it was just the name of the
Bavarian party that already existed when Hitler crossed the border; it was by mere chance of
destiny that he came from Austria (Southern border) and not Denmark (Northern border),
France/Alsace-Lorraine (Western border) or Poland-Sudentenland (Eastern border). Nazism is
not a system, it is just crazy liberalism, and I hope the white supremacists and
traditionalists in the West take note of that - if they don't want to be crushed.
MarkU , Apr 10 2021 17:28 utc |
27Prof , Apr 10 2021 17:33 utc |
28
VK The Oil Shock only added to the 1973-75 recession. The Oil Shock was political in nature,
and somewhat coordinated with the USG itself. The deeper causes of the early 70s economic
crisis, and of the end of Bretton Woods, was declining profitability across all advanced
capitalist states. See Robert Brenner's book, The Economics of Global Turbulence.
It is more than 24 hours since the initial announcement of a stand down and it would be
nice to see some confirmation. Troops withdrawing would be confirmation. If it is happening
in is not reported. What we get tends to be like the NYT item cited by John H @ 20. Nothing
in that article but fantasy and delusion. The ongoing narrative crowds out facts until
nothing is left. No one is as bad as NYT, still it is hard to trust anything we read.
Keeping an army in the field indefinitely is difficult. At minimum the troops must be fed
and must be kept busy. Does Ukraine have the wherewithal to do that? I tend to doubt that,
and yes, I am speculating. We will find out much later how bad desertion has been. We will
find out much later how the hodgepodge of conscripts, mercs, Special Forces, and NATO got
along. Reporting from 2014 had it that 600 NATO of every flavor were captured in the
Debaltsevo cauldron. If you believe that. I can't see how Ukraine musters and fields another
army after this if it is in fact over. More likely future armies will resemble what US
manipulates in Syria -- Turks, Uighurs, jihadis from whole planet, mercs.
Domestic politics in Uke have to be crazy. No one can possibly know what is happening
except the US Embassy. And they have their brains fogged by a lifetime of NYT fiction. No
good locals for them to work with. If there was anyone good we would have seen them by
now.
One must be awestruck with the talent the neo cons have for nation destruction. What they
created in Ukraine is a virtual post nuclear war. Neither the EU or Russia want this
basket-case-failed-Nazi state. Like the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, it has fortified its
enemy whom it intended to weaken. Now, Putin has a Hezbollah type ally in the Donetsk and
Lugansk region, and it has Russian Crimean back to the Motherland.
Nuland et al may be trying to show themselves loyal agents of Israel, testing whether
Russia can be distracted from Syria, or pretending to raise the cost of NS2. Russia and China
could make balanced moves in the Caribbean to tame the bullies, but may see no advantage in
counterthreats.
Such an utter humiliation of the US to pursue such foolish and racist FP, admitting its
complete control by money power in all federal branches and mass media.
As others here suggest, it's possible to read this as a success for the neocons. Ukrainian
gov't troop movements set off Russian troop movements, which are then portrayed as
aggressive, justifying whatever. It is very hard to believe that they seriously contemplated
an attack on Russia's doorstep, or in its antechamber. But the question remains as to how far
Zelensky's can has been kicked down the road.
I am wondering if this might be an advantage for Russia and other countries in the mid
to long term, that their companies are forced to master all the complex technologies involved
as fast as possible? Maybe they will even become competitors to their western
equivalents?
Usually, when governments decide about big industry projects, they demand that their
national companies get some orders to profit from the project. Now, it seems reversed. The
German government is still not openly against Nord Stream 2, but it has to be finished
without some of the companies originally involved.
A pipe bearing the Nord Stream 2 logo at a plant in Chelyabinsk, Russia, Feb. 26, 2020. PHOTO: MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS Listen to this article 5 minutes 00:00 / 05:07 1x Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma found himself in the company of a political titan, France's President François Mitterrand, on a gloomy day in December 1994. "Young man, you will be tricked, one way or another," Mitterrand told Mr. Kuchma, who was then the leader of a newly independent nation. Unsettled as he felt, Mr. Kuchma accepted the security assurances of the U.S., U.K. and Russia and signed the Budapest Memorandum. In exchange, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal, then the third-largest in the world. Little did we know that two decades later one of the signatories -- Russia -- would attack Ukraine and occupy its sovereign territory. Now, after many years of wooing and cajoling, Russia's attitude toward Ukraine is again growing belligerent. The Minsk process to resolve the conflict is stalled, and foreign troops have yet to leave the Donbas, the Ukrainian region where fighting rages on. Despite the supposed cessation of hostilities agreed to in September 2014, when the Minsk protocol was signed, little progress has been made. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma found himself in the company of a political titan, France's President François Mitterrand, on a gloomy day in December 1994. "Young man, you will be tricked, one way or another," Mitterrand told Mr. Kuchma, who was then the leader of a newly independent nation. Unsettled as he felt, Mr. Kuchma accepted the security assurances of the U.S., U.K. and Russia and signed the Budapest Memorandum. In exchange, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal, then the third-largest in the world. Little did we know that two decades later one of the signatories -- Russia -- would attack Ukraine and occupy its sovereign territory. Now, after many years of wooing and cajoling, Russia's attitude toward Ukraine is again growing belligerent. The Minsk process to resolve the conflict is stalled, and foreign troops have yet to leave the Donbas, the Ukrainian region where fighting rages on. Despite the supposed cessation of hostilities agreed to in September 2014, when the Minsk protocol was signed, little progress has been made. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Now, after many years of wooing and cajoling, Russia's attitude toward Ukraine is again growing belligerent. The Minsk process to resolve the conflict is stalled, and foreign troops have yet to leave the Donbas, the Ukrainian region where fighting rages on. Despite the supposed cessation of hostilities agreed to in September 2014, when the Minsk protocol was signed, little progress has been made. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Now, after many years of wooing and cajoling, Russia's attitude toward Ukraine is again growing belligerent. The Minsk process to resolve the conflict is stalled, and foreign troops have yet to leave the Donbas, the Ukrainian region where fighting rages on. Despite the supposed cessation of hostilities agreed to in September 2014, when the Minsk protocol was signed, little progress has been made. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. Ukrainians therefore are bewildered by the continuing construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2. Unlike the attack on Crimea, which came as a surprise, the pipeline's completion will have entirely predictable consequences for our national security. Ukraine will be irreparably weakened as soon as Russia has a new direct gas link to Germany. With the Nord Stream 1 and Turk Stream pipelines already operational, Nord Stream 2 will complete the encirclement of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, decoupling our energy security from Western Europe. Russia has tried to bully Ukraine by threatening gas cutoffs, most recently in June 2014. But Moscow has always had to be careful -- a large percentage of Russia's gas reaches Europe through Ukraine. If Nord Stream 2 is built, this consideration will be null and void. With the Nord Stream 1 and Turk Stream pipelines already operational, Nord Stream 2 will complete the encirclement of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, decoupling our energy security from Western Europe. Russia has tried to bully Ukraine by threatening gas cutoffs, most recently in June 2014. But Moscow has always had to be careful -- a large percentage of Russia's gas reaches Europe through Ukraine. If Nord Stream 2 is built, this consideration will be null and void. me title= NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP
All the day's Opinion headlines.
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The Kremlin has demonstrated time and again its willingness to use energy trade to advance its geopolitical
ambitions. It would be unwise, if not reckless, for Europe to increase its dependence on
Gazprom
,
Russia's
state-owned energy company, and give Moscow direct control over which countries are supplied with gas and which
can be cut off.
The current contract between Gazprom and Ukraine's gas-transit operator guarantees the flow of westward exports
via Ukraine until the end of 2024. But make no mistake: The day Nord Stream 2 is completed, that promise will be
worthless. Even if some transit through Ukraine persists, Ukraine will be subject to the Kremlin's whims.
The fighting in the Donbas, where Russia operates through its proxies, mercenaries and even regular troops, has
continued unabated for more than seven years. The gas pipeline has been spared from shelling -- Russia needs
uninterrupted gas flows through Ukraine as much as we do. This mutual dependence is a deterrent that Nord Stream 2
will remove.
Ukraine is grateful to the U.S. Congress, which recognized the true nature of this pipeline project, and the
European Parliament, which voted 10-to-1 on Jan. 21 to demand a halt to construction with a resolution on the
arrest of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny in Moscow.
Germany and Europe already have access to a massive gas-transit network spanning the Black and Baltic seas,
Belarus and Ukraine. The existing capacity is more than 50% higher than current consumption of Russian gas in the
European Union. Even if the demand increases as Germany is working to phase out nuclear and coal power generation,
there is no commercial need for another pipeline.
While Germany has little to gain, Ukraine stands to lose billions of dollars in transit revenue if the second
Baltic Sea gas link is built -- a fact that Nord Stream 2 apologists often present as the only basis for Ukrainian
opposition. The economic effect will be significant, but the claim is deliberately misleading. Ukrainian soldiers
will be putting their lives on the line if Russia decides to escalate the conflict in the Donbas after it no
longer needs to consider the effect on gas exports.
Ukraine understands the need to strengthen the trans-Atlantic alliance and the desire to find a solution that
works for both Washington and Berlin. It is, however, incumbent on the Kremlin first to demonstrate respect for
international law. The ball is in Moscow's court. It can and should end hostilities in the Donbas region, withdraw
its troops from the Crimean Peninsula and restore Ukrainian sovereignty.
President Biden was right to call the pipeline "a bad deal for Europe." As the project inches closer to
completion, Ukrainians can't help but recall Mitterrand's words from nearly 30 years ago. Ukraine was tricked,
just as the French president predicted. Let us not repeat history but learn from it. We must come together and
reject Nord Stream 2 once and for all.
Mr. Reznikov is Ukraine's deputy prime minister for reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories.
V
V Lee
SUBSCRIBER
1 day ago
The Ukrainian kleptocracy will see their cut shrink or disappear when gas will start flowing via Nord Stream 2. Not "a
bad deal for Europe" just for Ukraine.
A Koster
SUBSCRIBER
17 hours ago
Did i mention Turkey's role in Syria ?
It's interesting that everyone conveniently fails "to mention the role that gas line geopolitics
played in the "fallout" between Erdogan and Assad; as soon as Assad vetoed the Qatar-Turkey pipeline
that would have brought massive wealth to his family's energy transshipment business (BMZ Ltd), Assad
instead signing on to the Iran-Iraq-Syria "Friendship Pipeline", the friendship was ended and the war
on Assad commenced"
A Koster
SUBSCRIBER
1 day ago
This article is about one thing.. absolutely nothing to do with a risk to Ukraine's national security
'Ukraine stands to lose billions of dollars in transit revenue if the second Baltic Sea gas link is built"
And Turkey is in there like a dirty shirt.. see "Russia Warns of Full-Scale War in Eastern Ukraine, Blames
Kyiv".. like it was with Azerbaijan as they slaughtered thousands of Christians in Armenia.. and all for the
first find in the Caspian Sea by Azerbaijan since Russia's breakup.. HINT: they wanted.. not needed.. a
direct route west for a pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey.. which they got in a Russia brokered peace deal
So i guess congratulations are in order to Biden's NATO as they loyally keep working on enlarging the EU and
keeping the oil baron families of Erdogan and Alyiev filthy rich
James Schumaker
SUBSCRIBER
1 hour ago
I suggest you look up the Budapest Memorandum. The U.S. gave no guarantees. Like Russia, it gave assurances. I also
suggest you stop falling for pro-Trump talking points and look at what Trump actually did with regard to Ukraine. He
tried to extort its President into digging up dirt on his main political opponent by threatening to withdraw military
aid. That's what he was impeached for -- the first time.
RODNEY SMITH
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
Where does Burisma stand on the issue? Will be Biden's brief.
Jens Praestgaard
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
Otto von Bismarck's maxim for the newly formed German state was to always keep cordial relations with Russia. NordStream
2 is a step towards normalization of the German/Russian relationship after 120 years of failure.
Jim Mcdonnell
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
Bismarck's policy made sense in 19th Century Europe, and had Kaiser Wilhelm II not scuttled it we would be
living in a very different world. But he did scuttle it, and the world has changed - largely in ways Bismarck
sought to prevent - a great deal, as has Europe.
Heiko Muhr
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
Bismarck's thoughts about Germany's geopolitical situation are still relevant today. He argued that the
map that matters for German politicians is the map of Europe [and since 1945 that frame has been enlarged,
has included the US and Canada]. That Germany needed to pay particular attention to relationships with its
neighbors. That the country was to small to dominate Europe, and should rely on a system of stable alliances
to ensure stability, Ukraine and Russia are neighbors, Bismarck would have seen relationships with both
countries as relevant. Communication channels need to be kept open, those relationships need to be
managed. One neighbor, Russia, is an authoritarian state and since 2014 more openly aggressive. It needs
to be contained and challenged. The US has not been a reliable partner in doing that in the last 4 years
under Trump. That might change under a Biden, but will he be able to make and lock in the appropriate policy
decisions? We'll see.
John Bute
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
Germany has made a terrible strategic mistake by abandoning nuclear power to become more and more dependent on Russian
natural gas. France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear power and about 10% from fossil fuel. Only moderate
increases in hydro power and renewable energy will make it fossil fuel independent.
Heiko Muhr
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
German voters make their own decisions about climate change and definitely don't look for US advice. Power
plants burning coal and producing nuclear energy are coming off the grid. Natural gas will continue to be
important in that mix for quite some time. The Green Party's power is growing. It successfully expanded its
electoral base in 2 state elections this spring with broad support from middle class voters. After all,
environmentalism is a full belly movement. The Greens will challenge the German Conservatives, Merkel's
Christian Democrats, in September at the ballot box in national elections and other state elections. And Merkel
will not be on the ballot. Her CDU, which has been consistently the most pro-American party in Europe, finds
that pro-American stance is now a big liability. 4 years of the Trump regime. which treated Germans as clients,
changed the political landscape. Fewer Germans see the US is as a reliable partner, and that is now true even
in Merkel's party.
SCOTT CORE
SUBSCRIBER
1 day ago
Germany may view the US as an unreliable partner but they still rely on the US for economic and military
protection. Perhaps Germans have replaced the US with NATO in their minds and ignored the fact that the US
is the majority of NATO. Where Russia to threaten Germany where do you think Germany would turn? France? UK?
China?
So Germans are free to trash Trump for asking them to provide a modicum of their own protection but in the
end they will look to the US should they be threatened either economically by a cutoff of gas from Russia or
a military threat from Russia.
Heiko Muhr
SUBSCRIBER
20 hours ago
Look at Gallup polling data or the Pew Research Center's data in its Global attitudes program. In many countries Trump
ranked even below Xi or Putin. He was perceived as the bigger threat--unstable, angry, without a strategic vision, just
a ventilator of his emotions, a middle schooler craving attention, a clown. Yet he made these huge claims, all lies,
that the US was respected and listened to. The polling data tells us otherwise. Trump's lying and the hubris that fell
from these lies, that is unprecedented.
And now; THE LOSER. The Mouse-of-Mar-a-Lago. But, the Republican Party still follows him.. The man will be remembered as
the worst president the US ever had, ranking even below the corrupt Harding and the imbecile Buchanan. The lowest of the
low. And as THE LIAR [-->Trump should register that as a trademark]. History books won't be kind to him and the suckers
that still gobble up his lies even now after the putsch or whatever you want to call the Capitol "riot." Barnum was
right!
michael ring
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
England and France have their own nuclear deterrents. Europeans just want cheap steady supply of energy. Russia is in
the Middle East because Hillary and Obama destroyed Syria and Libya. Bush put us in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years!
Trump started the withdrawal. Let's hope sleepy preacher Biden continues it.
Heiko Muhr
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
A little reality check: At the very moment when Washington supposedly champions energy independence and warns European
allies against becoming too dependent on Moscow, American refineries are buying more Russian oil than ever before.
Check out the article by Javier Blas on the Bloomberg News site, published Mar. 24, 2021: "U.S. Thirst for Russian
Oil Hits Record High Despite Tough Talk."
David Thomson
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
Puerto Rico buys Russian LNG because there are no American-built LNG tankers. Thanks to the Jones Act, we can't ship
LNG from Texas to PR.
Eugene Boutz
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
(Edited)
Ukraine is composed of three *identities* which have nothing in common and want nothing in common.
There are the Russian speakers in the East and along the Black Sea, the people surrounding Lviv in the West which want
to be European and the denizens of Kiev who tend to favor the values and views of the Chancellor of Germany in the '30s.
Ukraine already has a tripartite schism and is most likely headed for a tripartite split once the Russian Federation,
having had its absolute fill of Kiev's games, obtains Beijing approbation to bring the matter to a conclusion with
weaponry of which Kiev can only dream.
The United States is not going to fight a nuclear war with Russia over the interests of the Kiev faction nor does
Germany want it to.
Nor do I.
Nor do you.
Heiko Muhr
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
(Edited)
The Germans are not going to cave. They will finish the pipeline. It is now 96 % built. The West Europeans started
importing Russian gas more than 40 years ago. Ronald Reagan failed when he tried to stick it to the Germans with
sanctions. And so will Cancun Ted. The old pipeline system that runs through Ukraine has been reverse-engineered with EU
funds about a decade ago. Ukraine has already been reliably supplied from the West when the Russians cut supplies. The
talking points in this piece are based on Cancun Ted's hallucinations, and not the facts on the ground. For a factual
analysis see Eugene Rumer's long piece published today in Defense News "Punishing Germany for Nord Stream 2 does nothing
to stop Putin." Rumer is the director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. He previously worked as a national intelligence officer on Russia and Eurasia for the U.S. National Intelligence
Council. He actually knows what he is talking about.
William Wahl
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
Just put Hunter on it. He'll fix this right up.
michael ring
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
Biden has been on the wrong side of every foreign policy decision in his entire career in Washington. Mitterrrand
was a bureaucrat who started his rise in vischy France. Ukraine is in a tough spot. So is Russia. They
have been fighting for 7 years. Body counts go up,citizens do not like it. Russia will not sacrifice one
pipeline for another. Ukraine and Russia can agree to no NATO troops on their border and tensions will go
down.
bruce miller
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
And who talked Ukraine into giving up their nukes? Well we did. Or rather, Slick and his pals did. Bet
the Ukrainians wish they'd kept a bunch. Just for old time's sake.
michael ring
SUBSCRIBER
2 days ago
What bargaining power would they be?No person or government in their right mind would use them. This is
about land grabbing.
GreatCaesar'sGhost called it: Ukraine is a tool to shut down Nordstream. Ukraine will push until Russia does something, then Germany shuts down Nordstream, shooting
themselves in the foot.
Puppyteethofdeath 1 hour ago
There's always the chance that election fraud will bring the Green Party to rise in Germany
also.
They'll gladly get rid of Nordstream 2 and destroy the German economy.
NATO commissars chase Ukrainian conscripts into RU artillery and machinegun fire until
they lose control over their units, which immediately flee the battlefield (as usual).
If V.V. Putin feels merciful, there's no Buratino rocket barrages on troop concentration
points, as happened during Ilovaisk debacle.
Now, hopefully NATO will puff up and use their vaunted Israeli drones during the attack,
so RU can study the remains.
You never, ever attack entrenched, prepared and boresighted Russians in tank country, without
air superiority, because if you do you get Kursk.
In the best case.
In worst, and most probable case, NATO will get another Saur Mogila disaster.
@Zarathustra urriculum. The Russians must stop protecting the Jews who control the
narrative everywhere. Jews must no longer control more than 10% of the media. They are only
1-2% of the population.
Like the Jews, Galician Ukrainians are always victims. What they did to the Poles during
the German occupation is forgotten.
The zionists are in control in the Ukraine and if they start a war with Russia the Ukraine
is going to be destroyed, Russia has warned Ukraine over and over but being the typical
zionists that they are, they will accept nothing but destruction and bloodshed as long as it
is someone elses blood and destruction.
The zionists have destroyed Iraq and Syria and Libya and Yemen and America.
@alwayswrite ous Regions/Republics had the legal right to secede from the given SSR they
were attached to. Furthermore, once USSR dissolved, any legal basis for a given (former) SSR
to have sway on the given Autonomous Soviet Republic ended.
@Miro23 Germans are surely going to become tired of all this CIA/Neo-con BS.
Merkel and Macron know just what the US is playing at. If the Ukraine does get the deserved
thrashing, that it is literally begging for, then of course there will be German and French
knee jerk condemnations along with the ritual imposition of token sanctions. However this
dangerous episode, will likely harden the resolve of both countries to escape the grip of the
flailing hegemon, which is now in its death throes. So perhaps in the slightly longer term, the
whole episode will backfire on the US and big time at that.
Russia might feel that war in Ukraine is inevitable and perhaps it would be better now,
rather than later.
@Levtraro ganovich, henchman to Stalin, but with an agenda of his own, had his troops and
secret-police agents seize essentially ALL the food stocks from perhaps 2 million peasant
families, resulting in death by starvation for multi-millions.
Thirdly, the heaviest battles in the Second World War were mostly fought in Ukraine. Again,
the death totals of the civilian population were huge. The land was ravaged. Essentially the
entire population were deeply traumatized.
Consequently one should not wonder that to the average Russian Ukrainians appear to be dazed
and dumbed-down. So next time you see your Russian friends, kindly remind them that their
brethren to the south and west should be regarded and treated with considerable compassion.
Good comment. Basically what I have been saying since Maidan. I understand why it has not
happened but the time has definitely come. I think the demarcation would be Odessa, Kherson,
Mykolaev and then north along the Dnipro including Khortiskia and up to East Sumy. I know it
sounds warmongerish but I hope this happens. Get this shit over with. There is so much
happening in this country that discriminates against ethnic Russians more each day.
No, it isn't; it's worse. The Ukrainian army suffers huge non-combat losses every day:
accidents from drinking or narcotics, desertion, suicides. Their commanders are incompetent and
super-dumb as well as first-rate scumbags.
They well remember the Russian reconquest after the revolution and Holodomor.
That they do not remember, for that never happened, at least, not as described. What they do
remember, however, are the caldrons in 2014-2015 and their horrendous losses.
"They well remember the Russian reconquest after the revolution and Holodomor. Ukraine will
not be easily swallowed again."
Ummmmm . it would appear that the grandchildren of the architects of the Holodomor are the
ones currently in power in Ukraine. Pretty amazing level of cucking and submission if you ask
me.
@Levtraro vernment of Ukraine and that the current regime is nothing more than a puppet
state which does NOT represent the best interests of the Ukrainian people and particularly of
those particularly Russian speaking folks in Crimea and the Donbass region.
The illegitimate regime in Kiev is almost entirely Khazarian Talmudist dominated and in
cahoots with the fascistic Uniates in Galicia. That group should be entirely divorced from any
future Ukrainian state as their history has a long involvement with Western Roman Catholic
cultures and consequently is an alien entity within the body politick of Ukraine, Belarus or
Russia. Let them go their own way and not infect their neighbors to the south and east with
their culturally indigestible attitudes.
Turkey Confirms 2 US Warships To Enter Black Sea As Ukraine Posturing Grows
BY TYLER DURDEN
FRIDAY, APR 09, 2021 - 10:29 AM
Turkey's foreign ministry on Friday confirmed
that it's granted permission for US warships to use the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits to enter the Black Sea at a moment
tensions with Russia over Ukraine are spiraling higher with tit-for-tat threats. Given it revealed the initial notification
was two weeks ago, a pair of American warships are
expected imminently to enter the
Black Sea
.
The foreign ministry
said
in a statement
while referencing the treaty that regulates passage through the straits: "A notice was sent to us 15 days
ago via diplomatic channels that two U.S. warships would pass to the Black Sea in line with the Montreux Convention.
The
ships will remain in the Black Sea until May 4.
"
Typically the US gives 14-days notice prior
to sending warships into the Black Sea, according to the long established treaty with Turkey regarding use of the Bosporus to
enter the waters.
And Reuters notes the significance of the
timing
as follows
: "The United States has informed Turkey that two of its warships will pass through Turkish straits to be
deployed in the Black Sea until May 4, Ankara said on Friday, as Russia has bulked up its military forces on Ukraine's eastern
border."
Late Thursday an unnamed US defense official
had told CNN the warships would be deployed
"in the next few weeks in
a
show of support for Ukraine
,"
and further the deployment would "send a specific message to Moscow that the US is
closely watching," according to the
report
.
Importantly, all of this comes just days
after Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky personally urged NATO to
immediately
expand its Black Sea presence.
He had said in a phone call with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg,
"Such
a permanent presence
should be a
powerful
deterrent to Russia
, which continues the large-scale militarization of the region and hinders merchant
shipping," the
president's
press service
indicated in a readout.
Zelensky had also traveled to the site of frontline renewed fighting in the Donbas region on Thursday in a show of support to
Ukrainian national forces who are clashing with Russia-backed separatists.
While American vessels have long operated in the Black Sea, even semi-regularly conducting drills there, this time the US
ships are being sent there
specifically as a "warning" to Moscow
.
But Russia's Defense Ministry on Thursday announced naval maneuvers of its own,
confirming
that it's
moving more than 10 navy vessels from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea
in
order to conduct naval exercises.
With the rival naval build-up on the Kremlin and Ukraine's doorstep, and with the mutual amassing of troops on either side of
the border...
what could go wrong?
Bdubs
49 minutes ago
And Trump
was the bloodthirsty war monger?
Is there
ANYTHING the left disparages the right for that is not a psychological projection?
These f-ers
need therapy.
Misesmissesme
1 hour ago
(Edited)
Man, we're doing everything we can to turn Ukraine into Poland circa 1939.
Maybe we can find an Archduke to assassinate so we can turn the clock all the way back to 1914.
USAllDay
1 hour ago
remove
link
Joe
sent his kid to Ukraine to blow lines. He'll send yours to blow up.
GreatCaesar'sGhost
1 hour ago
No nato troops will ever set foot in Ukraine. They're trying to pressure Russia into doing something
so they can force the Germans to stop nordstream. The Ukrainians can't win here and they're being used.
Not good.
BeePee
1 hour ago
There
were NATO advisors in Ukraine. Even that should be stopped.
Selling arms to Ukraine, most likely will continue. That's what companies do.
GreatCaesar'sGhost
58 minutes ago
The
Ukrainians are being pushed to make a move against Donbass and even Crimea. It is a poor country buying
expensive weapons, doesn't end well.
Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of war – with dire consequences for the whole
of Eurasia. Let's cut to the chase, and plunge head-on into the fog of war.
On March 24, Ukrainian President Zelensky, for all practical purposes, signed a declaration of war
against Russia, via decree No. 117/2021.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks
during a joint press conference with European Council President in Kiev on March 3, 2021.
Photo: AFP / Sergey Dolzhenko
The decree establishes that retaking Crimea from Russia is now Kiev's official policy.
That's exactly what prompted an array of Ukrainian battle tanks to be shipped east on flatbed
rail cars, following the saturation of the Ukrainian army by the US with military equipment
including unmanned aerial vehicles, electronic warfare systems, anti-tank systems and
man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS).
More crucially, the Zelensky decree is the proof any subsequent war will have been prompted
by Kiev, debunking the proverbial claims of "Russian aggression." Crimea, since the referendum
of March 2014, is part of the Russian Federation.
It was this (italics mine) de facto declaration of war, which Moscow took very
seriously, that prompted the deployment of extra Russian forces to Crimea and closer to the
Russian border with Donbass. Significantly, these include the crack 76 th Guards Air
Assault Brigade, known as the Pskov paratroopers and, according to an intel report quoted to
me, capable of taking Ukraine in only six hours.
It certainly does not help that in early April US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, fresh
from his former position as a board member of missile manufacturer Raytheon, called Zelensky to
promise "unwavering US support for Ukraine's sovereignty." That ties in with Moscow's
interpretation that Zelensky would never have signed his decree without a green light from
Washington.
On March 8, 2021, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks during observance of
International Women's Day in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP /
Mandel Ngan
Controlling the narrative
Sevastopol, already when I visited in December 2018 , is one of
the most heavily defended places on the planet, impervious even to a NATO attack. In his
decree, Zelensky specifically identifies Sevastopol as a prime target.
Once again, we're back to 2014 post-Maidan unfinished business.
To contain Russia, the US deep state/NATO combo needs to control the Black Sea –
which, for all practical purposes, is now a Russian lake. And to control the Black Sea, they
need to "neutralize" Crimea.
If any extra proof was necessary, it was provided by Zelensky himself on Tuesday this week
in a
phone call with NATO secretary-general and docile puppet Jens Stoltenberg.
NATO
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg gives a press conference at the end of a NATO Foreign
Ministers' meeting at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels on March 24, 2021. Photo: AFP /
Olivier Hoslet
Zelensky uttered the key phrase: "NATO is the only way to end the war in Donbass" –
which means, in practice, NATO expanding its "presence" in the Black Sea. "Such a permanent
presence should be a powerful deterrent to Russia, which continues the large-scale
militarization of the region and hinders merchant shipping."
All of these crucial developments are and will continue to be invisible to global public
opinion when it comes to the predominant, hegemon-controlled narrative.
The deep state/NATO combo is imprinting 24/7 that whatever happens next is due to "Russian
aggression." Even if the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) launch a blitzkrieg against the Lugansk
and Donetsk People's Republics. (To do so against Sevastopol in Crimea would be certified mass
suicide).
In the United States, Ron Paul has been one of the very few voices to
state the obvious: "According to the media branch of the US
military-industrial-congressional-media complex, Russian troop movements are not a response to
clear threats from a neighbor, but instead are just more 'Russian aggression.'"
What's implied is that Washington/Brussels don't have a clear tactical, much less strategic
game plan: only total narrative control.
And that is fueled by rabid Russophobia – masterfully
deconstructed by the indispensable Andrei Martyanov, one of the world's top military
analysts.
A possibly hopeful sign is that on March 31, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian
Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Mark Milley, talked on the phone about the proverbial "issues of mutual interest."
Days later, a
Franco-German statement came out, calling on "all parties" to de-escalate. Merkel and
Macron seem to have gotten the message in their videoconference with Putin – who must
have subtly alluded to the effect generated by Kalibrs, Kinzhals and assorted hypersonic
weapons if the going gets tough and the Europeans sanction a Kiev blitzkrieg.
French
President Emmanuel Macron speaks as German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on after a
German-French Security Council video conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on February 5,
2021. Photo: AFP / Thibault Camus
The problem is Merkel and Macron don't control NATO. Yet Merkel and Macron at least are
fully aware that if the US/NATO combo attacks Russian forces or Russian passport holders who
live in Donbass, the devastating response will target the command centers that coordinated the
attacks.
What does the hegemon want?
As part of his current Energizer bunny act, Zelensky made an extra eyebrow-raising move.
This past Monday, he visited Qatar with a lofty delegation and clinched
a raft of deals , not circumscribed to LNG but also including direct Kiev-Doha flights;
Doha leasing or buying a Black Sea port; and strong "defense/military ties" – which could
be a lovely euphemism for a possible transfer of jihadis from Libya and Syria to fight Russian
infidels in Donbass.
Right on cue, Zelensly meets Turkey's Erdogan next Monday. Erdogan's intel services run the
jihadi proxies in Idlib, and dodgy Qatari funds are still part of the picture. Arguably, the
Turks are already transferring those "moderate
rebels" to Ukraine. Russian intel is meticulously monitoring all this activity.
A series of informed discussions – see, for instance, here and here
– is converging on what may be the top three targets for the hegemon amid all this mess,
short of war: to provoke an irreparable fissure between Russia and the EU, under NATO auspices;
to crash the Nord Steam 2 pipeline; and to boost profits in the weapons business for the
military-industral complex.
So the key question then is whether Moscow would be able to apply a Sun Tzu move short of
being lured into a hot war in the Donbass.
On the ground, the outlook is grim. Denis Pushilin, one of the top leaders of the Lugansk
and Donetsk people's republics, has stated that the chances of avoiding war are "extremely
small." Serbian sniper Dejan Beric – whom I met in Donetsk in 2015 and who is a certified
expert on the ground – expects a Kiev attack in early May .
The extremely controversial Igor Strelkov, who may be termed an exponent of "orthodox
socialism," a sharp critic of the Kremlin's policies who is one of the very few warlords who
survived after 2014, has unequivocally
stated that the only chance for peace is for the Russian army to control Ukrainian
territory at least up to the Dnieper river. He stresses that a war in April is "very likely";
for Russia war "now" is better than war later; and there's a 99% possibility that Washington
will not fight for Ukraine.
On this last item at least Strelkov has a point; Washington and NATO want a war fought to
the last Ukrainian.
Rostislav Ischenko, the top Russian analyst of Ukraine whom I had the pleasure of meeting in
Moscow in late 2018, persuasively argues
that, "the overall diplomatic, military, political, financial and economic situation powerfully
requires the Kiev authorities to intensify combat operations in Donbass.
"By the way," Ischenko added, "the Americans do not give a damn whether Ukraine will hold
out for any time or whether it will be blown to pieces in an instant. They believe they stand
to gain from either outcome."
Gotta defend Europe
Let's assume the worst in Donbass. Kiev launches its blitzkrieg. Russian intel documents
everything. Moscow instantly announces it is using the full authority conferred by the UNSC to
enforce the Minsk 2 ceasefire.
In what would be a matter of 8 hours or a maximum 48 hours, Russian forces smash the whole
blitzkrieg apparatus to smithereens and send the Ukrainians back to their sandbox, which is
approximately 75km north of the established contact zone.
In the Black Sea, incidentally, there's no contact zone. This means Russia may send out all
its advanced subs plus the surface fleet anywhere around the "Russian lake": They are already
deployed anyway.
Russian President Vladimir Putin looks on as Novator Design Bureau
director-general Farid Abdrakhmanov and Deputy Defense Minister Alexei Krivoruchko shake hands
during a signing ceremony for government contracts in Alabino, Moscow region, Russia. on June
27, 2019. Photo: AFP / Alexei Druzhinin / Sputnik
Once again Martyanov lays down the law when he predicts, referring to a group of Russian
missiles developed by the Novator Design Bureau: "Crushing Ukies' command and control system is
a matter of few hours, be that near border or in the operational and strategic Uki depth.
Basically speaking, the whole of the Ukrainian 'navy' is worth less than the salvo of 3M54 or
3M14 which will be required to sink it. I think couple of Tarantuls will be enough to finish it
off in or near Odessa and then give Kiev, especially its government district, a taste of modern
stand-off weapons."
The absolutely key issue, which cannot be emphasized enough, is that Russia will not
(italics mine) "invade" Ukraine. It doesn't need to, and it doesn't want to. What Moscow will
do for sure is to support the Novorossiya people's republics with equipment, intel, electronic
warfare, control of airspace and special forces. Even a no-fly zone will not be necessary; the
"message" will be clear that were a NATO fighter jet to show up near the frontline, it would be
summarily shot down.
And that brings us to the open "secret" whispered only in informal dinners in Brussels, and
chancelleries across Eurasia: NATO puppets do not have the balls to get into an open conflict
with Russia.
One thing is to have yapping dogs like Poland, Romania, the Baltic gang and Ukraine
amplified by corporate media on their "Russian aggression" script. Factually, NATO had its
collective behind unceremoniously kicked in Afghanistan. It shivered when it had to fight the
Serbs in the late 1990s. And in the 2010s, it did not dare fight the Damascus and Axis of
Resistance forces.
When all fails, myth prevails. Enter the US Army occupying parts of Europe to "defend" it
against – who else? – those pesky Russians.
That's the rationale behind the annual US Army
DEFENDER-Europe 21 , now on till the end of June, mobilizing 28,000 soldiers from the US
and 25 NATO allies and "partners."
This month, men and heavy equipment pre-positioned in three US Army depots in Italy, Germany
and the Netherlands will be transferred to multiple "training areas" in 12 countries. Oh, the
joys of travel, no lockdown in an open air exercise since everyone has been fully vaccinated
against Covid-19.
Pipelineistan uber alles
Nord Stream 2 is not a big deal for Moscow; it's a Pipelineistan inconvenience at best.
After all the Russian economy did not make a single ruble out of the not yet existent pipeline
during the 2010s – and still it did fine. If NS2 is canceled, there are plans on the
table to redirect the bulk of Russian gas shipments towards Eurasia, especially
China.
Connecting German infrastructure for Nord Stream 2 is in place. In this handout photo
released February 4, 2020, by the press service of Eugal, a view shows the Eugal pipeline, in
Germany. The Eugal pipeline, which will receive gas from Nord Stream 2 in the future, has
reached full pumping capacity, and the second line of the pipeline has been introduced. Photo:
AFP / Press-service of Eugal / Sputnik
In parallel, Berlin knows very well that canceling NS2 will be an extremely serious breach
of contract – involving hundreds of billions of euros; it was Germany that requested the
pipeline to be built in the first place.
Germany's energiewende ("energy transition" policy) has been a disaster. German
industrialists know very well that natural gas is the only alternative to nuclear energy. They
are not exactly fond of Berlin becoming a mere hostage, condemned to buy ridiculously expensive
shale gas from the hegemon – even assuming the egemon will be able to deliver, as its
fracking industry is in shambles. Merkel explaining to German public opinion why they must
revert to using coal or buy shale from the US will be a sight to see.
As it stands, NATO provocations against NS2 proceed unabated – via warships and
helicopters. NS2 needed a permit to work in Danish waters, and it was granted only a month ago.
Even as Russian ships are not as fast in laying pipes as the previous ships from Swiss-based
Allseas
, which backed down, intimidated by US sanctions, the Russian Fortuna is making steady
progress, as noted by analyst Petri Krohn: one kilometer a day on its best days, at least 800
meters a day. With 35 km left, that should not take more than 50 days.
Conversations with German analysts reveal a fascinating shadowplay on the energy front
between Berlin and Moscow – not to mention Beijing. Compare it with Washington: EU
diplomats complain there's absolutely no one to negotiate with regarding NS2. And even assuming
there would be some sort of deal, Berlin is inclined to admit Putin's judgment is correct: the
Americans are "not agreement-capable." One just needs to look at the record.
Behind the fog of war, though, a clear scenario emerges: the deep state/NATO combo using
Kiev to start a war as a Hail Mary pass to ultimately bury NS2, and thus German-Russian
relations.
At the same time, the situation is evolving towards a possible new alignment in the heart of
the "West": US/UK pitted against Germany/France. Some Anglosphere exceptionals are certainly
more Russophobic than others.
The toxic encounter between Russophobia and Pipelineistan will not be over even if NS2 is
completed. There will be more sanctions. There will be an attempt to exclude Russia from SWIFT.
The proxy war in Syria will intensify. The hegemon will go no holds barred to keep creating all
sorts of geopolitical harassment against Russia.
What a nice wag-the-dog op to distract domestic public opinion from massive money printing
masking a looming economic collapse. As the empire crumbles, the narrative is set in stone:
it's all the fault of "Russian aggression."
Well, I'm hoping the Ukrainians will finally remember Bernard Lewis's warning about the
U.S. and realize they are being used like a Kleenex: "America is harmless as an enemy but
treacherous as a friend."
Americans have had it and will never tolerate sending combat troops into a Russia/Ukraine
conflict no matter how much rah-rah let's you and him fight we'll hold your coat for you,
faux patriotism the lugenpresse throw at them. Those of us who volunteered for the US
military in the past have learned our lesson.
"The problem is Merkel and Macron don't control NATO." I don't know how a decision is made
whether NATO will go to war or not but if Germany and France have no say in whether their
soldiers will be sent to war or not, that must by a very scary thought for them.
I found the following analysis interesting and I think it makes sense. It suggests France
and Germany have a say in matters and that they oppose any offensive Ukraine has in mind. The
commentator analyzes the diplomatic language and Germany and France appear to be fed up.
Without coming out and saying so directly, they see things more as Russia does than Ukraine.
It's very unfortunate things have developed this way for Ukraine. In addition, if Merkel
wants to be perceived as a complete failure as chancellor in Germany, only then will she let
NS2 be stopped from being completed. This analysis suggests there may be some strain between
France and Germany versus the USA.
I do have to disagree. If Ukraine start a war Russia must take back all eastern part of
Ukraine that has prevalent Russian population. Odessa and Zaporozhie is particularly
important. Russia must also tale all Kiev area back.
1. Senior Ukrainian officers were once Soviet officers. They, and most of their troops,
don't want to fight Russians and know it's foolish. The Ukrainian army will crumble if they
come in contact with regular Russian troops. It's not that they are cowards, but sane. It
would be like Canadian troops ordered to attack across the American border.
2. The American empire is furious and concerned that its long-time puppet disobeyed
orders. Germany wants Russian gas and the empire wants that pipeline stopped. Not only to
hurt Russia, but to teach the Germans a lesson. If fighting occurs in the Ukraine, would the
Germans dare to buy natgas from evil Russians?
3. Most importantly, Israel controls the American government. A major goal is the
destruction of Syria to allow the expansion of Greater Israel, as explained in the video
below. This nearly succeeded until the Russians intervened. Fighting in Ukraine would divert
Russian military resources from Syria so that nation can be destroyed, or Russia may give up
Syrian support as part of a grand peace deal.
The Biden administration is fully supportive of finishing off Syria and Lebanon, then
moving on to destroy Iran. The new talks about Iran's nuclear program will go nowhere. It's
just a show so Biden can say he tried.
It makes all the difference when the revolving-door regulator-capture reframing is not
"USA/Nato vs Russia" -- but rather the more accurate "Raytheon (et al) vs Russia."
The modern truth is: Russia and China have governments in control of policy and industry.
The USA (and therefore also its yapping poodle collection) have Industry setting policy and
running government for their 1%-er shareholder benefits.
Part of me wants to think that the Ukies will want to fold at the last moment. Yet all
this apparent evidence points to their going for it and promptly getting their collective
noses smashed in. Those who speculate in meta-political geo-strategic analysis cannot make
sense of the moves by the largely incompetent shot-callers and their even more incompetent
minions who cut the orders to their chessmen.
Heavy pressure by the equally incompetent regime in the Di$trict of Corruption, where
carrot and stick are equally in play, is as Escobar points out, the force behind this nearly
automatic death-sentence for the Kiev regime and the poor slobs who make up the draftee
elements in the Ukrainian military.
Again, geopolitically, one wonders at the deeper string-pullers within the Pentagram, the
CIA and the mass media of mind-control and message-massaging. Is this essentially a move to
keep the American people–most particularly the edjumacated managerial and technical
classes who make up the core of the alleged "middle-class"–"on message and in
line"?
Yes, the WarDefense industry (aka Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex") insist on
ongoing wars and threats of war to maintain their profit margins for the prime owners of that
false economic basis,prime actors such as the Rottenchild Crime Clan and the rest of the
parasites clustered in City of London and Wall $treet.
How will the canny and ever wary Russians proceed? Will they operate in the manner that
Escobar proposes, by not directly employing the considerable ground-forces which now stand on
alert just to the eastwards of their mutually agreed upon Swiss-cheese border with the
Novorussians in Donetsk and Luhansk? Or will Russian strategy be somewhat more comprehensive
by liberating the rest of the primarily Russian-speaking parts of eastern and southern
Ukraine which had largely backed the overthrown legitimate government of that bedizened
composite nation and are still smarting under the heels of the Galician fascists and the
smaller grouping of Russophobic Ukrainian nationalists who still harbor nightmares about the
Bolshevik/Stalinoid Holodomar? There are, after all human considerations which may influence
Kremlin policy.
Should Russia decide to make a move, it is my projection that they would never be likely
to even attempt to occupy central Ukraine and would set a stop-line well to the east of Kiev.
Something that bemusingly intrigues me is the Belarus factor. It would appear that the Minsk
regime, smarting from the attempted coup by the Poles, Baltic states and Ukraine backing of
"pro-Westerners, may be mobilizing to get into the action and perhaps readjust their
boundaries somewhat southwards. This could indicate a countering move by the Uniates in
Galicia to make common cause with their Roman Catholic brethren in the afore-mentioned Poland
along with Lithuania and remove their lands of control from a shattered Ukraine and form a
confederation with their neighbors to the west.
There is little doubt in my mind that Russia has numerous human assets in central and
southwestern Ukraine, who along with elements of a disintegrating Ukie military, would unite
to overthrow the rotten regime in Kiev and establish a markedly neutral smaller but more
cohesive Ukraine–a natural though smaller nation which could serve as an essential
buffer between a strengthening Russia and a collection of NATO nations which would then
comprise a hodgepodge of hawks and doves, a discombobulated collection of politico-economic
entities attempting to swim their ways to calmer shores or to maintain some semblance of
"Great Reset" programming in the face of popular resistance to lockdowns and mandated
AstraGenica jabbings.
Worst possible scenario is that someone in the Pentagon-dominated NATO command complex
loses their cool and initiates a conflict that could result in planet-wide chaos and
destruction. One would hope that cooler heads will take a few hits to their expansionist
fantasies and decide to make the best of a failed bit of adventurism and bide their time --
if they feel they have any time remaining before globalist economies hit the skids, leading
to a potential collapse to the myth of progress.
Everyone gets American logic. It's the Ukrainian logic that is truly baffling. Just how
stupid do the Ukrainians have to be to attack when anyone with a brain knows what will be the
outcome?
It makes all the difference when the revolving-door regulator-capture reframing is not
"USA/Nato vs Russia" -- but rather the more accurate "Raytheon (et al) vs Russia."
The modern truth is: Russia and China have governments in control of policy and industry.
The USA (and therefore also its yapping poodle collection) have Industry setting policy and
running government for their 1%-er shareholder benefits.
You can't do any Normal business with a Crime Syndicate like the USA/ EU and or Israel.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others. Russia is so close to being self sufficient , they could
turn their back on the West and it's cut throat allies , and just look to the East until the
West implodes. They will have to destroy all armies within close proximity to their borders,
including the Ukrainian/Mercenary one. Moscow must still have Jew Oligarchy baggage, that is
making money on Wall Street and those ties need to break apart or come to a Pro Russian
agreement or else. Rename Kyiv to Berlin 1944, and Lviv to Dresden and take it from there
– and don't look back anymore. And PS : on way to Lviv, Agent Orange every F..n
Monsanto/Bayer, Dupont and Cargil farm – like they did to Vietnam.
Behind the fog of war, though, a clear scenario emerges: the deep state/NATO combo
using Kiev to start a war as a Hail Mary pass to ultimately bury NS2, and thus
German-Russian relations.
Yes but also the Ukraine needs to save those gas transit fees that will go kaput if NS2 is
completed and operational, so it is the Ukraine the one with the most immediate incentive to
start a war. Though they need just a small war, a little war to force the hands of the
Germans to cancel NS2. Problem is the Russians have promised to give the Ukrainians more than
what they bargained for. To save those gas transit fees the Ukrainians may end losing the
country to a puppet installed by the Kremlin.
Escobar, besides not naming the Jew, does not mention which side Israel is likely to
support. We can be pretty certain that whichever side Israel supports is going to be the
victor in this conflict. Turkey is also important because of the Bosphorus, and Turkey and
Israel are working together to exploit the Leviathan gas field to the detriment of Cyprus and
Syria, so Israel can jerk Turkey around like a pitbull on a chain.
The US has been moving drones into Ukraine and they now are right on the border with
Crimea. The US Marines also have a large presence in Romania, also likely including all kinds
of drones. The Israelis are among the planet's leaders in drone technology, and surely own
even more patents. Israel provides much of its drone technology to Turkey, and the
Azerbeijanis used Turkish and Israeli drones in their short war with Armenia. During this
short war the Azerbeijanis shot up all kinds of Russian equipment with their drones including
Pantsir's and ZSU-23's.
The US also has all kinds of stealth drones and missiles, likely that is one area where
they lead the entire planet.
If this assessment is correct (in Russian but comes out OK in Google translate), then the
US / NATO have to get involved to compensate for the lack of a Ukrainian air force –
and in fact the rest of their obsolete equipment.
Personally, I can't imagine US or NATO troops on the ground in the Ukraine – and I
don't see any planning for it, so what's the idea?
One possibility seems to be 1) to start the fighting 2) then start the real game, which
is a massive anti-Russian media barrage "heroic Ukrainian patriots", "Russian atrocities",
"killer Putin" etc. sufficient to finish with Nord Stream 2, divide Russia from
France/Germany, plus reanimate NATO and sanction Russia. Basically to force Europe back into
US hegemony, and away from independent decision making.
They won't have any problem with the UK (their most slavish follower) but at some point
the French and Germans are surely going to become tired of all this CIA/Neo-con BS.
[German Industrialists] are not exactly fond of Berlin becoming a mere hostage,
condemned to buy ridiculously expensive shale gas from the hegemon .
German Industrialists and financiers have been repeatedly shaken down by the hegemon for
fines related to a number of "infractions." The scuttlebutt I've heard from a number of them
is that it got old a long time ago; what point is it to participate in the US market when
your profits are repeatedly clawed back as "fines," and those in the US with whom you compete
are given a leg up not just in the US, but on the world stage. Left to most industrialists,
Germany might have gone its own way years ago. Oddly enough, it is the
Ossivergeltungswaffe who dithers over breaking ranks with the "ally" that openly spied
on her.
And even assuming there would be some sort of deal, Berlin is inclined to admit Putin's
judgment is correct: the Americans are "not agreement-capable." One just needs to look at
the record.
The most recent example would be the Doha agreement on the US withdrawal of forces and
personnel from Afghanistan. Apparently the Pentagon recently awarded a number of contracts
for contractor services in that country for some time well past the "agreed" withdrawal date,
strongly suggesting the agreement to leave was a ruse.
Unfortunately we live in a world where history is/was erased, facts don't matter or they
can be twisted to fit anything no matter how ridiculous, the present is what I say it is.
Thus US and its vassals are just interested in their today's narrative.
Ukrainian leadership is hopelessly incompetent and corrupt so will do anything Biden's gang
tells them. It's simply a depressing scenario.
Blinken poking the Ukies to attack is a Hail Mary to stop NS2. Maybe it will work,
maybe not. But a few hundred or a few thousand dead Ukies is worth the Russian boogeyman
psy-op for the empire.
""Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of War blah blah""
Contrary to what Pepe asserts the rest of the world will not give a shit. Memories of
Chechnya? The sooner Putin over runs the place the better. You can bet the Ukrainian ruling
elite, for all their gumption, have their jets all fuelled and ready with flight plans for
the US via Switzerland...
"NATO puppets do not have the balls to get into an open conflict with Russia."
Sadly not so sure.
Some has it`s own agenda, like POland, Lithuania. Not even NATO/ US are in full control over
that, and needs no more than a misstep. Like activate some system which is potentionally
dangerous for Russia.
Or in different NATO/ US bases elsewhere in continental Europe.
"to provoke an irreparable fissure between Russia and the EU, under NATO auspices"
"When all fails, myth prevails. Enter the US Army occupying parts of Europe to "defend" it
against – who else? – those pesky Russians."
This sounds to be the real goal.
For long since the US is jealous to Europe as it became more and more equal in economic and
political power, and prevail better even with this "global pandemic".
EU wants more independence, US wants it`s colony to more obidient and follow commands.
If not just occupy, but "let" Europe partly destroyed even better: the treat of dominance
reduced, and again can be the "nice savior" who helps and "brings democracy".
So seems far too real in the Ukrainian conflict Ukraine is just a side character.
Good point. They simply can't "win" anything by attacking.
The (((US))) will provide plenty of encouragement and support as long as they get
mountains of Ukrainian corpses in return. Those corpses can then be photographed and the
photos broadcast all over the world as "proof" that Putin is Hitler. Basically, Ukrainians
are being funnelled into the meat grinder for a globohmo psyop opportunity. What a way to
die...
Are you referring to the Ukraine fiasco? Would that it were so that it was just a
distraction. Just apply some reverse engineering to how Germany and Russia have a pretext to
link up energy-wise when Ukraine was a perfectly serviceable transit point until NeoCon filth
started working their magic.
Indeed, let's not worry: German Chancellor Merkel spoke to President Putin yesterday and
apparently told him she wanted to see immediate de-escalation or else she might not sell Russia
any German cars; or buy Russian vaccine; or complete Nord-Stream 2 and tie the German economy
into Russian gas supplies. Isn't realpolitik a German word originally?
"Destiny guides our fortunes more favourably than we could have expected. Look there,
Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do
battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich
ourselves. This is noble, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such
an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which
are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but
windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and
turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures."
Or labour vs. capital; or realpolitik. But Happy Friday!
GreatCaesar'sGhost 1 hour ago
No nato troops will ever set foot in Ukraine. They're trying to pressure Russia into doing
something so they can force the Germans to stop nordstream. The Ukrainians can't win here and
they're being used. Not good.
USAllDay 56 minutes ago
Germans need the gas and Russia needs the revenue. These are facts that can not
change.
GreatCaesar'sGhost 53 minutes ago
US has gas to sell. Greater Israel and their Saudi partners believe that after they
overthrow Assad they will have gas to sell. I'm not sure the constantly virtue signaling
German government will buy Russian gas if there's a war.
BeePee 43 minutes ago
Russia already sells gas. This will continue. Mistake to destablize Russia's economy.
GreatCaesar'sGhost 53 minutes ago
US has gas to sell. Greater Israel and their Saudi partners believe that after they
overthrow Assad they will have gas to sell.
I'm not sure the constantly virtue signaling German government will buy Russian gas if
there's a war.
land_of_the_few 51 minutes ago (Edited) remove link
They should just mock them mercilessly.
Formation flypasts with rainbow colored smoke, Village People blasting from frigates
buzxing them, that kind of thing.
> Russia isn't going to invade Ukraine, much as their leaders and press seem to lose
sleep endlessly over it.
This is about blocking North Stream 2. Ukrainian government is a puppet in a bigger
geopolitical game and will do what they are told to do.
If they were ordered to invade Donbass Russia might intervene. I think Russia movement of
troupes was a pre-preemptive move to block a joint plan of the USA and some Eastern(Poland) and
Western European states to create a crisis and bury North Stream 2 by the attempt to retake the
territory by force (Georgian scenario).
While writing resolutions in which they essentially declare war on Russia (retaking Crimea
by force as a new Ukrainian government policy) Ukrainian government clearly understands that
any significant military move in Donbass might be the end of Ukraine as we know it. So they are
afraid to do anything without strong Western support, including military. That's why Biden
administration made a statement about the support of Ukrainian sovereignty and, at the same
time, probably pushing Ukrainians to make a move in Donbass.
There are two parts of Ukraine with different history and affiliations: Eastern Ukraine and
Western Ukraine.
The regime in Kiev represents Western Ukrainian nationalism and it is/was to a certain
degree resented in Eastern Ukraine (where manufacturing is concentrated) as provincial,
incompetent and corrupt. It is controlled by a handful of oligarchs -- a classic neoliberal
oligarchic republic so to speak.
That does not mean that Eastern Ukraine would welcome Russians now (after seven years of
anti-Russian propaganda by the government), but please do not write about things you have no
clue: in 2014 the situation was different with several uprisings against Provisional government
in Eastern Ukraine.
IMHO it was Putin's decision to limit Russia role that led to the current situation. As far
as I know the only large city which supported Provisional government in the East in 2014 was
Dnepropetrovsk ( the home town of oligarch Kolomoyskyi, and nationalistic politicians Kuchma
and Tymoshenko.)
IMHO Putin has the ability to occupy all Eastern Ukraine without a single shot and establish
separate "Eastern Ukrainian republic" government. But he decided not to do as the it would
result in crushing Western sanctions (which was Washington's policy from the very beginning
(google Nulangate); and that's why 2014 EuroMaidan putsch was organized and financed by the USA
with Poland, Germany and Sweden in supporting roles).
Add to this the necessary to feed pensioners (mentioned above) and the amount of money
necessary to resurrect the manufacturing which would compete with Russian's own. Which Russia
probably could not afford at the time.
REPLYHOLE IN HEAD IGNORED04/04/2021
at 4:44 am
> Russia isn't going to invade Ukraine, much as their leaders and press seem to lose
sleep endlessly over it.
This is about blocking North Stream 2. Ukrainian government is a puppet in a bigger
geopolitical game and will do what they are told to do.
If they were ordered to invade Donbass Russia might intervene. I think Russia movement of
troupes was a pre-preemptive move to block a joint plan of the USA and some Eastern(Poland) and
Western European states to create a crisis and bury North Stream 2 by the attempt to retake the
territory by force (Georgian scenario).
While writing resolutions in which they essentially declare war on Russia (retaking
Crimea by force as a new Ukrainian government policy) Ukrainian government clearly understands
that any significant military move in Donbass might be the end of Ukraine as we know it. So
they are afraid to do anything without strong Western support, including military. That's why
Biden administration made a statement about the support of Ukrainian sovereignty and, at the
same time, probably pushing Ukrainians to make a move in Donbass.
There are two parts of Ukraine with different history and affiliations: Eastern Ukraine
and Western Ukraine.
The regime in Kiev represents Western Ukrainian nationalism and it is/was to a certain
degree resented in Eastern Ukraine (where manufacturing is concentrated) as provincial,
incompetent and corrupt. It is controlled by a handful of oligarchs -- a classic neoliberal
oligarchic republic so to speak.
That does not mean that Eastern Ukraine would welcome Russians now (after seven years of
anti-Russian propaganda by the government), but please do not write about things you have no
clue: in 2014 the situation was different with several uprisings against Provisional government
in Eastern Ukraine.
IMHO it was Putin's decision to limit Russia role that led to the current situation. As
far as I know the only large city which supported Provisional government in the East in 2014
was Dnepropetrovsk ( the home town of oligarch Kolomoyskyi, and nationalistic politicians
Kuchma and Tymoshenko.)
IMHO Putin has the ability to occupy all Eastern Ukraine without a single shot and
establish separate "Eastern Ukrainian republic" government. But he decided not to do as the it
would result in crushing Western sanctions (which was Washington's policy from the very
beginning (google Nulangate); and that's why 2014 EuroMaidan putsch was organized and financed
by the USA with Poland, Germany and Sweden in supporting roles).
Add to this the necessary to feed pensioners (mentioned above) and the amount of money
necessary to resurrect the manufacturing which would compete with Russian's own. Which Russia
probably could not afford at the time.
REPLY HOLE IN HEAD IGNORED 04/04/2021
at 4:44 am
Russia a major producer of electricity using nuclear power. Which is preferable to Wind
turbines or burning money for solar panels (Russia is a northern country with no so much
sunlight). As simple as that.
When it comes to climate change and the need to update and innovate in the face of changing
weather patterns, Russian President Vladmir Putin's strategy is simple: deny, deny, deny. While
other fossil-fuel dependent economies
scramble to diversify or
race to build up clean energy infrastructure in a bid to put themselves at the forefront of
the coming renewable revolution, Russia has taken the opposite approach: the world's largest
nation is sitting tight and waiting to be the last man standing in a shrinking fossil fuels
market. While Russia, with its massive land area and enviable geopolitical positioning, is
extremely resource-rich, its oil is more costly to extract than other oil superpowers.
Nevertheless, Putin is trying to outlast them all as they are forced to transition away from
the oil due to falling prices and political pressure. The world is still decades away from
weaning itself off fossil fuels and there will potentially be even more money to be made as the
competition begins to fall away. The calculation Russia needs to make is when will its oil
industry move from being a profit driver to a burden as demand plateaus and then falls.
While the potential for profit is undeniably in oil markets, when it comes to the clean
energy transition, Russia is
being left behind . They are being left behind in terms of infrastructure, innovation, and
a dogmatic attachment to business as usual. "Putin and other Russian leaders have periodically
flirted with outright climate change denial," Bloomberg reports. "Scientists have estimated
that melting permafrost could cost Russia $84 billion in infrastructure damage by mid-century
while releasing vast quantities of greenhouse gases. Carbon Action Tracker, a non-profit, gives
Russia's climate policies a bottom grade of 'critically insufficient.'"
While Russia will soon be feeling the pain from the side effects of climate change, there
will also be a silver lining to all that northern ice-melt for the world's largest country. The
receding ice caps will unveil a veritable treasure trove of oil, gas, and
minerals never before accessible - not to mention an extremely valuable set of new sea
lanes to ease access for trade. The tradeoffs for this new natural capital, however, are so
costly in terms of devastating ecological externalities that almost
all of the world's biggest banks won't touch it .
In the meantime, Russia has doubled down on natural gas. "In recent years, the Kremlin has
bet the country's economic and geopolitical future on natural gas," Bloomberg reports,
"building new pipelines to China, Turkey, and Germany, while aiming to take a quarter of the
global LNG market, up from zero in 2008 and around 8% today." Within the vast expanses of
Russia, where entire regions are reliant on fossil fuel for their entire economy, the
prevailing belief is that natural gas is the future, and will always be cheaper domestically
than renewable alternatives. "What's the alternative? Russia can't be an exporter of clean
energy, that path isn't open for us," Konstantin Simonov, director of the Moscow consultancy
National Energy Security Fund, told Bloomberg. "We can't just swap fossil fuel production for
clean energy production, because we don't have any technology of our own."
While renewable energy is still an emerging sector, with plenty of potential opportunities
for Russia to stake its claim in the global clean energy game, it's clear that the Kremlin has
a long way to go in terms of ideological politicking for that to become possible.
"... The adjectives used in the FAZ to describe Putin had overwhelmingly negative connotations, including: threatening, rough, aggressive, confrontational, anti-westem, power-political, untruthful, cool, calculated, cynical, harsh, abrasive, non-substantive (arguments) and implausible (arguments). ..."
"... The words used to describe Obama had a completely different tone: committed, fanatically welcomed, enthusiastic, conciliatory, praised, hopeful and resolute ..."
"... The former FAZ Washington correspondent Matthias Rub wrote the adulation to US President Bush cited above shortly before the Iraq War began in 2003, in violation of international law. One year later he received the Arthur F. Bums Award for a different article. The Arthur F. Bums Award is presented by Germany's Foreign Minister. So, who selects the winners today? ..."
An interesting undergraduate thesis from Munich put together a list of the adjectives and
adverbs used in select articles about Obama (USA) and Putin (Russia) in the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung between 2000 and 2012.
The words selected were ones that implied a value judgement in their description of Obama or
Putin. The adjectives used in the FAZ to describe Putin had overwhelmingly negative
connotations, including: threatening, rough, aggressive, confrontational, anti-westem,
power-political, untruthful, cool, calculated, cynical, harsh, abrasive, non-substantive
(arguments) and implausible (arguments).
The words used to describe Obama had a completely different tone: committed, fanatically
welcomed, enthusiastic, conciliatory, praised, hopeful and resolute :' In plain language:
The reporting in the once renowned FAZ newspaper is definitely not neutral, independent,
unbiased nor objective these days. So where is this bias coming from? Does this style of
reporting possibly have anything to do with the closeness that the FAZ's writers have to
certain elites and powerful circles? In the following chapters, we won't only be considering
the FAZ when it comes to this question. We will also look into why the mainstream media doesn't
even want you to imply that they're close to the elite.
Chapter one, scene two: A few years ago, the reporter Thomas Leif painted a rather
conspiratorial picture in the ARD television documentary Strippenzieher und Hinterzimmer
(Puppet Masters and Back Rooms). In it, journalists, ministers and party officials appeared to
all be sitting in the same boat, isolated from the common folk and getting along like
gangbustcrs. Viewers got to see how politics is made in secret meetings behind the scenes. The
film was about a corrupt world of cozy connections.4 What was being shown, however, wasn't a
conspiracy theory.
The film was controversial, because die people being shown in it were the perpetrators. They
thought that this form of corruption was completely normal. The journalists portrayed in the
documentary took it as an affront when they were simply asked about these secret networks
operating in the background.
... ... ...
The manipulation of the readers has been noticeable at the FAZ for many years. Dr. Heinz
Loquai gave a famous speech in 2003 where he said the following about the FAZ:
We learn from the FAZ's Washington correspondents that, among other things, Bush
studies the bible every day, prays regularly and bases his actions on the question, "What
would Jesus do?" The president is a "paragon of modesty and close to his people." There may
be "an arrogant bone or two in Bush's body," but he is "a man of love." His "portion of
missionary fervor" is "softened by statesmanlike prudence," through "patient waiting," the
"natural political talent's decision" has been "expressed." Although Bush may know that he is
not an intellectual, he can rely on "his political instinct, his wisdom and his natural
wit."
So (...) lectured, we can continue to count on the judgement and objectivity of leading
German daily and weekly newspapers' America correspondents! Embedded with the allied troops,
embedded in the political-media network in Washington - what's the difference? 16
The former FAZ Washington correspondent Matthias Rub wrote the adulation to US President
Bush cited above shortly before the Iraq War began in 2003, in violation of international law.
One year later he received the Arthur F. Bums Award for a different article. The Arthur F. Bums
Award is presented by Germany's Foreign Minister. So, who selects the winners today? The
jury includes, for example, the journalists Sabine Christiansen and Stefan Kornclius
(Sflddeutsche Zeitung).17 Keep these names in the mind. We will come across them and their
interesting connections quite often.
ugghhhh the propaganda channel – thesaker – continues unabated
"Putin single-handedly "resurrected" Russia in an amazingly short time"
just LOL @ single-handedly
" Putin turned Russia into the strongest military power on the planet and he completely reshaped the Russian perception
of themselves and of Russia"
strongest? zvezda channel posting youtube videos doesn't make you the strongest military power
completely reshaped? so much that still all the young Russians want to emigrate
"the country which created the best vaccine on the planet "
the best vaccine? only 4% of Russians got vaccinated, that's 6 million out of 144 millions
so much about Russians trusting Putin, LOL
-- -- -
Andrei Raevsky, do you even re-read what BS you write?!
you aren't fooling anyone but a handful of braindead followers you got there on your blog
in the real world – no one gives a shyt about Putin
the West doesn't hate Putin, they just want to loot Russia or get a cut from the loot of Russia.
Russian oligarchs want to loot Russia for themselves without giving a cut/tribute to Western oligarchs.
Putin is a non-issue, a nobody, he just follows orders of the Russian oligarchs.
But there is a real hate @ Putin – that because he is a fake, only a carefully prepared media
image. And you Andrei Raevsky are part of that propaganda effort. Putin is no savior, Putin
is not working for the betterment of Russians or humanity as a whole. He is just a facade for
Russian oligarchs. And that is what we hate . And the more you and the likes of you push
that fake image of Putin, the more the pushback and hate from us.
So go on – continue.
I was a believer in Putin. Then I saw the light. Now I would have no quarrel putting a bullet in
Putin's head. Analyze this!
In truth, the West has a very long list of reasons for which to hate Putin and everything
Russian, but I believe that there is one reason which trumps them all: the western leaders
sincerely believed that they had defeated the USSR in the Cold War (even medals were
made to commemorate this event) and following the collapse of the former superpower and the
coming to power of a clueless, alcoholic puppet, the triumph of the West was total. At least in
appearance. The reality, as always, was much more complicated.
The causes and mechanisms of the collapse of the Soviet Union are not our topic today, so I
will just indicate that I believe that the USSR never "collapsed" but that it was deliberately
destroyed by the CPSU apparatus which decided to break up the country in order for the Party
and Nomenklatura to remain in power, not at the helm of the USSR, but at the helm of the
various ex-Soviet republics. Weak leaders and ideologies which nobody really believes in do not
inspire people to fight for their rulers. This is why the Russian monarchy collapsed, this is
why the masonic democracy of Kerenskii collapsed and this is why the Soviet Union collapsed
(this is also one of the most likely reasons for the final collapse of the US as a state).
Putin, who was not very well known in the West or, for that matter, in Russia, came to power
and immediately reversed Russia's course towards the abyss. First, he dealt with the two most
urgent threats, the oligarchs and the Wahabi insurrection in the Caucasus. Many Russians,
including myself, were absolutely amazed at the speed and determination of his actions. As a
result, Putin suddenly found himself one of the most popular leaders in Russian history.
Initially, the West went into a kind of shock, then through a process reminiscent of the
so-called " Kübler-Ross model " and,
finally, the West settled into a russophobic frenzy not seen since the Nazi regime in Germany
during WWII.
In this sequence, Russia committed two very different types of "crimes" (from the
AngloZionist point of view, of course):
The minor crime of doing what Russia actually did
and The much bigger crime of never asking the Empire for the permission to do so
The West likes to treat the rest of the planet like some kind of junior partner, with very
limited autonomy and almost no real agency (the best example is what the USA did to countries
like Poland or Bulgaria). If and when any such "junior" country wants to do something in its
foreign policy, it absolutely has to ask for permission from its AngloZionist Big Brother. Not
doing so is something akin to sedition and revolt. In the past, many countries were "punished"
for daring to have an opinion or, even more so, for daring to act on it.
It would not be inaccurate to summarize it all by saying that Putin flipped his finger to
the Empire and its leaders. That "crime of crimes" was what really triggered the current
anti-Russian hysteria. Soon, however, the (mostly clueless) leaders of the Empire ran into an
extremely frustrating problem: while the russophobic hysteria did get a lot of traction in the
West, in Russia it created a very powerful blowback because of a typical Putin "judo" move: far
from trying to suppress the anti-Russian propaganda of the West, the Kremlin used its power to
make it widely available (in Russian!) through the Russian media (I wrote about this in some
detail here and here ).
The direct result of this was two fold: first, the CIA/MI6 run "opposition" began to be
strongly associated with the russophobic enemies of Russia and, second, the Russian general
public further rallied around Putin and his unyielding stance. In other words, calling Putin a
dictator and, of course, a "new Hitler", the western PSYOPs gained some limited advantage in
the western public opinion, but totally shot itself in the leg with the Russian public.
I refer to this stage as the " phase one anti-Putin strategic PSYOP ". As for the
outcome of this PSYOP, I would not only say that it almost completely failed, but I think that
it had the exact opposite intended effect inside Russia.
A change of course was urgently needed.
The redirection of US PSYOPs against Putin and Russia
I have to admit that I have a very low opinion of the US intelligence community, including
its analysts. But even the rather dull US "Russia area specialist" eventually figured out that
telling the Russian public opinion that Putin was a "dictator" or a "killer of dissidents" or a
"chemical poisoner of exiles" resulted in a typically Russian mix of laughter and support for
the Kremlin. Something had to be done.
So some smart ass somewhere in some basement came up with the following idea: it makes no
sense to accuse Putin of things which make him popular at home, so let's come up with a new
list of accusations carefully tailored to the Russian public.
Let's call this a " phase two anti-Putin PSYOP operation ".
And this is how the "Putin is in cahoots with" thing began. Specifically, these accusations
were deployed by the US PSYOPs and those in its pay:
Putin is disarming Syria Putin will
sell out the Donbass Putin is a puppet of Israel and, specifically, Netanyahu Putin is a
corrupt traitor to the Russian national interests Putin is allowing Israel to bomb Syria (see
here )
Putin is selling the Siberian riches to China and/or Putin is subjugating Russia to China Putin
is corrupt, weak and even cowardly Putin was defeated by Erdogan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war
The above are the main talking points immediately endorsed and executed by the US strategic
PSYOPs against Russia.
Was it effective?
Yes, to some degree. For one thing, these "anti-Russian PSYOPS reloaded" were immediately
picked up by at least part of what one could call the "internal patriotic opposition" (much of
it very sincerely and without any awareness of being skillfully manipulated). Even more toxic
was the emergence of a rather loud neo-Communist (or, as Ruslan Ostashko often calls them
"emo-Marxist") movement (I personally refer to as a sixth
column ) which began an internal anti-Kremlin propaganda campaign centered on the
following themes:
"All is lost" (
всепропальщики
): that is thesis which says that nothing in Russia is right, everything is either wrong or
evil, the country is collapsing, so is its economy, its science, its military, etc. etc. etc.
This is just a garden variety of defeatism, nothing more. "Nothing was achieved since Putin
came to power": this is a weird one, since it takes an absolutely spectacular amount of mental
gymnastics to not see that Putin literally saved Russia from total destruction. This stance
also completely fails to explain why Putin is so hated by the Empire (if Putin did everything
wrong, like, say Eltsin did, he would be adored in the West, not hated!). All the elections in
Russia were stolen. Here the 5th (CIA/MI6 run) column and 6th column have to agree: according
to both of them, there is absolutely no way most Russians supported Putin for so many years and
there is no way they support him now. And nevermind the fact that the vast majority of polls
show that Putin was, and still is, the most popular political figure in Russia.
Finally, the big SNAFU with the pension reform definitely did not help Putin's ratings, so
he had to take action: he "softened" some of the worst provisions of this reform and,
eventually, he successfully sidelined some of the worst Atlantic Integrationists, including
Medvedev himself.
Sadly, some putatively pro-Russian websites, blogs and individuals showed their true face
when they jumped on the bandwagon of this 2nd strategic PSYOP campaign, probably with the hope
to either become more noticed, or get some funding, or both. Hence, all the nonsense about
Russia and Israel working together or Putin "selling out" we have seen so many times recently.
The worst thing here is that these websites, blogs and individuals have seriously misled and
distressed some of the best real friends of Russia in the West.
None of these guys ever address a very simple question: if Putin is such a sellout, and if
all is lost, why does the AngloZionist Empire hate Putin so much? In almost 1000 years of
warfare (spiritual, cultural, political, economic and military) against Russia, the leaders of
the West have always hated real Russian patriots and they have always loved the (alas, many)
traitors to Russia. And now, they hate Putin because he is such a terrible leader?
This makes absolutely no sense.
Conclusion: is a war inevitable now?
The US/NATO don't engage in strategic PYSOPs just because they like or dislike somebody. The
main purpose of such PSYOPs is to break the other side's will to resist . This was also
the main objective of both (phase one and phase two) anti-Putin PSYOPs. I am happy to report
that both phases of these PYSOPs failed. The danger here is that these failures have failed to
convince the leaders of the Empire of the need to urgently change course and accept the
"Russian reality", even if they don't like it.
Ever since "Biden" (the "collective Biden", of course, not the potted plant) Administration
(illegally) seized power, what we saw was a sharp escalation of anti-Russian statements. Hence,
the latest " uhu, he is a killer " -- this was no mistake by a senile mind, this was a
carefully prepared
declaration. Even worse, the Empire has not limited itself to just words, it also did some
important "body moves" to signal its determination to seek even further confrontation with
Russia:
There has been a lot of sabre-rattling coming from the West, mostly some rather
ill-advsied (or even outright stupid) military maneuvers near/along the Russian border. As I
have explained it a billion times, these maneuvers are self-defeating from a military point of
view (the closer to the Russian border, the more dangerous for the western military
force). Politically, however, they are extremely provocative and, therefore, dangerous. The
vast majority of Russian analysts do not believe that the US/NATO will openly attack Russia, if
only because that would be suicidal (the current military balance in Europe is strongly in
Russia's favor, even without using hypersonic weapons). What many of them now fear is that
"Biden" will unleash the Ukronazi forces against the Donbass, thereby "punishing" both the
Ukraine and Russia (the former for its role in the US presidential campaign). I tend to agree
with both of these statements.
At the end of the day, the AngloZionist Empire was always racist at its core, and that
empire is still racist : for its leaders, the Ukrainian people are just cannon fodder, an
irrelevant third rate nation with no agency which has outlived its utility (US analysts do
understand that the US plan for the Ukraine has ended in yet another spectacular faceplant such
delusional plans always end up with, even if they don't say so publicly). So why not launch
these people into a suicidal war against not only the LDNR but also Russia herself? Sure,
Russia will quickly and decisively win the military war, but politically it will be a PR
disaster for Russia as the "democratic West" will always blame Russia, even when she clearly
did not attack first (as was the case in 08.08.08, most recently).
I have already written about
the absolutely disastrous situation of the Ukraine three weeks ago so I won't repeat it
all here, I will just say that since that day things have gotten even much worse: suffice to
say that the Ukraine has moved a lot of heavy armor to the line of contact while the regime in
Kiev has now banned the import of Russian toilet paper (which tells you what the ruling gang
thinks of as important and much needed measures). While it is true that the Ukraine has become
a totally failed state since the Neo-Nazi coup, there is now a clear acceleration of the
collapse of not only the regime or state, but of the country as a whole. Ukraine is falling
apart so fast that one could start an entire website tracking only all this developing horror,
not day by day, but, hour by hour. Suffice to say that "Ze" has turned out to be even worse
than Poroshenko. The only thing Poroshenko did which "Ze" has not (yet!) is to start a war.
Other than that, the rest of what he did (by action or inaction) can only be qualified as "more
of the same, only worse".
Can a war be prevented?
I don't know. Putin gave the Ukronazis a very stern warning (" grave consequences for Ukraine's statehood as such ").
I don't believe for one second that anybody in power in Kiev gives a damn about the Ukraine or
the Ukrainian statehood, but they are smart enough to realize that a Russian counter-attack in
defense of the LDNR and, even more so, Crimea, might include precision "counter-leadership"
strikes with advanced missiles. The Ukronazi leaders would be well-advised to realize that they
all have a crosshair painted on their heads. They might also think about this: what happened to
every single Wahabi gang leader in Chechnya since the end of the 2nd Chechen war? (hint: they
were all found and executed). Will that be enough to stop them?
Maybe. Let's hope so.
But we must now keep in mind that for the foreseeable future there are only two options left
for the Ukraine: " a horrible ending or a horror without end " (Russian
expression).
The best scenario for the people of the Ukraine would be a (hopefully
relatively peaceful) breakup of the country
into manageable parts . The worst option would definitely be a full-scale war against
Russia.
Judging by the rhetoric coming out of Kiev these days, most Ukrainian politicians are firmly
behind option #2, especially since that is also the only option acceptable to their overseas
masters. The Ukrainians have also adopted a new military doctrine (they call it a "military
security strategy of Ukraine") which declares Russia the aggressor state and military adversary
of the Ukraine (see here for a machine translation of the official text).
This might be the reason why Merkel and Macron recently had a videoconference with Putin
("Ze" was not invited): Putin might be trying to convince Merkel and Macron that such a war
would be a disaster for Europe. In the meantime, Russia is rapidly reinforcing her forces along
the Ukrainian border, including in Crimea.
But all these measures can only deter a regime which has no agency. The outcome shall be
decided in Washington DC, not Kiev. I am afraid that the traditional sense of total impunity of
US political leaders will, once again, give them a sense of very little risk (for them
personally or for the USA) in triggering a war in the Ukraine. The latest news on the
US-Ukrainian front is the delivery by the USN of 350 tonnes of military equipment in Odessa.
Not enough to be militarily significant, but more than enough to further egg on the regime in
Kiev to an attack on the Donbass and/or Crimea.
In fact, I would not even put it past "Biden" to launch an attack on Iran while the world
watches the Ukraine and Russia go to war. After all, the other country whose geostrategic
position has been severely degraded since Russia moved her forces to Syria is Israel, the one
country which all US politicians will serve faithfully and irrespective of any costs (including
human costs for the USA). The Israelis have been demanding a war on Iran since at least 2007,
and it would be very naive to hope that they won't eventually get their way. Last, but not
least, there is the crisis which Blinken's condescending chutzpah triggered with China which,
so far, has resulted in an economic war only, but which might also escalate at any moment,
especially considering all the many recent anti-Chinese provocations by the US Navy.
Right now the weather in the eastern Ukraine is not conducive to offensive military
operations. The snow is still melting, creating very difficult and muddy road conditions
(called " rasputitsa " in Russian) which greatly inhibit the movement of forces and
troops. These conditions will, however, change with the warmer season coming, at which point
the Ukronazi forces will be ideally poised for an attack.
In other words, barring some major development, we might be only weeks away from a major
war.
We must not forget President Putin's outrageous opinion piece in the New York Times of
September 11th 2013: delivered at the same time as he had the impertinence to propose
the voluntary relinquishment of all chemical weapons by Syria -- thwarting the traditional
wholesale bombing campaign that the "Allies" were working up to. This was an unforgivable
affront to the USA -- and to Obama in particular; who had only just invoked his "red line".
It made him look ridiculous -- and a man in his position can't afford to look ridiculous.
This behaviour by Mr. Putin has never been forgotten or forgiven and it will be quite a
while before the New York Times prints another oped by him.
Russia was "back": in 2013 Russia stopped the planned US/NATO attack on Syria (the
pretext here was Syrian chemical weapons). In 2014 Russia gave her support to the
Novorussian uprising against the Ukronazi regime in Kiev and, in the same year, Russia also
used her military to make it possible for the local population to vote on a referendum to
join Russia. Finally, in 2015, Russia stunned the West with an extremely effective military
intervention in Syria.
Don't forget what Russia did the Georgia's American trained and supplied military in
2009.
This was an unforgivable affront to the USA -- and to Obama in particular; who had only
just invoked his "red line". It made him look ridiculous -- and a man in his position can't
afford to look ridiculous.
Excellent observation.
To deal with contemporary western elites is, to a great extent, to deal with Satan
himself. The devil- and presumably, his minions- does not mind confrontation or opposition
anywhere as much as he hates being the object of derision.
"The devil the prowde spirite cannot endure to be mocked." -- St. Thomas More
"why does the AngloZionist Empire hate Putin so much?"
I have an explanation, but that would tend to get me labelled a "sixth columnist".
It is obvious to anyone who does not believe that Putin is the Saviour Of Russia, but just
a neoliberal politician who is moderately better than Yeltsin, and whose real alternatives,
not Quislings like Navalny but real alternatives, are all far more nationalist and not
beholden to international capital than he is. Since the 90s are now over, and the attempt to
destroy Russia has failed, how does one ensure that the country does not become even stronger
and, crucially, more assertive?
One possible answer is interesting: keep demonising the man in power, *even though you
know that demonising him hardens support behind him*. Especially since it hardens support
behind him. As long as you keep attacking him, the Russian people support him more, making it
less likely for someone who would be more nationalist and less neoliberal to take charge.
I've come to think that the whole "Putin the Devil" thing is pushed so hard by the
corporate-communist-left (aside: I do struggle these days with what to call them) mostly as a
distraction. "Hey! Look over there! A BAD MAN!" (and pay no mind to what I'm doing over here,
flooding the country with replacements, thrashing the constitution, coming up with vaccine
passports and enabling a totalitarian technocracy).
In fact, it's a necessary hallmark of ALL totalitarian leftist regimes to have a huge
"outside enemy" who threatens the very existence of the state and is used to distract from
domestic troubles. Try to find a single totalitarian state without one.
So the U.S. has everything to gain and little to lose (Biden gov thinks anyways) by
goading Ukraine into "taking back Crimea." The U.S. is committed to fight that war down the
very last Ukrainian.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced this week that the country's National
Security and Defense Council had approved a strategy that is aimed at retaking Crimea and
reintegrating the strategically important peninsula.
Christopher Caldwell delivered what I thought was a good assessment of Putin in 2017, and
this excellent piece by The Saker complements and updates it for me. I think Putin is even
more reviled than ever by the U.S. Dems, because Putin = a national-sovereignty proponent =
Trump.
I play online chess -- speedy games, and so I have a lot of experience with players from
Russia and Ukraine. They tend to favor what chess players call "quiet moves." Is this a
manner of thought, a philosophy, that can be extrapolated to government? (U.S. players, by
contrast, tend to be more impetuous and impulsive in their chess style.)
A senior official from Nord Stream 2 AG, the project company leading the Nord Stream 2 Russia to Germany natural gas
pipeline project,
has
reported
an uptick in "provocative" activity from warships and planes in the
area where the pipeline is being built
.
"Higher activity of naval vessels, airplanes and helicopters and civilian vessels of foreign states is observed in the work
area after restarted construction of the offshore segment of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, whose
actions
are often clearly provocative
," said Nord Stream AG official Andrei Minin,
according
to the Russian news agency TASS
.
Above: the pipe-laying vessel Fortuna, which is operated by the Russian company KVT-RUS
and recently targeted by US sanctions. Image via Reuters
Minin said a 1.5-mile safety zone is established around the construction area where vessels are not supposed to enter.
"Nevertheless, naval vessels of foreign countries are constantly registered near service ships performing work," he said.
He added that a Polish antisubmarine warfare airplane is
"regularly flying around
the work area at a small height and closely to the pipelay vessel."
Minin said in one provocation,
an unidentified submarine was above surface within
one mile of the pipeclay vessel Fortuna
, a ship that was
hit
with US sanctions on January 19th.
Minin said the activity indicates "obviously planned and prepared provocations."
Besides warships and planes, he said fishing vessels have also come dangerously close to the construction area.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has been in the crosshairs of the US for years, but despite sanctions and threats, Nord Stream
AG reported on Thursday
that
the project is now 95 percent complete
. Construction restarted in December 2020 after being suspended due to threats of
US sanctions.
Although it's not clear if the US is involved in these provocations, it is likely. Washington seems willing to take extreme
measures to
stop
the project and is
threatening to sanction its ally Germany
. Besides
the US, another country keen to stop the project is Ukraine,
which
stands to lose up to $3 billion
a year in gas transportation fees if the pipeline is complete.
The original Nord Stream consists of two lines that run from Vyborg, Russia, to Lubmin, Germany, near Greifswald. The new
project would add two more lines, doubling the amount of natural gas Russia could export to Germany.
play_arrow
Be of Good Cheer
1 hour ago
$3
billion loss to the Biden Crime Family. No wonder he wants to stop NS2.
NoPension
1 hour ago
^^^^^!!!
Pair Of Dimes Shift
45 minutes ago
10% to the big guy would be $300M.
Damn right the big guy's handlers are pissed.
Rid'n Dirty
1 hour ago
The
US spends over $1 trillion on "defense" with over 800 bases worldwide, yet we have no control over who
illegally takes up residence here. America has become an ugly hegemon run by Wall Street and other
corporate whores. Almost 2/3rds of the world is under some type of US sanction designed to wreck
economies and starve innocent people (Houthis, Syrians and Iranians).
Let's see if Germany can do what's best for its economy for the first time since 1945.
Based Fren
1 hour ago
It's so tiresome. We just have to stick our finger in everyone else's business.
naro
1 hour ago
Have you heard of the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Wars is their oxygen.....they are looking for
wars wherever they can find it.
ManOnFirst
59 minutes ago
a
Polish fishing vessel rammed a construction ship and blamed a faulty engine for the incident. I really
hate the Poles. They are the whiniest, most cowardly country in the world. They lament the fall of
their empire 1000 years ago and think they could still be a superpower if only the big, bad Russians
weren't so mean. Oh, and the big, bad Germans too.
SoDamnMad
27 minutes ago
I'm
surprised the Russians didn't throw a 3 liter gasoline jug with a burning rag taped to it down on that
fishing vessel. Your telling me no steerage and no engine control. Two can play this game. Poles best
not try to lay any communication cables in the next 20 years.
Games Without Frontiers
1 hour ago
(Edited)
Globalists from the US doing everything they can to prevent a more independent EU. The further away you
can get from a dying and dangerous empire the better.
2banana
1 hour ago
Established by whom?
Oh,
you just made that sh!t up in international waters in one of the most heavily used trade routes in the
world.
Minin said a 1.5-mile safety zone is established around the construction area where vessels are not
supposed to enter. "Nevertheless, naval vessels of foreign countries are constantly registered near
service ships performing work," he said.
Games Without Frontiers
1 hour ago
It's international waters but safety zones are always established on this type of industrial project,
it's hard to enforce in open waters but the West looks like a bunch of tools as usual.
not-me---it-was-the-dog
43 minutes ago
(Edited)
remove
link
....
Shipping
and shipping lanes In Danish waters, the proposed NSP2 route will run inside and along the TSS Bornholmsgat for
approximately 42 km close to the Swedish EEZ. The TSS Bornholmsgat carries most of the ship traffic to/from the
Baltic Sea and experiences over 50,000 ship passages per year. The proposed NSP2 route additionally crosses the
TSS Adlergrund in the Danish and German EEZs, which has approximately 7,000 ship movements per year. Safety
exclusion zones will be implemented around slow-moving construction vessels. Only vessels involved in the
construction of NSP2 will be allowed inside the safety zone; therefore, all other vessels not involved in
construction activities will be requested to plan their journeys around the safety zone. The shipping lanes
crossed by the proposed NSP2 route in Danish waters provide sufficient space and water depth for ships to plan
their journey and safely navigate around possible temporary obstructions. The impact on ship traffic associated
with the imposition of a safety zone is assessed to be minor and associated with local and temporary changes to
the traffic scheme. Therefore, it is assessed that there will be no significant transboundary impacts on Baltic
Sea ship traffic caused by the NSP2 project in Danish waters.
so....umm....since the work is being done in danish waters, well, gosh, i would guess the exclusion zones are set
up with......wait for it......danish authorities. and the last bits in german waters will require german
authorities to set up the exclusion zone.
Ukraine gets 3B a year in transit fees for Russian gas...
rejectnumbskull
15 minutes ago
Besides the US, another country keen to
stop
the
project is Ukraine,
which
stands to lose up to $3 billion
a year in gas transportation fees if the pipeline is complete.
Did
you not read this sentence in the article correctly?
The World Health Organization recently published its report on the
origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which has caused the Covid-19 pandemic. Most scientist agree
that the virus is of zoonotic origin and not a human construct or an accidental laboratory
escape. But the U.S. wants to put pressure on China and advised the Director General of the
WHO, Tedros Adhanom, to keep the focus on China potential culpability. He acted accordingly
when he
remarked on his agency's report:
Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this
requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist
experts, which I am ready to deploy.
The Governments of Australia, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia,
Lithuania, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and the United
States of America remain steadfast in our commitment to working with the World Health
Organization (WHO), international experts who have a vital mission, and the global
community to understand the origins of this pandemic in order to improve our collective
global health security and response. Together, we support a transparent and independent
analysis and evaluation, free from interference and undue influence, of the origins of the
COVID-19 pandemic. In this regard, we join in expressing shared concerns regarding the
recent WHO-convened study in China, while at the same time reinforcing the importance of
working together toward the development and use of a swift, effective, transparent,
science-based, and independent process for international evaluations of such outbreaks of
unknown origin in the future.
The most interesting with the above statement is the list of U.S. allied countries which
declined to support it,
Most core EU countries, especially France, Spain, Italy and Germany, are missing from it.
As is the Five-Eyes member New Zealand. India, a U.S. ally in the anti-Chinese Quad
initiative, also did not sign. This list of signatories of the Joint Statement is an
astonishingly meager result for a U.S. 'joint' initiative. It is unprecedented. It is a sign
that something has cracked and that the world will never be the same.
The first months of he Biden administration saw a rupture in the global system. First
Russia admonished the EU for its hypocritical criticism of internal Russian issues. Biden
followed up by calling Putin a 'killer'. Then the Chinese foreign minister told the Biden
administration
to shut the fuck up about internal Chinese issues. Soon thereafter Russia's and China's
foreign ministers met and agreed to deepen their alliance and to shun the U.S. dollar. Then
China's foreign minister went on a wider Middle East tour. There he reminded U.S. allies of
their
sovereignty :
Wang said that expected goals had been achieved with regard to a five-point initiative on
achieving security and stability in the Middle East, which was proposed during the visit.
"China supports countries in the region to stay impervious to external pressure and
interference, to independently explore development paths suited to its regional realities
," Wang said, adding that the countries should " break free from the shadows of big-power
geopolitical rivalry and resolve regional conflicts and differences as masters of the
region ."
Suffice to say, the China-Iran pact deeply is embedded within a new matrix Beijing hopes to
create with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Iran. The pact forms part of a new
narrative on regional security and stability.
Countries in Asia and further afield are closely watching the development of this
alternative international order, led by Moscow and Beijing. And they can also recognise the
signs of increasing US economic and political decline.
It is a new kind of Cold War, but not one based on ideology like the first incarnation.
It is a war for international legitimacy, a struggle for hearts and minds and money in the
very large part of the world not aligned to the US or NATO.
The US and its allies will continue to operate under their narrative, while Russia and
China will push their competing narrative. This was made crystal clear over these past few
dramatic days of major power diplomacy.
The global balance of power is shifting, and for many nations, the smart money might be
on Russia and China now.
The obvious U.S. countermove to the Russian-Chinese initiative is to unite its allies in a
new Cold War against Russia and China. But as the Joint Statement above shows most of those
allies do not want to follow that path. China is a too good customer to be shunned. Talk of
human rights in other countries might play well with the local electorate but what counts in
the end is the business.
Even some U.S. companies can see that the hostile path the Biden administration has
followed will only be to their detriment. Some are asking the Biden gang to
tone it down :
[Boeing] Chief Executive Dave Calhoun told an online business forum he believed a major
aircraft subsidy dispute with Europe could be resolved after 16 years of wrangling at the
World Trade Organization, but contrasted this with the outlook on China.
"I think politically (China) is more difficult for this administration and it was for
the last administration. But we still have to trade with our largest partner in the world:
China," he told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Aviation Summit.
Noting multiple disputes, he added: " I am hoping we can sort of separate intellectual
property, human rights and other things from trade and continue to encourage a free trade
environment between these two economic juggernauts. ... We cannot afford to be locked out
of that market. Our competitor will jump right in."
Before its 737 MAX debacle Boeing was the biggest U.S. exporter and China was its biggest
customer. The MAX has yet to be re-certified in China. If Washington keeps the hostile tone
against China Boeing will lose out and Europe's Airbus will make a killing.
Biden announced that "America is back" only to be told that it is no longer needed in the
oversized role that it played before. Should Washington not be able to accept that it can no
play 'unilateral' but will have to follow the real rules of international law we might be in
for some
interesting times :
Question: Finally, are you concerned that deteriorating international tensions could lead
to war?
Glenn Diesen: Yes, we should all be concerned. Tensions keep escalating and there are
increasing conflicts that could spark a major war. A war could break out over Syria,
Ukraine, the Black Sea, the Arctic, the South China Sea and other regions.
What makes all of these conflicts dangerous is that they are informed by a
winner-takes-all logic. Wishful thinking or active push towards a collapse of Russia,
China, the EU or the U.S. is also an indication of the winner-takes-all mentality. Under
these conditions, the large powers are more prepared to accept greater risks at a time when
the international system is transforming . The rhetoric of upholding liberal democratic
values also has clear zero-sum undertones as it implies that Russia and China must accept
the moral authority of the West and commit to unilateral concessions.
The rapidly shifting international distribution of power creates problems that can only
be resolved with real diplomacy. The great powers must recognize competing national
interests, followed by efforts to reach compromises and find common solutions.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin has repeatedly asked
for a summit of leaders of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council:
Putin argued that the countries that created a new global order after World War II should
cooperate to solve today's problems.
"The founder countries of the United Nations, the five states that hold special
responsibility to save civilisation, can and must be an example," he said at the sombre
memorial ceremony.
The meeting would "play a great role in searching for collective answers to modern
challenges and threats," Putin said, adding that Russia was "ready for such a serious
conversation."
Such a summit would be a chance to work on a new global system that avoids unilateralism
and block mentality. As the U.S. is now learning that its allies are not willing to follow
its anti-China and anti-Russia policies it might be willing to negotiate over a new
international system.
But as long as Washington is unable to recognize its own decline a violent attempt to
solve the issue once and for all will become more likely.
Posted by b on April 1, 2021 at 17:52 UTC |
Permalink
Very thought provoking b, I wish time off brought me back firing on all cylinders like
this!
No doubt vk will chime in here better than I but it surely cannot be a matter of "if
America decides". There are historical forces at work in this financialized phase of late
capitalism that are not grasped by the US leadership, let alone factored into intelligent
policy debates. Biden is an arch-lobbyist for the vested interests which compel the US's
unilateral and interventionist foreign policy. I'm quite sure he is incapable of 'deciding'
anything (not just mentally but institutionally). But the underlying dynamic of
world-historical change is beyond him and his whole country. The die was cast long ago when
the Soviet Union fell and the US couldn't help themselves. Junkies for unilateralism since
1989, they will keep shooting up until they OD (Boeing notwithstanding...). I suspect they
will end up like the schizoid UK, psychologically unable to accept increasing and humiliating
losses of empire until it hits the bottom of the dustbin of History.
Military actions might be suicidal for Ukraine. But this exactly what the USA wants in order
to achieve its geopolitical objectives.
The danger for Ukraine in Georgia war scenario.
Notable quotes:
"... Yesterday (Ist April) the Russians stopped sending Gas via Ukraine. ..."
"... A hot war in eastern Ukraine/Crimea appears unlikely. Ukraine no doubt perceives that such a conflict means almost certain defeat. Military defeat would likely raise existential issues for Ukraine and its leadership, given the present adverse economic conditions. The Ukrainian leadership has very little to gain by waging a war and has much to lose. ..."
"... Assuming the truth of reports of a Russian military buildup along its relevant borders, such a buildup appears to be more of a warning to Kiev - and to the U.S. - not to make any rash moves. ..."
Cute /funny, but for me this points to the script that the "west" has laid out before
hand: Washington has dialed up an attack by Ukraine, has been concentrating ukrop forces
along the line of contact, and has kept its media muzzled, total media blackout, until the
Russians respond. Then let loose with the media to make it appear that the Russians are
threatening Ukraine. And per the 08/08/08 Georgia attack, if they push the button and attack
donbass, and the Russians respond, blame it on Russian aggression. Russia attacks!! Russian
aggression!! Who's to know it isn't so? They'll all be singing from the same hymn sheet. Not
like in '08 when the EU was still semi autonomous. If Washington doesn't order an attack,
then they can still point to Russia massing troops and score a propaganda victory as Russia
is intimidating poor Ukraine. Russian aggression!! And "sell" more weapons to Ukraine and
move more "advisors" in. The cost? Who cares? They'll just keep the printing press
rolling.
"Vyacheslav Nikonov: ...How dangerous is the situation in Ukraine in light of the ongoing
US arms deliveries, the decisions adopted in the Verkhovna Rada on Tuesday, and the
statements made by the Ukrainian military, who are openly speaking about a war? Where do we
stand on the Ukrainian front?
Sergey Lavrov: There is much speculation about the documents that the Rada passed and
that President Zelensky signed. To what extent does this reflect real politics? Is it
consistent with the objective of resolving President Zelensky's domestic problem of
declining ratings?
I'm not sure what this is: a bluff or concrete plans.
According to the information published in the media, the military, for the most part, is
aware of the damage that any action to unleash a hot conflict might bring.
I very much hope this will not be fomented by the politicians, who, in turn, will be
fomented by the US-led West. ...
Like President Vladimir Putin said not long ago; but these words are still relevant,
– those who try to unleash a new war in Donbass will destroy Ukraine. "
Yesterday (Ist April) the Russians stopped sending Gas via Ukraine.
The day before Zelensky "invited" NATO into Ukraine for military exercises. In the face of the amassing of Russian troops near Ukraine's borders, setting up joint
exercises involving Ukraine Army and Allied forces, including joint air patrols with NATO
aviation in Ukraine's airspace, will help stabilize the security situation in the region,
Mashovets has told his counterpart.
UNIAN:
https://www.unian.info/politics/donbas-kyiv-invites-nato-to-hold-joint-military-drills-11374195.html
(Disclaimer; I don't know much about this site)
(The day before that there was a top level meeting of NATO "to discuss the situation in
Ukraine, which might have provoked/told Zelnsky to do the former).
Talking of provocation; here is a "twit" showing a Polish, it looks like fishing vessel,
ramming a supply ship to NordStream II pipe layers. Gangster warfare? https://twitter.com/I30mki/status/1377821400325480451
Although b says that the "Russian threat" is overdone, this buildup is certainly part of
the problem as the US wants NATO in Ukraine. Therefore the more the threat is hyped the more
they can use it to "justify" changing the facts on the ground.
One side observation is that Biden is totally absent. This situation is being run by the
US High Command (Milley et al) and others who always want moar war for the cash it brings
in. The US Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Chairman of the JCS, and National
Security Advisor have all had phone calls with their Ukrainian counterparts over the past
three days, and General Milley spoke with General Gerasimov.
Ukraine - and the West's - main problem with Russia over the Donbass is that Russia is NOT
a party to the Minsk agreement. With both France and Germany, it is a guarantor.
The signatures on the Minsk document are that of Ukraine and the so-called republics.
Ukraine can create as many laws stating it is in an 'International armed conflict' with
Russia as it likes, it does not alter the fact that no such conflict exists, nor has it been
brought to the Security Council.
But the Minsk accord HAS been approved by the Security Council.
"On March 29, the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) adopted a draft of so-called
resolution on the situation in Donbass. It seems that there is noting new in such a
document, however, it puts at stake Kiev's obligation on implementation of the Minsk
Agreement...
Such a document is not the first to be adopted in Ukraine in the last years. However,
this draft has a specific feature. It is for the first time that Ukrainian Rada adopted the
draft statement, which says that the war in Eastern Ukraine is a Russian-Ukrainian armed
conflict.
Previously, the phrase "aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine" was used
in Kiev's official documents. Today, the war in Donbass was designated as an international
armed conflict, that is, war.
Such a definition has significant juridical impact. This statement completely blocks
Kiev's implementation of the Minsk Agreements. Paragraph 2 of the Package of Measures
clearly defines that the parties to the conflict are Kiev on the one hand, Donetsk People's
Republic and Lugansk People's Republic (LDPR) on the other.
Today the Ukrainian Parliament officially declared, at the highest level, that the
parties to the conflict are Ukraine and Russia.
The resolution ensures the immediate forwarding of the text of this statement to the
national governments and parliaments of foreign states, international organizations and
their parliamentary assemblies."
The propaganda may never change but that doesn't mean the events can't be different this
time. There's video of large amounts of heavy weapons heading to the border.
A few weeks ago the US sent 350 tonnes of armoured humvees etc to Odessa. Then On 23rd
March video shows Ukraine sending trainloads of tanks etc. On 24th March Kiev passed a decree
claiming a right to retake Crimea. It's always said so but this seemed to really ratchet up
the rhetoric as it virtually commits the government to trying to retake Crimea by force.
Several videos from 29th March show different Russian trains with scores of tanks etc
heading across the Kerch bridge to Crimea, and to the Donbas border. Plus other videos of
numerous helicopters & endlessly long lines of tanks & armoured vehicles on roads as
well.
This is a buildup not seen since the hit war days of 2014.
Meanwhile a NATO Fleet enters the Black Sea for exercises with Ukraine.
A hot war in eastern Ukraine/Crimea appears unlikely. Ukraine no doubt perceives that
such a conflict means almost certain defeat. Military defeat would likely raise existential
issues for Ukraine and its leadership, given the present adverse economic conditions. The
Ukrainian leadership has very little to gain by waging a war and has much to lose.
Assuming the truth of reports of a Russian military buildup along its relevant
borders, such a buildup appears to be more of a warning to Kiev - and to the U.S. - not to
make any rash moves.
True, there is a possibility of war. Hot heads in Kiev and Washington appear always to
want war. But insofar as Washington is concerned, its domestic agenda presently appears to
hold far greater sway than does a failing outpost on the periphery of Washington's
influence.
At this juncture, then, the possibility of a significant conflict seems low by
comparison.
You are completely ignoring the overall picture. The US wants to stop Nordstream 2 and
roping NATO into a war situation with NATO would make it almost impossible to continue.
Already physical provocation is being used against the pipe-laying ships (see Stonebird's
post (2))
Personally I blame all this shit on the Nazi scum moved to the United States by Washington
after World War 2 and "weaponised". Desperate to destroy Russia and no doubt keen to acquire
Lebensraum, these Hitler fanboys and their handlers in Washington are doing everything they
can to apply Hitler's racial beliefs to Russia and make them seem like others when Russians
are as European as Hungarians, the British and the Irish and certainly more European than
Americans, Canadians and Australians. This is to make war with Russia more acceptable among
Europeans. Perhaps the Hitler fanboys in Washington need to work to improve their understand
of the Napoleonic Wars and World War 2 .
As Field Marshall Montgomery (a decent but fallible and somewhat egotistical British general)
said in 1959:
Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow". Various people have
tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know
whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: "Do not go fighting with your land
armies in China". It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives.
A few years later he repeated his Rules of War and even claimed ownership for himself:
The United States has broken the second rule of war. That is: don't go fighting with your
land army on the mainland in Asia. Rule One is, don't march on Moscow. I developed those
two rules myself.
They are rules that the Hitler Fanboys and "Lost China" morons in Washington should have
tattooed on their foreheads along with a free prefrontal lobotomy.
BTW, who are the more civilised:
The use of the procedure increased dramatically from the early 1940s and into the 1950s; by
1951, almost 20,000 lobotomies had been performed in the United States and proportionally
more in the United Kingdom. The majority of lobotomies were performed on women; a 1951
study of American hospitals found nearly 60% of lobotomy patients were women; limited data
shows 74% of lobotomies in Ontario from 1948–1952 were performed on women. From the
1950s onward, lobotomy began to be abandoned, first in the Soviet Union and Europe.
.
The idea of "weaponized immigration" in the sense of bringing in immigrant hostile to their
source state and using them to overthrow their source state was applied by Washington and
largely publicized by Yasha Levine.
As some of us are superannuated, it is good to know the views of
younger generation . Top general of Ukraine addressed the deputies of Verkhovna Rada
(parliament), declared readiness of Ukrainian army to attack with the aim of "re-integrating
the temporarily not-under-control territories", but then he somberly added the perspective of
huge civilian casualties, and then started to described Russian forces currently to the
north, east and the south of Ukraine. That was taking some time, so Anna Kolesnik, at 26 one
of the youngest deputies of the ruling party, texted "We are listening to Khomchak. We need
to get out from this country."
Looks like Zelensky signed a document or Decree No. 117/2021 the other day, to recapture
the Donbas and Crimea which could also be seen as a declaration of war towards Russia, more
in the link below:
Look at the videos of massive troop build ups. Also the conscription in both the Donbas
republics & Ukraine Donetsk & Lugansk militia veterans of 2014/15 returning from
Russia to region.
To say nothing is going to happen this time seems wishful thinking.
Of course US and European concern about Russian military build-up along Russia's borders
with European nations serves a purpose: justifying even more NATO military build-up along the
other side of the Russian border which in turn generates profit for US, British and EU arms
corporations and their shareholders in the banking and finance industries (and politics as
well), and helps NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg to think he is important.
Several nations that have borders with Russia probably need the money that NATO soldiers
might spend (mostly on entertainment like watching pole-dancing performers) while stationed
on their territories. Latvia and Lithuania among others haven't done too well since joining
the EU with something like 18 - 20% of their people living in poverty and many families
dependent on remittances sent by their relatives working overseas. Instead of their resident
Russian-speaking population being a bridge between their economies and the Russian economy,
these countries prefer to deny their Russian-speaking minorities social welfare benefits and
the right to vote, unless they can speak and read their host nations' languages at
postgraduate level, and to harass them in various petty ways.
As for Ukraine, the Zelensky govt has its work cut out trying to get Crimea back so the US
military can take over the base at Sevastopol and turn the Black Sea into a US lake, and to
clear out the Donbass region of those pesky Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics and make
it secure for oil and natural gas exploration and exploitation. The Bidens depend on Zelensky
to get those oil and natural gas resources so they can get their cut.
Anna Kolesnik, cited by Piotr Berman @ 12 has it exactly. The emigres are already
arriving. Ukraine is and has been entirely a failed state. The Uke army is a joke. So they
have a new boatload of Humvees. Probably already sold. Humvees were going to stop T72 and up.
Right. High probability Ukraine simply vanishes, local residents invite stability and the
Russian army.
The normalcy bias expressed by host and commenters is extreme. Start believing in defeat.
Defeat is going to change your outlook.
"So what made the Russians suddenly move a massive invasion force toward Ukraine?
Well, it turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky essentially signed a
declaration of war against Russia on March 24th. The document that he signed is known as
Decree No. 117/2021, and you won't read anything about it in the corporate media.
I really had to dig to find Decree No. 117/2021, but eventually I found it. I took
several of the paragraphs at the beginning of the document and I ran them through Google
translate
In accordance with Article 107 of the Constitution of Ukraine, I decree:
1. To put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine
of March 11, 2021 "On the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily
occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol"
(attached).
2. To approve the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied
territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (attached).
3. Control over the implementation of the decision of the National Security and Defense
Council of Ukraine, enacted by this Decree, shall be vested in the Secretary of the
National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
4. This Decree shall enter into force on the day of its publication
.
President of Ukraine V.ZELENSKY
March 24, 2021
Basically, this decree makes it the official policy of the government of Ukraine to retake
Crimea from Russia. Of course the Russians will never hand over Crimea willingly because they
consider it to be Russian territory, and so Ukraine would have to take it by force."
That was more than a week ago. See how much Ukraine has done about it so far? That is as
much as they are able to do. Also quoted in #17 by imo, Mike Whitney/ZH "I really had to dig
to find Decree 117"... That would be because you have been trained to look away. That decree
was well reported, just not in the house organs of the idiots.
Martyanov has a new post up. Worth reading. He cites Michael Hudson on the overwhelming
influence Russian Jews have had on US policy. I would add Polish Jews. Zbig Brezinski gets
mentioned. Ever taken a look at his pamphlet, The Grand Chessboard? It has been required
reading for all students at Thomas Pickering School (State Department) for a generation.
Theme is Ukraine is center of universe. And this is because Zbig is a Polish aristocrat with
lost family estate on outskirts of Lvov. Any fool knows emigre info is useless and emigre
aristocrat most useless of all. Any in US policy establishment who should have known better
were blinded by Russophobia. (Just a note, spellcheck on this box changed my spelling to
'Lviv' multiple times before allowing old spelling. The thought control is total.)
The deployed Russian forces are not about overwhelming the Uke army. It is an occupation
force. They will be taking territory.
I don't see mention of Ukrainian build up and increased aggression on the border of Donbass.
That's why Russian troops are building up. They are posturing defensively. It's US-backed
Zelensky that is taking the aggressive position here.
77 millions that voted for Biden are not all "f....s". Everyone has some priorities,
imperfect choices etc.
That of course applies to countries, something that "responsible media" never considers,
but this is not a good role model for us.
Russia has to rely on her resources, so defending them from military and/or financial
takeover or even nuclear blackmail is a vital interest. While there are no perfect choices,
they try to choose the better ones. And not leaving people who speak Russian to repressions
and even massacres is another vital interest.
In the current situation, Russia clearly needs a deterrence for any possible blitzkrieg
type of plan by Ukraine. But pre-emption would not be the best choice.
In turn, Ukrainian government/elite has to bet on a patron and at least make some
appearance of diligently following what the patron wants. And for that, they need to
raise/maintain tensions with Russia (and China? hard is our fate now that we are
underlings).
I'm sure oldhippie means that if the Ukies are subservient enough to the US to actually
attack, this will almost certainly be reminiscent of Georgia (rather than just some cruise
missile strikes, as some had speculated). The buildup means Russia is prepared to sweep into
the Ukraine, and probably make a special point of killing as many Nazi battalions as
possible, along with any Ukie troops who don't surrender quickly enough. I don't see them
entering Kiev, just like they didn't try to take Tblisi, but I imagine they will try to take
most of the pro-Russian territory in the East and possibly even South, until Kiev begs for a
cease-fire (just like last time), but this time the conditions of cease fire will likely be
much more strongly enforced, and then I would imagine Russia will try to establish some
assemblage of peace-keeping troops from countries they can trust (maybe Shanghi Coalition?)
so that they can withdraw their troops as soon as possible, for political reasons. Not that
it will help, but then again, I think Russia sees they'll be damned if they do, damned if
they don't, so they might as well do it. But they damn sure don't want to take ownership of
the Ukraine, just like they didn't want to own Georgia.
The Dems and Republicans are two heads of the same hydra, voting for one or the other is a
charade played on the American people and is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The US is
a state run for the benefit of the economic elite that owns the media and from which the
political elite is chosen/sponsored and which is aligned with the military elite. Presidents
will come and go, policy pretty much stays the same, its the same as CEOs of corporations -
if they don't follow profit maximization they will be booted out.
The US elites all went to the same schools (or military academy) where they were
inculcated with "American Exceptionalism" and the need for "America to be the Global
Policeman", ending up with mediocrities such as Blinken and Pompeo that thrash around as the
world moves to multipolarity and the US becomes just another important nation. It will take
at least decades for the US elite to get their heads around this, the British still haven't
as seen by their wasting of resources on showy projects such as the two useless aircraft
carriers (know as "targets" by submariners and missile batteries) to assuage its "size"
envy.
Granted I am just an armchair observer but I have been watching since before the Maidan coup.
Something feels different this time, as if the positions of the players involved have changed
somehow. I realize that the multipolar world has been incubating for some time now and that
Russia, China et.al. have been waiting patiently for USA to collapse from exhaustion, but I
rather doubt that it will do so with a wimper. There may come a time when the RF armed forces
may opt to use a quick bone crushing response to say 'enough'. While this is never an great
option to have to take due to potential reprecussions, it can sometimes be better than being
slowly swallowed by the serpeant of Mission Creep.....
"Our rhetoric [over Donbass] is absolutely constructive," Peskov said in reply to a
question. "We do not indulge in wishful thinking. Regrettably, the realities along the
engagement line are rather frightening. Provocations by the Ukrainian armed forces do take
place. They are not casual. There have been many of them."
Ukraine's economy is collapsing. Even the IMF (USA) is getting tired of giving it free
money:
Prospects for Ukraine this year to receive even the second tranche of the IMF under the $ 5
billion credit line, which Kiev agreed with the Fund last June, remain vague. Although
according to the schedule, Ukraine should have already mastered the second and third
tranches for a total of $ 1.35 billion and is about to receive the fourth tranche in the
amount of $ 0.55 billion, in fact, the first June tranche of 2.1 billion is still the only
one.
Commenting on this situation on television, Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergei Marchenko
said this week: "The IMF does not give money, because, unfortunately, as a country, we have
crumpled up some obligations and must renew them."
[...]
So far, budget holes have been bridged by historically record borrowings in December
last year (over $ 6 billion) and an increase in interest rates on domestic borrowings this
year. But last year's reserves and domestic borrowing are insufficient either to cover the
$ 9 billion budget deficit or to service the external public debt, which will cost at least
$ 8.1 billion this year (excluding the cost of securing new loans).
The IMF, by the way, is not interested in getting its money back - they already knew the
black hole they were entering into when the coup happened in 2014 - but in social
engineering: the American Empire wants a brand new province:
According to the aforementioned Sergei Marchenko, the IMF puts forward five main conditions
for returning to consideration of the issue of allocating the second tranche of the loan.
First , the Fund requires the restoration of liability, including criminal
liability, for the declaration of false information by officials and other persons for whom
such is provided in the framework of anti-corruption procedures. This type of
responsibility was actually abolished by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) in
October last year as part of the recognition of a number of provisions of the
anti-corruption law as unconstitutional. Although almost the entire so-called
anti-corruption infrastructure in a format imposed by the West contradicts the
Constitution, the judges are concerned about this problem mainly because of the
infringement of their rights. Since then, Zelenskiy has effectively blocked the work of the
KSU, making a number of decisions that clearly go beyond his constitutional powers. And
last December, the Verkhovna Radaeven restored responsibility for declaring inaccurate
data. But within the framework of the struggle for control over the anti-corruption
infrastructure, the "seven-embassy" (the ambassadors of the G7 countries) did not even
think that responsibility had been restored.
Secondly , we are talking about the restoration of the so-called independence of
the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), that is, the accountability of the body to
Western curators, their actual appointment and accountability of the head of NABU, etc. and
imply the legal consolidation of the full control of the West over the entire
anti-corruption infrastructure, which in its essence is a parallel structure of government
in the state. After amending the law on NABU and recognizing as unconstitutional the
appointment of Artem Sytnik, a protege of the West, by the head of NABU Zelenskiy never
dared to fire him. But even such a manifestation of loyalty to the "seven-embassy" seemed
not enough.
Thirdly , the Fund demands urgently to "reform" the High Council of Justice, that
is, to transfer the judicial branch of power under the control of the West - by analogy
with anti-corruption bodies. In this issue, Ukraine is showing the greatest resistance so
far. Moreover, it comes both from the judges themselves and from representatives of other
branches of government. For obvious reasons: the surrender of the judicial system will
destroy even the miserable remnants of sovereignty, and most importantly, it will carry
serious risks both for judges and for various top-level officials.
Fourth and fifth - issues of the gas market and the electricity market. In the
context of these markets, the Fund is interested in the abolition of tariffs [n.t. -
probably it means here "subsidies"] for the population with a corresponding increase in
prices. The Ukrainian, let's say, elites just do not care about the problems of the
population - that is why the refusal to regulate gas prices for the population last year
became one of the first fulfilled requirements of the IMF. However, when winter came, gas
prices skyrocketed and social protests broke out across the country , and gas price
regulation had to be urgently returned. Of course, only for a while - first until April,
now until May. But the Fund did not like this either: just the other day, the head of the
IMF office in Ukraine, Jost Lyngman, called a return to gas price control in an ineffective
way of subsidizing households. Exactly the same applies to electricity prices - the tariff
for the population was raised in winter, but the Fund wants the regulated tariff to
disappear altogether. The Ukrainian authorities are, of course, ready to meet the IMF
halfway on these issues. But so that social protests do not completely reset her
ratings.
The article also mentions that Ukraine effectively cannot borrow elsewhere in the "free
market" because its bonds are rated "junk" (this we already knew, since it's been so for some
years now) and that its "borrowing rates" (interest rates) are at 12% (bonds) and 6.5%
(central bank's). In other words, Ukraine will disappear as a sovereign country, one way
(outright loss of the Eastern regions, reduction to a impoverished para-Polish rump state) or
the other (become a proto-colony of the USA a la Puerto Rico). My guess is Zelensky is
calculating an all-out war to reconquer the richer eastern regions, followed by a triumphal
accession to NATO, to be the only way out for Ukraine as a nation-state.
If Ukraine attacks the eastern provinces, there will be a repeat of Georgia 2008. The Russian
counter will be ferocious.
But Ukraine is just a puppet for America, which will use, abuse and even lose Ukraine for
*other purposes*.
Those other purposes are fortifying European subordination to NATO, cancelling Nord Stream
2 and breaking any German and French rapprochement with Moscow. US hegemony is in fact
conditional on a climate of hostility between Europe and Russia in general, and between
Germany and Moscow in particular. Hence the need to provoke Germany to cancel NS2. The
Navalny operation didn't work, and the sanctions didn't work either. So it's on to Plan C,
which might sacrifice Ukraine for the greater project of US empire.
In the bigger picture, the strategy is to globalize NATO against China. This is the Biden
regime's specific strategy of provoking minor conflicts to fortify alliances and bloc
politics for taking on China and Russia. Ukraine is just disposable trash in this game.
That Merkel and Macron just met with Putin is further evidence of the unlikeliness of war.
Frau Merkel in particular has an interest in preventing a war because it is Germany who needs
the Nordstream pipeline (to Washington's displeasure); the Russians can just as easily sell
their natural gas to China if Nordstream falters. Thus the Germans are more likely to exert
pressure on Ukraine to forebear than they are to let Ukraine loose the dogs of war.
I agree with you, oldhippie @ 20. And thanks to b and other posters here who have kept us
well apprised of the events in Ukraine as the buildup commenced on the Ukrainian side,
supported by US munitions.
Actually, as far as I can understand it, if the Russians do enter Ukraine it will be at
the behest of the Ukrainians themselves, just as it was in Crimea. They will be as supportive
as possible of the Donbass, which is already back in the Russian Federation in every way
except the formal declaration.
But Russia wants the country of Ukraine to remain whole. That's a big ask, but it surely
must include all areas like Odessa in order to be viable as a member of the Federation. I
don't know if that is possible yet, but rule by force has existed for so long under such
duress there, that I do believe the entire civilian population would be happy to have this
happen. And in will come the Russian aid, pouring in on tanks if need be, to a population
weary of hardship.
Russia certainly doesn't want to be on a war footing with Ukraine, since it considers the
citizenry to be its own people historically speaking, as Putin has said many times. It will
not force the issue; it can be patient. But if its troops do enter, they will only do so if
they are welcome; and I think that welcome mat is fast being woven, as fast as Penelopes in
the Donbass can weave it. And as for the rest of Ukraine, plenty of Penelopes there as
well.
It may not be Ukraine will enter the Federation immediately - there will have to be talks
and so much restructuring politically speaking before that can happen. But if the hand of
Russia is still extended in friendship to places like the US, it most certainly would be to a
sane and peaceful Ukrainian government.
This time the buildup is very real. But NATO has no reason to be "concerned", as it is
they who have the initiative. Russia will only move in response to a Ukrainian attack on
Donbass. Ukraine will only attack after it gets approval or direct orders from
Washington.
Work on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is progressing fast. I estimate that pipelaying
may be finished by the end of May. To prevent it from happening, Ukraine has to attack in
April. Rumors claim that the planned date of the attack is April 15, 2021. The problem on the
Ukrainian side is that there is no sensible war plan, apart from attacking Donbass and then
immediately withdrawing to defensive position on the western shore of the Dnieper River.
Christelle Néant from Donetsk published this on March 16th, citing Ukrainian
sources.
In an enlightening article, the Ukrainian media outlet Strana revealed that not only is
the Ukrainian army preparing for an offensive in the Donbass, but that there is an
emergency plan to stop the attack if Russia were to send its own army in. This information
is nothing less than a debunking of seven years of Ukrainian propaganda, which claims that
Ukraine is fighting Russia in the Donbass.
The article is based on sources in the Ukrainian army and the Defence Ministry, and
begins by questioning the reality of Kiev's preparation for an offensive against the
Donbass.
Strana's sources on the front line confirm that there is no longer a ceasefire, nor a
withdrawal of troops and equipment. The source even makes it clear that it was Ukraine that
first violated this provision of the Minsk package of measures, and that the DPR and LPR
(Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics) did so only afterwards, in response to the
violation by the Ukrainian army.
...
BUT, because there is a but in this kind of rather too pretty plan, if Russia sends its
army to intervene then the Ukrainian army will have to give up its offensive against the
Donbass and withdraw.
"In this case, the AFU offensive will be stopped. With a high degree of probability,
the troops will then have to withdraw, so as not to fall again into cauldrons," says the
Strana source in the Ukrainian Defence Ministry.
In other words, for the Ukrainian army's offensive in the Donbass to work, Russia must
not intervene. The problem for Kiev is that Russia has no intention of letting several
hundred thousand of its citizens die on its border without reacting. A problem that
Strana's source is well aware of.
J.Swift#38
Nice riff on 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'!
Excellent take on the situation as it has unfolded. I agree with your observations re: a
change in tone coming Russia and China in regard to their criticizms of the USA. It's likely
that they have indeed run the numbers on both how much damage they can absorb and what their
counter move would be as compare to the long drawn out decline that seems to be atking
forever.
The line (or really one of the several) is when the USA get more directly involved and
sustains losses at the hands of Russian forces. Nobody really wants to find out what happens
when the The Darkness behind the might of the Pentagram has a hissy fit. The yapping dog
might just beable to run the numbers itself and see the outcome as being very disadventageous
to itself and it's minions. Who am I kidding, the USA doesn't care a whit about it's
minions....
I believe you are right. A war is unlikely, but with madmen in Washington you never know.
Some of them would like to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.
But, Russia is moving substantial troops and equipment to the Ukrainian border to deter
the Kiev authorities from invading the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk
People's Republic (LNR) - so this is real not a made-up story (it is not what 'normal' troop
movements as the b's article implies). Russia is drawing a red line and it should be seen as
such!
Russia's actions will probably be enough to dissuade Kiev but what have they got to lose?
The Kiev regime is failing, its economy is in freefall, disaster beckons - a glorious
military defeat might be considered preferable to inevitable social and economic
collapse.
Kiev may also have well-founded belief that the US/West will be forced to support them
militarily to keep the secrets of western involvement in the downng of MH17 out of Russian
hands.
Thank you for all the compliments. I am not and will not be angry with librul for more
than one moment, in the past. Same Biden/Trump barbs are tossed daily on a face to face
basis. It has become how Americans are.
Ghostship does make some good points. Not theoretical to me. Here in Chicago FuhrerTag is
still celebrated at many bars. Large group sings of Horst Wessex song occur for a variety of
occasions. When at University of Illinois (70s) there was a sizable contingent of OUN
children in the History Department. They freely Indulged in Sieg Heil and Slava Ukraina to
greet each other publicly. There was also an Ustache contingent who did return to Croatia,
not to fight but to govern. Shall we say that these groups were insane. Some did go to
military careers.Some did go to State Department. Some did go to think tanks. If the subject
is Russia clinical insanity is not a career impediment in America.
For two days I owned the Rainbow, Bugsy Siegel's old joint 1900 N. Damen. . That was
Ukrainian Village. My money was refunded. The alternative was death. Yes, they put guns in my
face. Yes, they could do that. No, I do not like these people.
None of us predicts future with any accuracy. Will keep pointing out that downsides for
Russia will vanish with victory. They have a lot of choices in how they could construct that
victory. Every choice US/NATO has available is nothing but a defeat.
It is a very important reminder as to how insane and mindless the neo con hatred is of
Russia and Putin. It is indeed alarming that this rabid hatred controls the neo cons and what
passes for us foreign policy. How can on expect rational policy when the people in charge are
completely irrational.
If nothing else, just note the quote in the article from Hudson-it is beyond alarming as
to the description by hudson of the mindless and controlling irrationality of the neo cons in
the dimo biden admin!
I watched a video by Alexander Mercouris China Warns Ukraine on Crimea Ties which
shows how coordinated this present crisis may be, as Washington may be maneuvering its
Ukrainian proxy into nationalizing a corporation there that manufactures a variety of turbine
engines, built to power both warships and aircraft. Zelensky is applying pressure on both
China and Russia at once. The Russians have overcome some manufacturing problems and have had
to build up their own stocks of turbines for military use. Responding to Zelensky's seizure
of their assets and investments in Ukraine, the Chinese have sent an economic mission that
involves serious investments in Crimea .
A coordinated threat to the culturally Russian Donbas and Lugansk region and the
nationalizing of Chinese assets will place China and Russia again on the same path in their
diplomatic response. It would not be a surprise if China officially recognizes Crimea as part
of the Russian Federation.
To be fair, the neocon's feel that way about everyone - they embrace the role of paranoid
imperialist because that's a relatively accessible way to get funded in the DC policy world.
The striking thing is the hubris - they're just going to fight everyone all at the same time
and it will somehow be okay in the end, no cost to them.
Russia doesn't need "troops" to defend Donetz and Luhansk; Russian can destroy Ukrainian
forces using stand-off weapons and then DNR and LNR forces can easily cope with what remains.
Russian doesn't need forces to "occupy" Donetz and Luhansk because these areas will remain
under the control of the republics. What Russia needs "troops" for is to advance and capture
Kiev and this is what Russia's troop deployments threaten. If the conflict starts in Ukraine
then Russia will demonstrate its ability to do whatever it wants in all areas of Ukraine;
then Russia will withdraw and leave what is left for the West/EU and US to deal with.
Rationally, nothing will happen because Kiev will be deterred. But, many elements in the
Kiev regime may desire war because they believe the West will (because they "have to")
support them (or, as I already said, glorious defeat may seem preferable to the slow-burn
collapse of their regime). The US/West may encourage Kiev because they are posturing for war
and the plandemic is envisaged as the best time for such an event (I feel the likelihood of
this is underestimated), or compelling a demonstration of Russian "aggression" may have
overriding propaganda value (regardless of the outcome for the Kiev regime) for their own
populations (everyone can really hate on Russia for the next 10 years - hate is a great
unifier).
All of this is to be expected after weeks and weeks of UAF buildup along the Donbass
border. In fact, they've been shelling villages in the Donbass for some time now since they
re-instigated aggression in February. Even today they were shelling the infamous Donetsk
airport. On top of that you've got US aerial vehicles flying around the Black Sea right
underneath Crimea and next to Krasnodar. Kiev's posturing has signaled their supposed
willingness to attack the Donbass and attempt to retake Crimea, so Russia's reaction to
protect Russian citizens would be entirely reasonable.
The defense ministers of Ukraine and the United States held their second conversation in a
month and a half on the situation in Donbass. According to Andriy Taran, the Americans
promised Kiev "support measures" in the event of a direct military conflict between Ukraine
and Russia.
The US will not come to the aid of Ukraine. That is a pipe dream, pun intended.
@JohninMK et al:
On the surface this seems to be a continuation of the provocation game, which has been the
tactic since the beginning. The Ukies are definitely upping the ante by threatening Crimea. I
can only assume that they are deep into thinking wishfully that the USA will "come to rescue"
when they poke the bear. But in both their cases I have to wonder: with WHAT? The Ukies dont
have an effective army as demonstrated by mass defection and surrender last bout. Other than
"punishment battallions" there do not seem to be many troops willing to fight. As for the
USA, they are not shock troops, they are an occupation force. So then is it to be some sort
aerial ballet of stand-off weapons over the skies of the Donbass??
As stated above, the Western MSM is going to shriek like flock of terrified Karens no
matter what Russia does so they may as well earn it. My mind wanders over the demonstration
of the Iskander in Syria most recently. Ten or so of those simultaneously in the right places
would bring a Ukrops offensive to sudden halt if there were the will to do so.....
Zelensky is making de-escalation noises. Bit late for that. Should this all ratchet down
it will be the end of Zelensky. Bear in mind he is there only because there is no one else.
As an actor and a comedian he has been impersonating a President. He did that for the sitcom
cameras and then he did it in real life.
It will also be the last time Ukraine ever pretends to field an army. Conscripts will make
their way home somehow, they won't be played again. Heavy equipment and ammo will be
auctioned off cheap to any who can arrange transport. Transport will be questionable, arms
will be sold very cheap.
Ukraine army is heavily larded with mercs and Wahabi jihadis from all over the planet.
Idiots could still start something big even if the "leadership" calls it off. Shelling has
been happening all day up and down the line. Artillery is mostly mercs. Russia is holding
fire so far, one shell chances to fall on a concentration of Russian troops and it is on.
Poles and other idiots could also blow this up. Way too many moving pieces and no one in
charge, either in Kiev or Washington.
If this excitement just ends Ukraine will go from a comic opera government to no
government at all. Russia will move in for humanitarian reasons. Western Ukraine will die or
flood to Europe.
I see we are back to the "fog of war".
There has been artillery/mortar fire around Horlivka and elsewhere. (50 shells) These
mortar attacks were conducted by the 58th motorised rifle brigade of the Armed Forces of
Ukraine from the areas of Avdeevka and Pervomaisky.
A Global Hawk is presumed to have flown over both Donetsk and Luhansk - various altitudes to
test the Russian radars. This is the same type that was shot down by Iran. Maybe the US wants
to order a few more replacements?
One vid that is supposed to show a train full of Tor systems of the 56 airborne has already
been debunked as filmed a long way away on the other side of Russia, (The 56th do not have
Tors)
It is clear that there is a definite push to provoke a Russian reaction. The threats about
Crimea mean that any movement in that area will be taken seriously, as "several" high ranking
Russian Generals have arrived there. Russian Generals lead from the front, not the back as do
the UK or US versions. (see Syria)
It is the details that are showing that this will escalate (Burning houses and villages)
and civilians in bunkers. I was going to show you the picture of an old man still in the
firing area, because he has nowhere else to go . Someday the human cost must be
counted.
***
Interesting tie ups with the BRI and Afghanistan from Karlof1's post @70. One mention of a
canal between the Sea of Azof and the Caspian, via Russsia. The "anything but Suez"
canal?
More than that, I realised that the Saudi Arabian NOEM (Straight Line road) across the
Gulf of Aqaba to Sharm el-Sheik, will eventually give it access to the Med via Egypt and
Africa, without going through Israel. (Or Lebanon, Syria or Turkey)
Syria is in a mess because of lack of fuel. Their stolen fuel is/was bought by Israel
cheaply. Are you sure that the EverGiven WAS an accident?
*****
Biden has Zelenskys back - if he is thinking of his back pocket there is nothing left in
it.
I'm sure oldhippie means that if the Ukies are subservient enough to the US to actually
attack, this will almost certainly be reminiscent of Georgia (rather than just some cruise
missile strikes, as some had speculated). The buildup means Russia is prepared to sweep into
the Ukraine, and probably make a special point of killing as many Nazi battalions as
possible, along with any Ukie troops who don't surrender quickly enough. I don't see them
entering Kiev, just like they didn't try to take Tblisi, but I imagine they will try to take
most of the pro-Russian territory in the East and possibly even South, until Kiev begs for a
cease-fire (just like last time), but this time the conditions of cease fire will likely be
much more strongly enforced, and then I would imagine Russia will try to establish some
assemblage of peace-keeping troops from countries they can trust (maybe Shanghi Coalition?)
so that they can withdraw their troops as soon as possible, for political reasons. Not that
it will help, but then again, I think Russia sees they'll be damned if they do, damned if
they don't, so they might as well do it. But they damn sure don't want to take ownership of
the Ukraine, just like they didn't want to own Georgia.
A fair and balanced analysis, as far as it goes.
We must remember the Stavka is in charge....
What makes the most sense to them??? Where should the cease fire line be??? The best place
to put it is the midline of the Denieper River. It is a natural boundary. It is wide enough
so anything less than 155 mm artillery can't reach across. It resolves permanently water
supply to Crimea.
NATO will use this action to censure, villify, and sanction Russia. She might as well get
something for that.
Will this happen?? Last year, I'd say no.... but now.... anything goes...
I thought Biden would not start a war until next year to save the 2022 mid-term elections. My
speculation is that Merkel is standing firm on Nord Stream 2 so the Biden administration is
going to use the Ukrainians to start up a war against Russia to physically shut down the
construction of the pipeline and introduce sanctions like against SWIFT, Aeroflot, etc.
During a meeting with Defense Minister of Ukraine Andriy Taran and the leadership of the
Armed Forces of Ukraine, the defense attaches of the United States, Canada and the United
Kingdom assured Ukraine of the support in defending its sovereignty and territorial
integrity. "US, Canada's, and UK Defense Attaches met with Minister of Defense [of Ukraine]
Taran, Deputy Minister Petrenko, Deputy Minister Polishchuk, Joint Forces Commander
Lieutenant General Naiev, and Colonel Budanov," the U.S. Embassy posted on Twitter. The
Embassy assured Ukraine of support in defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity:
"We stand with Ukraine as it defends its sovereignty and territorial integrity and are
watching the situation in Ukraine closely."
The story is number one or two all over the place (The Hill, Politico, Reuters, The
Washington Times,...).
No mention of Ukraine except perhaps in minor side stories.
"Biden holds first call with Ukrainian president amid Russian buildup"
By NATASHA BERTRAND and LARA SELIGMAN
04/02/2021 09:39 AM EDT
Updated: 04/02/2021 11:24 AM EDT
President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on Friday morning
for the first time since Biden took office, amid reports of a Russian military buildup in
eastern Ukraine that has alarmed U.S. and Ukrainian officials.
The leaders spoke for 30 to 40 minutes, according to a person with knowledge of the
call. A White House readout of the conversation said Biden "reaffirmed the United States'
unwavering support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of
Russia's ongoing aggression in the Donbas and Crimea."
Nice work on pulling all the puzzle pieces together, b!
The really big problem will be weaning the Outlaw US Empire from its addiction to
Unilateralism, which is its primary mode of operation aside from a very brief interlude when
FDR was POTUS, devised the UN and its Charter, and got the Senate to ratify it so it would
become an integral part of the USA's fundamental law of the land.
All one need do to see the gravity of the bolded text is to examine the Outlaw US Empire's
behavior since FDR died--The USA immediately transformed into the Outlaw US Empire on 22
October 1945 when the UN Charter came into full force and the Empire was already in grave
violation of its fundamentals.
That those millions of violations have never seen the inside of a courtroom doesn't mean
they never occurred or aren't now happening globally.
"Nord Stream AG Says Warships, Submarines and Helicopters Tried to Disrupt Pipeline's
Construction":
"However, it seems that in March threats to the pipeline multiplied and became more
'real'.
"The construction site of Nord Stream 2 has been suffering harassment by various vessels
and aircraft in recent months, which nearly led to damage to the pipeline itself, according
to Nord Stream AG representative Andrey Minin. He stressed that the disturbances were
'clearly planned and thoroughly prepared provocations,' devised to stop the joint
Russian-European project in its tracks ." [My Emphasis]
Unilateral Act of War anyone?!! Yes, its the Poles once again.
IMO, it's sad b omitted mentioning the newly formed Friends of the UN Charter Group in his
article since it aims at drowning the "Unilateral, rules based international order" once and
for all time. My promotion of it isn't going to be enough. If all but the Neoliberal nations
become members, then they can jointly aver that there's only one system of international Law
and its based on the UN Charter and all relevant treaties thus shutting up the Outlaw US
Empire regardless its protests. Of course, a movement within the Empire that says the same as
the Friends would go a long ways to getting us where we as humans want to go to--a peaceful
planet that's concerned about the wellbeing of humans and all they need for support instead
of making the rich ever richer through the terror of unremitting Class War.
And if you don't think that War isn't based on Terror, then you haven't seen migrant
families busted up with the little kids being kidnapped and all put into concentration camps.
( China is
beginning to bark up that very inhuman tree watered so well by the Outlaw US Empire.)
"As it stands, Russia is very much focused on limitless possibilities in Southwest Asia,
as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made it clear in the 10th Middle East conference at the
Valdai club [Link at Original]. The Hegemon's treats on multiple fronts – Ukraine,
Belarus, Syria, Nord Stream 2 – pale in comparison."
Awhile ago, I posted the following acutely correct adage: The USA treats business as war,
while treating war as business. I added what Coolidge was misquoted as saying in 1925--The
business of America is business (He actually said, "the chief business of the American people
is business.") So when the POTUS says its just business, you should prepare for war.
Back to the linked article. While reading it ought to be easy to see why the BRI
interconnectivity is seen as a huge threat to the two Outlaw Maritime Empires--UK/US--who
initially set forth the parameters of the Great Game. (BTW,
Lavrov's Great Game program interview English transcript is now complete.) They have no
seat at the table whatsoever. You'll also see why the Outlaw US Empire will try to remain in
Afghanistan forever as well as the reason why it can't admit the real reason for being
there--to interdict the BRI and the development boom it promises to bring to a great many
impoverished people throughout Eurasia. Talk about Human Rights!
But it looks like all the Empire's efforts will amount to little more than a mosquito
attacking an elephant for there's no way it can stop BRI or Eurasian integration; at best, it
can merely delay it and earn the enmity of the planet, including its own people. Clearly,
India will cease its role in the Quad as staying locks it out from what it needs
most--development that uplifts its impoverished tens of millions. And the loss of India means
the certain loss of the Great Game for the Outlaw Empire.
In the grand scheme of things, Ukraine is merely a tsetse fly as is NATO ultimately. The
real prize lies with the geoeconomic riches BRI and Eurasian Integration will generate and
being a partner with it, not an adversary.
The US-China meeting in Anchorage took place 75 years almost to the day of the Winston
Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri. Just as the latter signalled a break point in the
uneasy, war forced cohabit of the West with the communist Soviet Union, so too the Anchorage
will enter the history as the break point in the US hegemony threatening collaboration of the
West and China.
Since WW2, no other nation, not even Russia, has confronted the US so firmly and so
publicly as did Yang Jiechi, one of the ruling member of the Chinese Politburo when he said
that "the United States does not have the qualification to speak to China from a position of
strength'.
That was a slap in the face the Americans will have to respond to, and it's in the nature
of the response one will find whether the American Governing elite is prepared to share power
or go for a confrontation.
The real question is not about his neocon delusions, which are pretty predictable, but about
the ability for the USA project global dominance in the decade to come.
Blinken is a marionette. And pretty much second rate even in that.
Notable quotes:
"... Let's consider this headline for a moment: "Blinken Accuses China of Trying to Undermine US-Dominated World Order." Blinken provides us with a definition of that "world order" in his own words cited in the article: "'... preserve the rules-based international order, in which we have all invested so much over the past 75 years , and which has served our interests and values well'." [My Emphasis] ..."
Let's consider
this headline for a moment: "Blinken Accuses China of Trying to Undermine US-Dominated
World Order." Blinken provides us with a definition of that "world order" in his own words
cited in the article: "'... preserve the rules-based international order, in which we have
all invested so much over the past 75 years , and which has served our interests and
values well'." [My Emphasis]
Clearly, he's referring to the rules put in place by the UN Charter. But as we at this bar
all know, it's the Outlaw US Empire for whom Blinken works that's the #1 criminal when it
comes to violating the UN Charter which is why it's "served our interests and values
well."
Now when we turn to reality, it become very clear that China seeks to uphold the UN
Charter--it's one of the foundational members of the newly established Friends of the UN
Charter Group that the Outlaw US Empire will certainly snub because of the reality of its
actual relations to that Act and Organization .
Indeed, what is being said by the very formation of that Group is a big NO!! to the
Outlaw US Empire's attempt to say it abides by the system it's continuously violated for the
past 75+ years. Yet, it's also clear that NO!! isn't being shouted out by global media
enough, particularly when Outlaw US Empire officials give such an excellent opportunity to be
rebuffed and ridiculed for their lies.
We have many good writers here who could take Blinken's words and turn them into an
indictment of himself and the nation he represents. That implies that writers for global
publications are just as good but need to examine the framing of their articles. Peace won't
come to our planet unless the Outlaw Bully Nation is daily accused for what it is and
does.
NATO is a distinct minority yet it holds the world captive in a terroristic manner. It's
well past time to stop groveling and kow-towing and to stand-up and call out the bullshitters
for what they are since being nice isn't getting us anywhere.
Even before the targets in Yemen had been "legally" designated as
a Foreign Terrorist Organization Obama used cluster bombs to shred
dozens of women and children in a failed attempt to hit members of
"al Qaida in Yemen (AQY)".
.
The war crime immediately became a dirty Obama secret, covered up
with the help of the MSM, in particular ABC.
.
An enthusiastic White House had leaked to their contacts at ABC that
Obama had escalated the War on Terror, taking it to another country,
Yemen. This was December 17, 2009 only days after Obama had returned
from his ceremony in Oslo where he proudly accepted the Nobel Peace
Prize.
.
ABC was thrilled with their scoop and in manly voices announced
the escalation in the War on Terror.
.
The very next day ABC went silent forever about it, joining the cover up
of a war crime.
.
Hillary Clinton, by the way, committed her own act of cover up.
Covering her butt by backdating a memo.
.
The designation of a organization as a FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization)
is not official nor legal until it is published in the Federal Register.
An oversight? Obama attacked Yemen before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
had done the paperwork to make the killing legal?
.
The designation was not published until a month later, January 19, 2010.
Hillary Clinton back dated the memo she published in the Register with the date of
December 14, 2009, to somewhat cover her butt.
.
Obama's acceptance speech in Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize was December 10th.
.
Yemen leaders agreed to participate in Obama's coverup saying it was their
own Yemen forces that had accidentally shredded dozens of women and children.
.
Obama was grateful to the Yemen leaders. The Yemen leaders were not
honored in Oslo. But, ironically, Obama ended his speech honoring women
and children, days before he ordered their slaughter.
.
Obama in Oslo, December 10, 2009:
.
"Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty
still takes the time to teach her child, scrapes together what
few coins she has to send that child to school -- because she
believes that a cruel world still has a place for that child's
dreams.
.
Let us live by their example. We can acknowledge that oppression will
always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the
intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed,
we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace.
We can do that -- for that is the story of human progress; that's the
.
hope
.
of all the world; and at this moment of challenge,
that must be our work here on Earth.
.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
.
One week later Obama shredded dozens of women and children in Yemen
and covered it up.
.
Here is ABC's Brian Ross using his most masculine voice to boast about Obama's attack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHcg3TNSRPs
.
Wikileaks cable corroborates evidence of US airstrikes in Yemen (Amnesty Intl)
https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2010/12/wikileaks-cable-corroborates-evidence-us-airstrikes-yemen/
.
Actual cable at Wikileaks: https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/10SANAA4_a.html
.
More at ABC [12/18/2009]: https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236 https://web.archive.org/web/20190624203826/https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236
">https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236">https://web.archive.org/web/20190624203826/https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cruise-missiles-strike-yemen/story?id=9375236 https://web.archive.org/web/20190725171012/https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cr
">https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cr">https://web.archive.org/web/20190725171012/https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cr
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BERLIN, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Gas contributes only a fraction of Germany's energy consumption,
and Russian gas only a fraction of that, so it is wrong to say that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline
will make Germany dependent on Russian energy, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said.
Asked about the flagship Kremlin project, which has been heavily criticised by the United
States and some European countries, Scholz on Monday restated the German government's position
that the pipeline was a private investment and should not be the target of U.S. sanctions.
The poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, blamed by most Western governments on
Russian state actors, has led to renewed calls for the nearly complete pipeline, built by
state-owned Gazprom, to be cancelled.
Critics of the pipeline say it increases Germany's reliance on Russian energy and deprives
transit countries Poland and Ukraine of crucial leverage over the giant country to their east.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Maria Sheahan)
To go back to a previous BTL discussion on Patrick Cockburns recent article in
Counterpunch, Bidens missteps so early on are a very worrying indicator that his foreign
policy team is worse than just being malign. They are incompetent. Thats a very dangerous
combination.
I don't think the Russians, Chinese, or most other major countries (apart from Europe) had
a fundamental problem with Trumps approach. They understood him, and were quite happy to
ignore his bombast and threats and focus instead on what was happening in the real world. But
things are different for someone like Biden, and I'm very surprised nobody in his team seem
to realise this. When he talks on the record, its assumed that it is a reflection of a real
policy. At first, I thought maybe he was just doing the usual new guy in power thing of
talking tough to set the ground for later compromises (the opposite of Obama, who appeared
very weak to other leaders, and then just looked indecisive when his policies turned more
hardline). But that does not seem to be the case so far.
I've no idea what the final outcome will be, but I do think that this is one of those
points in history where things take a very sharp and irreparable change in direction.
Obviously, things have been brewing for years, but the ineptness of US foreign policy seems
to have created a strategic Russian/China alliance which will force many countries to make
some very hard choices about which side of the fence they are on.
On a related note, I woke up this morning to find that a speech by Lawrence P. Wilkerson,
who is associated with the conservative paleoconservatives is getting very wide circulation
in China (you know this has to be officially approved otherwise it disappears very rapidly on
WeChat. He makes a claim that the CIA back in the early '00's intended to use the Uigurs as a
sort of proxy army to destabilise China. For all sorts of reasons, I would doubt that, but it
is now widely believed among Chinese people, even those who have no liking for the CCP. The
notion that the Uigurs are a sort of third force within China, and as such need to be
destroyed now seems to be very deeply embedded in Chinese thinking, and the interference by
'official' western NGO's are undoubtedly making things much worse for them.
"[Wilkerson] makes a claim that the CIA back in the early '00's intended to use the Uigurs
as a sort of proxy army to destabilise China. For all sorts of reasons, I would doubt that,
but it is now widely believed among Chinese people, even those who have no liking for the
CCP."
Just curious as to what your reasons would be for doubting this. The CIA has been doing
precisely this all over the world for over 70 years. There is a clear pipeline between the
Uighurs in China and the CIA-supported "rebels" in Syria. The expatriate Uighur organizations
that are integral to the Western propaganda apparatus is supported and amplified by the NED
and other CIA fronts, as your last sentence implies. This is not to deny the historical
Uighur desire for autonomy in Western China, nor to defend Chinese policies toward them.
Rather, it is to acknowledge the CIA's use of ethnic tensions to sow chaos and division in
non-conforming nations *everywhere*.
1. The US has had little to no success in its many attempts to establish an intelligence
foothold in China. There is zero evidence, direct or indirect, that it has had any successful
contact with Uigur groups directly, although contacts via others, such as the Pakistani or
Turkish intelligence agencies are possible. If there was even the tiniest amount of evidence
of such a link, the Chinese would be broadcasting it from the skies, and not just
re-messaging out tired CT stuff. Chinese intelligence is far ahead of the US in that region,
so they would certainly know if something like that was happening.
2. Uigur groups in general such as we know about them tend to be as virulently anti
Western as anti Han Chinese. All evidence suggests that the brand of Islam that has been
belatedly introduced into those regions is essentially second hand Wahhabism (traditionally,
they were never all that religious).
3. Any such attempt could be easily countered by China – simply by dumping Uigur
radicals into Afghanistan to bolster the Taliban, or anywhere else that would create trouble.
The fact that they haven't done this strongly suggests that the Chinese themselves see no
link.
4. US military intelligence is often a misnomer, but even the CIA can't be stupid enough
to think that fostering another islamic state on the borders of Afghanistan is anything but a
terrible idea.
Of course, no doubt some mid ranking CIA officer may have circulated some report saying
more or less 'hey, maybe we can use those Uighurs or whatever they are called'. But thats an
entirely different thing from suggesting that there have been active links and a strategy for
using them to destabilise the borders of China. The reality is that the US has been entirely
unsuccessful in any attempts (when they've been made) to undermine China via internal Chinese
ethnic or religious groups.
Incidentally, the reliability of Wilkerson (who I actually quite like and who says some
interesting things), on that topic can be measured by his statement that the invasion of
Afghanistan was motivated by an attempt to stop the Belt and Road Initiative. It's quite
impressive intelligence if that was the case as the invasion predated the Belt and Road
Initiative by more than a decade.
Yes, I think the important point is your last one. It's not out of the question that on a
rainy afternoon in Virginia some junior CIA analyst amused himself by sketching out such an
idea, and one day the product may leak and be presented as "proof." But for the reasons you
give, the political leaders who would have to approve the scheme would turn it down, even if
it were physically possible. I doubt it would be, actually: from what little information is
publicly available, the US seems to be having little or no luck penetrating that area.
Thanks for the systematic reply. I appreciate each of your points, and pretty much agree
with the first one – including your comment about Turkish intelligence. But regarding
the others, the fact that we are talking about anti-Western Wahabist radicals does not mean
the CIA (or elements of the CIA or other military/intelligence operations) would hesitate to
weaponize them if possible. We did this in Afghanistan, Bosina, Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
Chechnya etc. Indeed, we seemed to *welcome* the fostering of an Islamic State in Eastern
Syria, because the various jihadists were a means to destroy the Syrian government. When the
goal is to foster chaos and destruction in order to *undermine* an existing state, the
calculus of unleashing the head-choppers is different than if we were actually interested in
fostering stability in the region. I admit that such a strategy might sound insane to *us*,
but Einstein's definition of insanity seems to rule our National Security Establishment.
Not PK, but I would suggest these cases are not only different from each other, but also
different from the Uigurs. Essentially, there was a war going on in all of these cases, and
the US (and they were scarcely the only ones) decided to try to get a bit of influence by
arming one or more of the factions. This is a tactic which is as old as arms themselves, and
has a pretty spotty record of success, if that. Its advantage is that it is low-key and
doesn't require a massive presence (the classic case is the Soviet Union and the Chinese
flooding Africa with AK-47s and copies in the 1960s and 1970s). But the cases you mention are
very disparate. In Bosnia there do seem to have been some (illegal) CIA deliveries to the
Muslims in violation of the embargo, but these were very small scale and in any event the
Muslims were one of the major parties to the conflict, as well as constituting the de facto
government in Sarajevo, because the other ethnicities had withdrawn. Likewise, and in spite
of preening memoirs and films, the US influence in Afghanistan was quite small : the
mujahideen were already forming in the 1970s, and the only contribution the US really made
was to supply anti-aircraft missiles, which complicated the Russians' existence quite a bit.
But actually fomenting and arming an insurgency next to one of the three or four major powers
on the planet, with highly skilled intelligence services? There is stupidity and there's
downright insanity.
I the 1950s, the CIA and MI6 trained and armed the "Forest Brothers" in the Baltics.
Neutral Sweden and Finland were across hundreds of km of water. Land access was through
Soviet territory or satellites. There was no significant international trade or commerce in
the area at the time. Yet they had tens of thousands of well supplied (for that era)
resistance fighters that took a decade for the USSR to stomp out.
To suggest that today's CIA is incapable of stirring things up in a well-connected
Xinjiang when thousands of foreigners travel there, tons of business shipments and
international flights and road transport is a mystifying statement. Particularly after CIA's
decades of experience managing jihadis all across North Africa, Mideast and Central Asia,
more than a few being Uigurs.
And suggesting that the only thing the US supplied the Afghan jihadis were Stinger
missiles is far off the mark. It was a multi-billion dollar per year operation conducted by
the US with collaboration of the ISI and Saudis. All those tens of thousands of jihadis
didn't arrive by camels and make slingshots.
I agree "There is stupidity and there's downright insanity" in fomenting troubles in
Xinjiang. The US has already passed that test. Many times.
We are three generations past the 1950s. Not a relevant example.
The US is not even remotely as good as you'd have to believe to accept this theory. For
starters, we don't begin to have enough people with native level language competence, much
the less willing to live there long enough to be trusted. They'll take our arms, but our
directives?
It is in the interest of the CIA to take credit for all sorts of things where their role
was non-existent to marginal because funding.
I can't claim any great knowledge or insight into the region, but the notion that the
Uighurs were part of a grand CIA strategy, or that they have had sufficient influence in the
region to manipulate them into opposing China, just doesn't pass the smell test.
Unfortunately, like the notion that Covid is spread on frozen food, so far as I can tell it
is now considered 'a fact' by most Chinese, inside and outside the country. As a result, even
Chinese who strongly dislike their government are not at all bothered by reports coming out
of the region.
For what its worth, I knew an English guy who lived for a few years in Urumqi with his
Chinese wife about 15 years ago. He was virulently anti-muslim and didn't much like the
non-Chinese locals he met, but I remember at the time that said that what he saw around him
convinced him that things were going to end very badly for the Uighurs, the Chinese were just
waiting for the opportunity to wipe them out. I was in Tibet at that period (I was fortunate
to get a visa on the last year solo traveller were allowed in) and witnessed the way Tibetans
were openly abused on the street by Chinese soldiers. Even Tibetans said that the Uighurs got
it worse.
The US government and privately motivated US citizens have no credibility on this issue.
That means if anyone is going to raise it, it will have to be someone other than America or
Americans.
That doesn't change the fact of Great Han Lebensraum genocide-policy against the Uighurs
on the part of the Chinese Communazi Party. And Chinese statements about their Lebensraum
genocide against Uighuria are just as much hasbara as Israeli statements about
antiPalestinianitic persecution in the Occupied West Bank.
And if that purely-private opinion of a mere U S citizen makes any Great Han hasbarists (
or might I say . . . Hansbarists) on this thread mad, then that makes me happy.
Your friend was English; I have not seen this attitude on the part of Chinese friends or
Chinese I've talked with. I was traveling on a domestic flight in China a number of years ago
and found myself sitting on a plane next to a random Chinese soldier -- a memorably tall,
handsome young man. He spoke English well enough to have a discussion (the relaxed atmosphere
and the need to pass the time does wonders when it comes to breaking down language barriers).
Major Uighur terror attacks and unrest had been in the news (around 2009), so I asked him
what he thought about it. He said that he grew up in Xinjiang. His parents were Han Chinese
who had first come to Xinjiang during the cultural revolution to build some local
infrastructure/improvement project (he described it to me but I don't remember the details).
They saw their goal as improving conditions in the region. Of course, the government wanted
to solidify Chinese presence in that region of their country, but I heard no hint of anger or
derision toward the Uighur. He said he was very concerned that the Uighur people were happy
and he hoped China could find a way to mend the relationship. He said that growing up, there
were many mixed Chinese/Han marriages and that "people say" that mixed Han/Uighur marriages
produced the most physically beautiful children. I didn't see any evidence of the malignant
racism you describe on the part of your English friend.
Strong central governments vs violent separatist movements tend to create lasting
problems. Growing up in a border state over 100 years after our own civil war, I grew up with
the fact that many people had still not let go of that resentment. Southerners still
maintained a sense of grievance back then. The Maryland state song that I learned as a child
is only now being decommissioned by the state legislature. One stanza refers to the "Northern
scum".
This week's WaPo headline: "Maryland poised to say goodbye to state song that celebrates
the Confederacy".
If your Han Chinese interlocutor's feelings are widely shared among the ruled-over rather
than ruling-over ordinary majority of Han citizens, then it would appear that it is the
MonoParty RegimeGovernment ruling over China which is Communazi, not the people as such.
Regardless, it will be up to countrygovs which have moral standing in this area to comment
or not, not the US anymore. At least for now.
Probably the Uighurs have it even worse than Tibetans because Uighuria is very inhabitable
by Han settlers whereas Tibet is high and dry enough that ( I have read), that
lowland-adapted Hans have trouble physically coping over time with the lower oxygen levels at
Tibet altitude.
If that is so, then the High Tibetan Plateau at least would not provide Lebensraum for
millions of Han Settlers in any case, so why clear the Tibetans off the plateau and out of
existence? Not so much need, in Tibet's case.
@PlutoniumKun
I have no knowledge about points 1 to 3, but totally disagree with point 4.
The hubris and desire of the US alphabet agencies to meddle is remarkable. A current example
is the CIA support of jihadis in Syria that the US military itself is fighting against.
Interesting caution re Wilkerson – do you have a link?
Here is a link to an article talking about that talk PK. Having a coupla thousand Uygurs
in Syria gaining combat experience for use later who knows where was probably proof enough
for China of western intentions. Just think of the other Jihadists who have been used in
places like Libya and the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war and the Chinese would be drawing their
own conclusions-
When Biden called Russian President a soulless "killer" on
ABC News, Putin responded with the most deft bit of diplomacy I've seen in quite a while, openly challenging Fungal Joe to a
publicly broadcast debate of substantive issues, which Biden, of course, declined.
There can be no question now that
all the disparate interests within
The
Davos Crowd
are aligned at this point
(see
this
month's Newsletter
for more discussion on this).
All guns point at Russia.
Putin tried to defuse the situation with an offer that was at once an epic troll of Biden,
who is clearly no match for his Russian counterpart cognitively, and a warning to Americans that this situation has gotten far more
dangerous than they are being told.
And sometimes you win simply by taking the high road. Make no mistake the fact that Putin went here this early in Biden's presidency
is a bad sign. It tells us things are horrific between the world's most prominent nuclear powers and that there's been zero
diplomatic effort put forth by the Biden administration since the election.
The problem is rapidly becoming that indiscriminate use of all weapons all the time --
diplomatic, economic, military, propaganda -- creates a kind of dopamine addiction.
In order to keep the public interest in
the threat they have to keep raising the stakes and the rhetoric to eventually absurd levels.
As I like to say all the time, it's the first rule of screenwriting :
Be forever raising the
stakes lest the audience gets bored.
But there comes a point where people begin to realize that they are being asked to back a war where the existential threat to the
elite's power is transferred onto them. Remember folks, government's fight and spend billions propagandizing you into believing
their wars are for your own good.
It's rarely the case, if ever. More often than not the war being ginned up in the media and by government officials is one that
either feathers their own nest directly, supports the goals of other powerful folks indirectly, or covers up past corruption.
The brewing conflict in
Ukraine is all of these and more.
The project to add Ukraine to NATO and the EU is a long-held dream of neocons
like Victoria Nuland and neoliberals like Biden. It's an important cog in the World Economic Forum's desire to expand the EU to both
encircle Russia thereby disrupting any dreams of Eurasian integration which could form a bulwark against their brave new world.
What's got Biden's Depends in a bunch is that he's neck-deep in the corruption in Ukraine. In
Obama's own words, Ukraine is Joe's project. And Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky is not fully subsumed into the morass of
Biden's (and the rest of the usual suspects') problems.
Putin's deft and cordial handling of Biden's indiscriminate use of language was masterful here. Biden's initial remarks are, at
best, him trying to hold onto the Amy Poehler demographic (see reruns of Parks and Recreation for her slavish obsession with him as
Vice-President) as a vibrant, macho man, while he implements every bad idea that that same demographic rejected from all the other
Democrats during primary season.
But we can all see he's nothing of the sort. He's a barely coherent, rapidly fading bully with no discernible achievements in life
other than being available to be a placeholder for someone else's plans.
So, it was never a question as to whether Biden would ever talk to Putin under those
conditions. They can't even get him to talk with reporters for real, having to green screen him into backgrounds to make it look
like he's out in the world, doing stuff.
And don't get me started on that embarrassment of a press conference held the other day. Running for re-election in 2024? This guy's
not going to be alive in 2024. Then again, since he didn't run in 2020, what does it actually matter?
Elections are just Hollywood productions anymore anyway.
Biden's counter is to now invite Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping the big Climate Summit
in late April
where the WEF controls the agenda and Biden's anti-diplomatic corps led by the completely over-matched
Secretary of State Antony Blinken can further embarrass the U.S. on the world stage.
Since both Putin and Xi told the WEF to go scratch on both Climate Change, Agenda 2030 and,
most
notably from Putin, the Fourth Industrial Revolution
, I don't see how this summit ends any better than virtual Davos did earlier
this year.
In fact, with Biden's approach to both China and Russia so far, this summit is shaping up to be a colossal waste of time while also
threatening everyone the world over with what they can expect policy-wise from the West until someone finally puts these insane
people out of our misery.
With each day that passes the U.K., for example, under tyrant Boris Johnson sinks further into a complete totalitarian nightmare
(see
here
,
here
,
here
,
and
here
from the last 24 hours) thanks to COVID-19, while ramping up the anti-Russian rhetoric to eleven.
But, back to Ukraine, because it's tied directly to all this climate change nonsense. Putin
understands as well that Biden will allow every escalation in Ukraine because he's shackled by it and they need to complete the job
started with the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovich in 2014.
That means we'll see something far worse than Victoria Nuland's latest Cookie Campaign for freedom. We're going to see a war for
the Donbass soon, likely right after Orthodox Easter and the end of the snow melt.
Putin tried to go directly to the people to end this destructive spiral to the bottom, because he knows where this ends.
It will be a confrontation that one side will have to commit to completely or allow it's bluff to be called. The game Biden's
handlers have played to this point has been a massive escalation of rhetoric while continually moving real pieces into position for
a real conflict. I just don't see cooler heads prevailing here because there is no upside for the U.S., the EU and the WEF if China
and Russia stand their ground and Biden et.al. back down.
Russia has to be
destroyed or subjugated if the Great Reset is to happen and Europe is to remain a relevant global player.
That
means control of the Black Sea, which means taking back Crimea. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently reiterated publicly
that Russia has had zero diplomatic contact with the European Union since the 2014 vote by Crimea to rejoin Russia.
Diplomacy is nearly over between the major powers. Biden's simple refusal to talk to Putin
publicly is a major event.
In the end everything we've lived through since COVID-19 began boils down to the need to destroy the global economy built on oil and
coal, otherwise all major energy production stays under Eurasian control as it strengthens not Atlanticist as it peaks in global
power and their grand dreams wither.
Time is getting short for this to happen. Public opposition to this program is rising. It happens now or not at all.
If there is a war in the Donbass this spring it won't be a happy ending which extends U.S.
primacy into the future but the moment when we realized its acceleration into irrelevancy.
In both the current major conflicts between Russia and the US Psychopaths In Charge, Russia holds the moral high
ground. In Ukraine the US promoted, financed, helped organize, and encouraged the overthrow of a democratically
elected government. When the citizens of Crimea exercised their natural right of self determination and voted to
return to being a part of Russia, the US called it a coup. In Syria, the US has illegally invaded a sovereign nation
without that nation's sovereign government's permission or request. Russia got both. Not only does Russia hold the
moral high ground, but the legal high ground as well.
vic and blood
PREMIUM
3 hours ago
Well
stated.
The
role reversal is complete. We are now the Evil Empire.
gmrpeabody
1 hour ago
" . In
Ukraine the US promoted, financed, helped organize, and encouraged the overthrow of a democratically elected
government. "
Marine
General Smedley Butler knew his forces were being used back in the thirties to enforce American bankster
interests in central and South America.
eyewillcomply
1 hour ago
(Edited)
"We are now the Evil Empire."
As
soon as we allowed the cousins of the same Bolsheviks who made Russia into a communist basket case to
control our currency and thus, government, we became an "Evil Empire". It has been a slow process and hard
to recognize early on. The founding principles of the United States are moral and admirable. What we have
morphed into at the behest of this satanic cabal is the exact opposite of that ethos.
chunga
3 hours ago
Many
people hate the US and have many very valid reasons to fight and kill all of us.
BlindMonkey
2 hours ago
(Edited)
A
large swath of Americans just want to live life as a people. They harbor no ill will to other people's,
we just want our space in the world respected. Of these, they also have a beef with the insane people
that have got us to this point.
jeff montanye
2 hours ago
the u.s. government has not been mine since vietnam.
dead hobo
1 hour ago
(Edited)
Funny,
but look at the big picture. How could all these foreign horrors be contemplated if only a few people voted
for Biden? Agree the election was stolen, but it still took a massive number of Libtards and Woketards to
provide enough actual votes to make the fake votes count.
We are
seeing what happens when a massive amount of Accumulated Stupid runs daily life in the US. No amount of talk
will make a difference and most people don't read. Combined, this makes them impervious to common sense.
Things will get worse, then much worse, before they get better. This is a big deal. Democrats are going all
in at 110% effort because they know they will fail and and never get another chance if they don't take over
now. Expect outrageous takeovers followed by more outrageous takeovers. We haven't seen anything yet. Expect
to be Amazed.
chunga
2 hours ago
I'm
afraid those people will not be exempt from the harmful, malicious actions of the US govt and do not deserve
to be. I put myself in this category.
Sandmann
23 minutes ago
Most
Americans are great and generous people but so were most people in the Soviet Union
Lordflin
2 hours ago
You
don't seriously believe we would sit on the sidelines of such a conflict...
When
was the last time that happened...?
Deep
State wants war... and they are now firmly in charge in a capital protected by armed troops and razor
wire...
JPHR
3 hours ago
(Edited)
remove
link
This
article seems mistaken in treating Biden as somehow being in charge nor is this Harris.
The
most concerning aspect of this fake presidency is that non-elected and not accountable people behind the
scenes are running this farce.
The US
always selects weak corrupt leaders as front men for their color revolutions abroad and it should not be a
surprise that the color revolution at home now follows exactly that very same pattern.
Carlin was RIGHT
2 hours ago
(Edited)
It is
not just the author of this article that is mistaken, it is also 95% of the murican public. What you see on
your tee veee and read in media is 100% pure theatre - all agenda driven, of course.
Dumfknation will begrudgingly go along with ANYTHING tptb dictates - that has been proven beyond any doubt
over the last year. So expect nothing but misery and quite possibly death for the foreseeable future,
because (((they))) most certainly have NO CONCERN WHATSOEVER for you happiness and prosperity, and only seek
to make the world a better place for (((them))).
Sandmann
4 hours ago
Much
of the Hitler-Stalin War was fought in Ukraine. Ukraine was always the centre for Soviet weapons production
to ensure The West stayed away.
Brzezinski set up a cat's paw which he hoped would ensnare Russia but it will destroy USA. The West kept
Bandera groups funded and armed in Ukraine into 1950s. Poland wants to seize Gailicia. The simple fact is
Ukrainians are emigrating for work to Poland and Turkey and Western Europe if they can get forged papers.
Ukraine is dead - US wants to force West Europeans to pay transport levies to Ukraine for Russian gas
instead of North Stream so Europeans fund Ukraine corruption and backfunding to US Democrats.
Russia
will fight when it is ready as will China. Seems stupid to risk Atlanta or Dallas or LA or Chicago for Kiev
Craven Moorehead
3 hours ago
The
Soviet Union economically collapsed trying to match NATO military strength, too much of their resources and
productivity were directed to military, the West effectively outspent them.
Now
the tables have turned, The US may be on the road to the same fate, and the current government of morons may
just bring it about
BlindMonkey
2 hours ago
remove
link
The Ukraine war might be kept under wraps solely because Russia has clearly signaled they will enter it. An
attack is a suicide play for Ukraine. I don't expect this to stop the warhawks from trying but Zelensky
must know this is a death trap for him.
If this kicks off, expect Poland to be sacrificed to try to
take Kaliningrad in retribution.
SwmngwShrks
1 hour ago
remove
link
I
remember being in school in 2014, in a UN class specifically, learning about how the US backed coup in the
Ukraine led to them wanting to join the EU. However, as part of the treaty during the dissolution of the
USSR, if any of the barrier states went to join the EU, Russia would annex Crimea, as its only warm-water
port.
This
is what happened, and what was executed, however it was propagandized here in the US that Russia had
"invaded" Crimea. It explains why reporters on scene found the locals welcoming the Russians.
The
thing is, I remember so explicitly finding this on the web, because I was surprised it was true. I read the
actual treaty, and can no longer find it online, anywhere. Sigh, down the memory hole, thanks Brave New
World.
Savvy
24 minutes ago
It's hard to believe the Americans could be so short sighted, but Ukraine was 'liberated' to control
Russia's access to the EU market. Pretty stupid if so because that's when construction on NS2 began and
Ukraine is a US quagmire now. Another shining example of US intervenyionism.
SoDamnMad
2 hours ago
remove
link
Search
for the "March of the Immortal Regiment" on Youtube and understand that if you attack either the Crimea or
the Donbass you will fight seasoned soldiers as well as civilians ready to smash your face in with a
shovel. Unlike the US woke crowd those that chose Russia are not willing to lay down for the corrupt
private Nazi militias of Ukraine. The shipment of up-armored humvess are worthless in this fight. Half the
stuff will be stolen and wind up on the black market. No more mister nice guy. "Remember, you asked for
it."
deep-state-retired
3 hours ago
remove
link
With
the successful Biden Coup and full media / tech blackout of election fraud the Globalists are ready to take
on one of the last few nation states. They think like Napoleon and Hitler just kick in the door and the
house will collapse. We will see.
de tocqueville's ghost
1 hour ago
(Edited)
the
industrialized military complex and deep state stole our vote and election...they need war to survive. Biden
was always their "boy"...he voted yay for every war in the last 42 years. They had to get rid of Trump...he
wasn't starting any wars.
We knew Biden would start beating the war drums soon after being in the WH, and he is.
JackOliver5
3 hours ago
(Edited)
Luongo
is not too sharp - THIS is about the energy future - NATURAL GAS !
So was
the deal between Iran and China today !
Russia
already has over over 1000 CNG service stations - Iran will provide CNG pipelines to China - the Rothschilds
will have NO place in this NEW world !
THAT
is why we are seeing what we are seeing NOW !
Time
will prove that I am right !
Five_Black_Eyes_Intel_Agency
4 hours ago
(Edited)
The
psychopathic cabal loves creating frozen conflicts that they can "switch on" - such as the one in Ukraine.
The only problem is that they always keep choosing losers as their friends.
The
CIA and MI6 are working hard on "switching on" the Ukraine conflict, because peddling conflict is all they
know. Russia will wipe the floor with them.
The
world is waking up fast to the US-UK-israeli racket of depravity. The world except those pitiful vassals
still stuck in the honeymoon phase with their oppressors like the EU.
Propaganda Ripper
2 hours ago
(Edited)
At
this point, if you are politically correct, you cheer for World War 3. What could be more normal in a world
gone mad ?
US Banana Republic
2 hours ago
(Edited)
remove
link
Russia
AND China need to make sure the US has skin in this game.
When I
was IN Ukraine recently for three months a friend asked when the continental US was last involved in a real
war. It was, of course, the US Civil War and that ended in 1865. The US is far removed from the people it
disturbs and massacres. We have no problem singing how proud we are to be Americans because we are situated
in a place that we can do anything to anybody and they can't touch us. That needs to end.
I
don't know exactly how but Russia and China need to make the US pay some consequences for this ********
aggression.
Oldwood
2 hours ago
When you say "US", exactly WHO are you referring?
When you say "Chinese" who are you referring.
Most people of this planet are dominated by their leadership.
otschelnik
3 hours ago
(Edited)
remove
link
Donbass is another example of a successful 'frozen conflict' tactic which the Russians use in ethnicly
charged border conflicts or strategically important territories. North Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transdnestr are
some of the other ones. There's one big chanage in that now a lot of the residents of the Donbass region
have obtained Russian passports under an expedited system, about 400,000 reportedly by the beginning of the
year. Unlike US politicians Putin is not limited by time. This can go on for decades.
Russia
is keeping their options open, and they're willing to withdrawl from Donbass if the region is given autonomy
in Ukraine if they can keep Crimea. This is their favorite option but that's not acceptable for the Ukraine
government. If that doesn't work they can go all the way and annex Donbass too and have the forces to go
all the way to the Dnepr river. Ukraine can't do anything, they're too weak.
The
neocon's running the Biden administration would definitely like to push Ukraine into a hot war with Russia
but our NATO allies are not going to support it.
vasilievich
2 hours ago
If I
may ask, how do you know what Russia is willing to do?
otschelnik
22 minutes ago
Listen to Lavrov and read between the lines.
SoDamnMad
2 hours ago
"if
they can keep Crimea". I stopped reading after that. The road and railway links over the Kerch Strait told
me they were there for good.
BinAnunnaki
1 hour ago
remove
link
Can
Putin annex Donestsk and not expect full western sanctions, esp. on energy or is that a bluff?
Will
Merkel let her people freeze for Eastern Ukraine?
indus creed
30 minutes ago
(Edited)
At the
minimum Russia will take the eastern portion and the entire southern region, thus cutting Ukraine off from
the Black Sea.
MILITARY SITUATION IN EASTERN UKRAINE ON MARCH 28, 2021 (MAP UPDATE)
European Monarchist
1 hour ago
(Edited)
remove
link
Biden
is just like Obama, an unsophisticated and blundering WARMONGER.
El_Puerco
1 hour ago
Who
Are the Secret
Puppet-Masters
Behind
Biden's
War?
European Monarchist
59 minutes ago
(Edited)
Who
knows, but here is my list of likely suspects: the military industrial complex, the CIA, the deep state,
Mossad, hubris, dementia, and demons.
The Vel
1 hour ago
I like
this article. Some wonderful quotes:
'
They can't even get him to
talk with reporters for real, having to green screen him into backgrounds to make it look like he's out in
the world, doing stuff.'
- Check
In the
end everything we've lived through since COVID-19 began boils down to the need to destroy the global economy
built on oil and coal, otherwise all major energy production -
Check
If
there is a war in the Donbass this spring it won't be a happy ending which extends U.S. primacy into the
future but the moment when we realized its acceleration into irrelevancy. -
Check
Mate
That's
the key point of covid - it will take the US Federal Government into irrelevancy along with Dementia Joe.
And all you good folks and me will get to witness this transition to
irrelevance
(if
you don't die off from the vaxx sooner).
BubbaBanjo
1 hour ago
remove
link
Ukraine would be very wise to find a diplomatic way to be a neutral nation and not be a pawn. Russia will
take the pawn if it is played. Nothing will stop that. A pawn needs to know its role in the game.
Aquamaster
10 minutes ago
Always
remember, Biden did not put anyone into his administration based on qualifications. Most were picked for
either their racial, sexual, or LBGTQ... bonafides. The rest were picked as paybacks for financial, and
media/tech support during the campaign. Also, many are Obama retreads, and we know how poorly they performed
in those eight years of the Obama reign of error.
This
is going to be a horrible four years and I have no doubt that OBidens ideologues will blunder us into at
least one war. Hopefully it won't be WW3.
flyonmywall
23 minutes ago
The
idiot-in-chief is being told by his handlers that they can win this without American boots on the ground,
with cannon fodder provided by conscript Ukrainians.
When
the Russians finally unleash their armor divisions, they will cut through their opposition like a hot knife
through butter, while being covered by the Russian aerospace forces.
If
these idiots unleash long range misiles, World War 3 will be just around the corner.
Aquamaster
7 minutes ago
Indeed. We saw this exact thing happen in the ill fated Georgia conflict during the Bush presidency.
QABubba
2 hours ago
remove
link
Putin
is, and has been, playing a waiting game. With each year that passes the West gets weaker and Eurasia gets
stronger. The goal is with deft diplomacy to stretch this period out long enough for the balance of power
to become obvious.
Again, whoever thought that Russia would pay billions in transit fees to Poland and Ukraine for them to turn
around and spend with Lockheed, Ratheon. etc., to buy weapons to point at Russia was an idiot. A first
class idiot. The kind of idiot that will be the death of us.
Tom Green Swedish
2 hours ago
WIth
each year Putin becomes older and weaker. He will age out, and they will fall. I don't like Russia. Who
would?
Victor999
1 hour ago
Lots of people like Russia - all over the world. And lots of people absolutely hate America - all over
the world. How do you explain that? And if you knew anything about Russia, you would understand why you
should fear the day that Putin finally steps down.
blumenthal
2 hours ago
(Edited)
In
contrast to the attempted coup in Turkey, in which Erdogan acted decisively, it was a serious mistake on
Yanukovich's part not to deploy the military in Ukraine. The Russians made a subsequent mistake by not
marching straight into the capital Kiew. Now it will be much more difficult to control the situation in
Ukraine. A further conflict will escalate very quickly, because the Russians have a lot at stake and China
will not hesitate for long.......
Propaganda Ripper
2 hours ago
(Edited)
Yanukovich did not deploy the military in Ukraine because he was threatened with sanctions... The result is
that he almost got himself (and his family) killed. It was a very narrow escape from Kyiv.
BinAnunnaki
2 hours ago
remove
link
Remember this all happened while Putin was concluding a successful Olympics
morefunthanrum
2 minutes ago
Zerohedge and the Republicans are awful sympathetic to trumps buddy putin....why is that?
TRUMP WON
2 minutes ago
Putin
loves his country...
Biden
does not.
Only a
few years difference in their ages... Jesus, what a contrast.
One,
sharp as a tack... the other, a urine-soaked imbecilic pedo clown
rtb61
1 hour ago
The
Ukraine no longer seems willing to self destruct being part of Europe a lie, they should never have shot
down the passenger jet, they will never be forgiven for that.
Right
now the worst thing the USA could do to Russia, dump the Ukraine back on them and force Russia to pay to fix
and and create chaos with regard to the Crimea.
The
Ukraine is a mess and getting worse, it is a booby prize for whom ever gets stuck with it. The Ukraine even
managed to say the stupidest thing they could, when they said the Crimea returned to Russia, really stuck
their foot in there. Should never have said that because yes, it was stolen by a Ukrainian leader of the
Soviet Union and logically at the end of the Soviet Union should have demanded it's return to Russia because
soviet union evil.
The
Ukraine government should have never said, the Crimea returned to Russia because they immediately lost their
case in doing so.
Global Hunter
1 hour ago
remove
link
The
pro-Soros, pro NATO Ukrainians (baby Russians) who are rebelling against their Russian brethren shot the
plane down ya stooge.
fosfor 37
2 hours ago
(Edited)
remove
link
Many
thanks to Biden and Nuland for the Russian Crimea!
Vladymyr Zhirinovsky - The division of Ukraine will take place in the near future
The
flight of Viktor Yanukovych from Kiev turned out to be the most profitable option for Russia. Otherwise, one
would have to spend a lot of money and be left without Crimea.
"Why
didn't Yanukovych stay in Kiev? How would we take Crimea if Yanukovych stayed in Kiev? We would have thrown
an army into Kiev, we would have given a lot of money, Yanukovych would have sat there and continued to rule
Ukraine, and Crimea would have remained Ukrainian and died. Yanukovych played along with us. Now Biden is
playing along with us. Let him continue to help the allegedly Ukrainian army. "
Zhirinovsky presented the ongoing actions as a multi-step combination for the creation of Novorossiya.
"It is
beneficial for us that Biden gave the command through his Ukrainian accomplices to launch an attack on
Donbass. Yes, we will crush this entire army completely, and a movement will begin towards the creation of
Novorossia, the entire South-East of Ukraine, and the North - we will see. Maybe we'll come to an agreement
with the Germans and the Poles, maybe we'll do a little differently there. "
Let it Go
3 hours ago
remove
link
Biden putting more weapons into
the hands of those unmotivated to fight for their corrupt state is merely adding fuel to this fire and doing
more harm than good.
Remember Ukraine is a financially failed state and while we can point to its
potential, its massive oil and gas reserves by all rights should belong to the Ukrainian people. These
reserves do not belong to people like Joe and hunter Biden.
More
on this subject in the article below.
Recall
all the "concern" that Trump might be blackmailed by those who had dirt on him...(Russia)
never
happened
So
what of Biden and Burisma, Ukraine, Hunter, China deals, money wired, ...??
Any
stories that might be told, or withheld, on the Bidens?
Southern_Boy
21 minutes ago
I
believe living anywhere near the DC Swamp will become rather dangerous (it's probably dangerous now because
of BLM/Antifa and the "woke" mobs) once the nuclear ballistic missile exchange starts. Even the big blue
cities and state capitals are probably going to be targets.
The
globalist elites of the Medical-Military Industrial Complex really believe the homeland is invulnerable to
and will never be subjected to a real damaging attack.
Don't
forget the historical wild card is Pakistan, India and Iran with nuclear and biological weapons of mass
destruction.
gzorp
24 minutes ago
(Edited)
After
the nazis bounced Kennedy's brains (and your democracy) off the trunk of his limo on 11/22/63, the Right of
Return side as opposed to Containment side won the argument. There would be no cooperation with the Soviet
Union... Nixon (Dulles/nazi protege) used the ukrainian (Bandera faction) Romainian Iron Guard, Croation
Ustashi etc . to get the ethnic vote for the Republipigs promosing right of return to their countries for
the nazi collaborators given refuge here in the US. Brought into the Republipig party as an official wing of
the party by HW Bush when he was chairman of the Republipig party as the "Ethnic Outreach" wing of the
party. Seen the USSA returning any former nazis to Croatia or Ukraine?...
Kat Daddy
49 minutes ago
(Edited)
If a
plebiscite is called in the Donbass, the people will vote to join the Russian Federation. Any actions taken
by NATO and the Atlanticist interests will appear illegal under international law. So much for promoting
democracy and humanitarian interests. There need not be a war, but I know you're secretly hoping for one.
Fortunately for me I am able to listen to podcasts & audiobooks while working to fill
gaps in my portfolio, as nothing paid for available as yet. Dropped on an AB written by a
Wehrmacht soldier on the Eastern front, followed by the view from a Russian soldier. I then
moved on to 2 AB's which featured around 15 testimonies from German military at or close to
the D-day beaches.
Something that became instantly clear was that all the combatants had very similar hopes
& dreams but were motivated by each states propaganda & much harsher disciplinary
measures than the Allies faced . The German cannon fodder believed that they were creating a
United Europe protected from Communism & were in partnership with the French –
something that was made all the easier to believe due to the friendly treatment they received
from at least some of the French locals. The Ivan's on the other hand were protecting the
Motherland from Fascism & as they progressed were given plenty of evidence that they were
correct to do so.
It was like getting a small bubble view of groups of men in either case whose main loyalty
was concentrated towards the relatively small group pf men they fought & died with. A
view under a microscope totally different from the usual general view from high above when
individuals are reduced to numbers with only the top brass being honoured with names.
All described various versions of Hell on Earth, gory with very little glory & one
thing that really surprised me in relation to D-day & the so called " Good War " was the
accounts of the use of early phosphorous weapons & the horror they inflicted on the
defenders. I looked it up on Wiki but it only mentions it in relation to the bombing & I
assume rocket attacks from Typhoons & the like at Cherbourg. My Great Uncle Tommy came
ashore that day & unlike my Grandad he talked a lot about his war experience, which
included descriptions of the black burning skeletons of German soldiers in trenches in front
of shattered concrete bunkers after air strikes & what he saw as one of the the biggest
threats being shrapnel, which soon got him home after his left arm was amputated after being
shredded by splinters from a machine gunned tree in the Bocage – his considered opinion
on war films was & is not family blogable.
The German accents are a tad Private Schultz, but fortunately for me that soon got lost in
the detail.
True, aided by everybody's low grade psychopaths that sow the bad seeds that has the rest
full of hatred & thirsting for revenge.
Something else that upset me was the fate of the horses & pack mules which for both
the Soviets & the Wehrmacht were the mainstay of their transportation. The Germans found
that the small Steppe ponies were much tougher than their larger supposedly better bred ones
– millions were killed & the Russian soldier who had worked in a mine as a
youngster with pit ponies felt it deeply during the times when he witnessed the mortally
wounded. He also became aware of the fate of many of the war caused stray dogs at the
Russians advanced into totally shattered places like Belarus. They were rounded up & then
fed under tanks for a period, before being starved then tied to a high explosive which was
timed to go off at the estimated time it took for the them to run under an advancing Tiger,
Panther or whatever.
Funnilly enough the biggest thing that shocked the Germans in relation to what was
unloaded at D-Day was the fact that there were no horses.
Perhaps the plight of the animals is hard to take for some at least is because they were
both totally blameless & innocent.
You really don't know what the hell is going on, do you! Putin is the moderating force in
Russia, keeping the hardliners at bay. Once he is gone, people who aren't going to take any
more **** from the US and its allies will be coming to power. Then we will see people like
you piss in their pants worrying how to save themselves from Russia's fury.
Maltheus 1 hour ago
Putin is an old guy. I fear that his replacement won't have the same patience and wisdom.
Or maybe I'm eagerly looking forward to it. Either way, it doesn't take much for things to
get out of hand rather quickly.
European Monarchist 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
President Putin is likely the healthiest leader Russia has ever had.
He is also 68, a full decade younger than Joe Biden.
I think he will be around for a while.
Vladimir Putin's hard-core daily routine includes hours of swimming, late nights, and no
alcohol
Take a look at a day in the life of Vladimir Putin:
Putin rises late in the morning, taking breakfast around noon. He usually tucks into a
large omelette or a big bowl of porridge, with some quail eggs and fruit juice on the side.
Newsweek reports that the ingredients are "dispatched regularly from the farmland estates
of the Patriarch Kirill, Russia's religious leader."
Once he's finished his meal, he drinks coffee.
Next, it's time to exercise. Newseek reported that Putin spends about two hours
swimming. While he's in the water, Putin often "gets much of Russia's thinking done," Judah
writes.
After he's done swimming laps, Putin lifts weights in the gym.
Russia plans to decrease its oil exports in the second quarter 2021 despite an OPEC
decision to allow the state an additional output hike from April.
On a daily basis, Russia's oil exports will drop by some 3% in April-June compared to the
first quarter of 2021, Reuters calculations showed.
REPLYRON PATTERSON IGNORED
03/25/2021 at 12:23 pm
And no one asked why? There is a reason for everything.
Hint: Four of the five largest fields in Russia are located in West Siberia, Samotlor,
Priob, Lyantor, and Fedorov. 61% of Russian production currently comes from Western
Siberia.
Russia's second-largest field, Romashkino, discovered in 1948, is located in the Volga-Ural
Basin and is also in serious decline.
The five largest fields in Russia produce approximately 75% of Russian oil. And they are
all in serious decline.RON
PATTERSON IGNORED
03/25/2021 at 1:00 pm
"Russian oil production will not get any help from reserve growth in Western Siberia. Old
dying fields, like old dying men do not grow."
I really don't like to brag, but I was dead on. From 2015 to 2019, Russian oil production
increased by about 200,000 barrels per day per year, for a total of 800k barrels per day. That
growth came from new fields in Eastern Siberia. The largest of those new fields, Vankor, peaked
in 2019 at just under 500,000 barrels per day. Hell, even their new fields are starting to
peak.
But those old dying fields did not grow one iota. They are all now in decline.
JEAN-FRANÇOIS FLEURY IGNORED
03/26/2021 at 6:14 am
And world oil production is going to skyrocket, according to IEA and EIA projections. Of
course. JEAN-FRANÇOIS FLEURY IGNORED
03/28/2021 at 7:39 am
...About Brazil, the oil production will increase at most of 500 kb/d according to the post
of George Kaplan. ... About Irak, they are not going to produce more oil. Indeed, after
different episodes of wars, UNO sanctions, invasion by US, insurrections against US and British
troops and after EI insurrection, they did extract less than half of their oil reserves.
... About Norway, by looking at the post of Georges Kaplan about current state of oil
reserves and production, it seems rather unlikely that they will be able to increase
significantly their oil production.
History doesn't repeat, but it sure as hell rhymes.
The Revolutionary and Civil war was fought against finance capital; where said capital
emanated mostly from London. By 1912 the U.S. was no longer Industrial Capitalist, but had
been usurped by Finance Capitalism, and of course the (((usual suspects))) were pulling
strings in the background.
WW2 was the now finance capitalist allies against the industrial capitalist axis
powers.
The run up to WW2 had the axis "industrial capitalist" powers exit the London based
finance capitalist "sterling" system. Churchill even admitted to the reason why the allies
attacked.
Germany's most unforgivable crime before the Second World War was her attempt to
extricate her economic power from the world's trading system and to create her own exchange
mechanism which would deny (((world finance))) its opportunity to profit.
Finance capital exported jobs from the U.S. and the West toward China; this in order to
take wage arbitrage. China then rope-a-dopes the dummies from the west, and uses its state
credit and industrial capitalist system to acquire intellectual know-how, and climb the
industrial curve.
Finance capitalist are slowly being cut-out of taking wage arbitrage from China and
realize that their "assets" over there, can be taken by the Chinese state at any time. Now
they want war to secure their asset position, and to buy more of China at a war time fire
sale price.
Finance capital runs the same playbook over and over. The bad guys won in WW1 and 2. The
(((international))) finance class works behind the scenes to take sordid gain on humanity,
including mass death.
If your government is festooned with ne0-con Jews, then that should be strong signal that
your country is not sovereign, but instead is operated by stealth with finance capital and
its oligarchs.
This time around is different, China and Russia will exit the dollar system, and the
western finance capitalist class can do nothing but make idle threats. Some will argue that
the West will resort to nukes.
Maybe? I'm assuming that our (((friends))) are not completely insane, as they would lose
their capital and asset position. Their greed will stop them from destroying themselves, and
us.
"If your government is festooned with ne0-con Jews, then that should be strong signal
that your country is not sovereign, but instead is operated by stealth with finance capital
and its oligarchs. "
You are a wise man Mefobills
If your government is festooned with ne0-con Jews, then that should be strong signal
that your country is not sovereign, but instead is operated by stealth with finance capital
and its oligarchs.
"When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you
– you know your nation is doomed."
Germany is showing signs of an independent Russia policy. The main issue between the United
States, Europe, and Russia now is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would carry gas from Russia
to Germany. The Biden Administration may impose
sanctions on companies that help build it, which
risks a blowup with Berlin .
Most Republicans want
even sterner measures . Senator Ted Cruz is
delaying confirmation of some of President Biden's officials unless he takes action.
Hostility towards Russia is one of the few issues that unite Republicans and Democrats
– along with support for
citizenship for illegal immigrants ,
interference in Syria, keeping
troops in Afghanistan , and thwarting
China . We can't count on Republicans or Democrats to stand up for Americans, but we can
count on support for invading the world and inviting the world. This combination of an
aggressive foreign policy and indifference towards citizens is why some call the current regime
the
Globalist American Empire (GAE). It may be based in Washington DC, but it has nothing to do
with the historic American nation or its interests.
However, what I call the " American Paradox "
may doom this "empire." It is run by people who seem to care nothing for the country; the
empire is built on sand.
@Anonymous that a strong American military and national security posture is the best
guarantor of peace and the survival of our values and civilization.
Stavridis has been at the forefront of the mass slaughter known as the implementation of the
Oded Yinon Plan for Eretz Israel:
From 2002 to 2004, Stavridis commanded Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, conducting combat
operations in the Persian Gulf in support of both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation
Enduring Freedom.
Stavridis "oversaw operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria." In short, this prominent
racketeer is dripping with the blood of hundreds of thousands of the victims.
"The strategic stealth bomber will be able to deliver conventional and thermonuclear
weapons to enemy targets anywhere and anytime in the world. It will be able to destroy any
target, anywhere".
Once it gets there, anyway – which at presumably subsonic speed may take a long,
long time.
So basically this will cost a huge amount of money to do what ICBMs have been able to do
for 60 years, and what Burevestnik can do with a lot more flexibility and stealth.
"Afghanistan is a great base from which to invade Central Asia and threaten Russia from
the south. The country has been occupied by the US for 20 years "
If Russia, China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Iran got together and supported the Taliban,
they could get the Americans out of Afghanistan double quick.
I am slightly puzzled that they haven't done so long ago.
Unless they prefer to keep the Americans tied up and bleeding in Central Asia. Keep your
enemies closer, etc.
This uncomfortable thought came to me while listening to Joe Biden talking about "soulless
killer" Vladimir Putin. Smaller insults have sparked off wars. The "Footless, yellow
earth-worm" slur moved Kaa the Rock Python to devour Bandar Log. Luckily, easy-going Putin
replied with a smile. He said that in his
childhood, kids responded with "I am rubber, you are glue; bounces off me and sticks to you";
he only wished good health for the American president and proposed to debate him online, so
that Americans and Russians, as well as the whole world, could form their own opinion. Biden
evaded the challenge. It's not clear he remembered who Putin is. An empty suit with a
teleprompter, called him Donald Trump Jr . Biden
said Putin meddled in the US elections and he will pay a price for it. Alas, Putin couldn't
influence the US dead, and they swung the elections as they voted for Biden by whole
cemeteries. Yes, Biden is a senile dummy that couldn't even board Air Force One without
stumbling thrice
the next day, but there is somebody who operates the teleprompter, and that is the problem.
The Russians were visibly furious. When US leaders drop such invective, it's like pirates
passing a 'black spot' in Treasure Island .
It's a signal that the foreign leader has to be deposed or killed outright. That's how they
spoke of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadhafi; both were killed and their 'rogue states'
devastated. It was clearly a show of hostile intentions, not just from Biden but also from the
US establishment speaking like ventriloquist through the current White House tenant.
Afghanistan is a great base from which to invade Central Asia and threaten Russia from the
south. The country has been occupied by the US for 20 years, and Trump was determined to pull
out the troops. Biden has already hinted that the US will renege on its agreement with the
Taliban to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The withdrawal was supposed to be completed by
May 2021; it will be "tough" for the United States to withdraw forces from Afghanistan in six
weeks, he said. Biden has also scrapped Trump's plan to withdraw forces from Germany, and with
good reason. His administration wants Germans to drop the Nord Stream II project, and it is
easier to convince a country if you have forty military bases there.
Fighting against Iran never stopped. When the US isn't doing it her best friend Israel is
acting. It has emerged that during the last two years, Israeli frogmen sabotaged 12 Iranian
tankers, reported the Wall
Street Journal . But it all backfired. On February 16, the entire Mediterranean coast of
Israel was covered with sticky black mess.
... ... ...
The blow to Israel was terrible – animals, plants and fish died; for a long time it
will be impossible to swim and sunbathe on the oily shores. Only now the sad truth has begun to
leak out: 'the worst pollution of the century' had been done by Israelis. The first to speak
about the source of the pollution was Israeli Minister of the Environment Gila Gamliel. She
said the oil was released by the Iranian tanker Emerald carrying a cargo of
US-sanctioned oil products to Syria. This is Iranian eco-terrorism, she said. But Gila was
quickly gagged – the Israeli military censorship forbade discussion of this topic, except
in the most general terms. It appears Gila Gamliel was right – up to a point. The Israeli
dissident
Richard Silverstein wrote about it:
It was a deliberate attack by Israel on the Iranian vessel. Israel's naval commando unit,
Flotilla 13 covertly attached a mine to the Emerald . The intent was to cause minor
damage that would send a message to Iran that its own attacks on Gulf shipping would bring a
cost. This Times of London
report written by Haaretz columnist Anshel Pfeiffer confirms my source. However, the
commandos didn't realize that the Emerald was a rusty old hulk in desperately
ill-repair. The Israeli mine, which was supposed to cause minor damage, actually ripped a
hole so big that much of the contents of the ship's hold leaked into the Mediterranean. This
is what caused the Israeli environmental disaster: Israel itself.
Biden voted for Gulf War Two. Why? Because as he admits, he is a Zionist. Zionists are
traitors, terrorists and murderers. Yet Biden the terrorist accuses Putin of being a
killer?
The illusion of a US president having any actual authority is pretty much being dispelled by
this ventriloquist's dummy Biden signing whatever is placed in front of him and parroting
whatever is on the teleprompter. A stupid egotist his entire life, his mental decline isn't as
apparent as it might be quite yet because he's been carefully stage managed so far. They're
being extremely careful not to let the cat out of the bag in letting people get a glimpse of
what he's really like. And it's downhill from here.
The virus hysteria has been a test case lab in assessing what works, what doesn't, how to
improve on herding and suppressing the population, etc. Insofar as dead foreign leaders goes,
who really knows?
When tens of millions of dollars are available lots of people in some leader's circle might
be tempted to expose the target to some form of poisoning or lethal radiation. Hugo Chavez
expressed suspicion at how he and other leaders opposed to US diktat seemed to come down with
cancer.
The US itself has claimed some of it's diplomats were possibly targeted by mystery rays in
Cuba so the idea of something like this is not far-fetched; it's just a case of projection,
accusing others of what one is guilty of.
LOL, you don't know how many times, since his campaign and now as (fake) POTUS that Biden
has reminded me of Chauncey Gardiner. It's the perfect comparison.
(But, Jobotomy Xiden will be gone soon and then the bi-racial, sociopathic Hillary 2.0 will
be inaugurated. Excuse me while I go hurl.)
Think of the hysteria and histrionic nation wide wailing and teeth gnashing over Trump
calling it "the China virus" and the dead silence when Biden calls Putin:
A soulless killer. .
I wish Putin would take revenge and pull a Soleimani on Biden & Co. but perhaps he
laughs & chalks it up to the senile, demented ramblings of a clown.
Is this more theater?
To add to the insanity, the embrace and total absolution of the pathological liar, war
criminal and mass torturer and murderer, George W. Bush leaves me .stunned:
Bush on Putin, 2001:
"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We
had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul ; a man deeply
committed to his country and the best interests of his country."
Biden is a sociopath, one of limited intelligence. But a sociopath nevertheless.
If he is instructed by his controllers to initiate a nuclear war, he will do so
unhesitatingly.
I would not be surprised if both Joe and Hunter were somehow benefiting from drug traffic
across the border. Actually, I expect that is largely what is behind Biden's open border
policy.
It's impossible for normal people to understand sociopathic behavior. The American political
class has been selected for sociopathy now for generations.
"Americans should write a letter of apology to Putin, apologizing for our rude and senile
leader (and the degenerate lunatics that surround him) and ask for President Putin's
understanding and patience. "
Not a bad idea at all. I would formulate some things differently though, the idea is that
the letter should also circulate, so mind the crude tone, show that even Americans can be
tactful gentle-man. Even that would impress the whole world.
Thanatopia's attacks on Putin differ vastly from its deranged Sinophobia. Thanatopians want
Putin gone, replaced by a New Yeltsin, and Russia vivisected for further pillage. But they
don't want Russians dead, because this 'Free Russia' will be needed for the Great Purpose-the
destruction of China.
The truly Evil campaign to entirely falsely accuse China of genocide in Xinjiang, is a call
not just to war, but to genocide. A China devastated would still rise again, even if the USA
and its villainous stooges succeed in breaking it up, again, as was nearly achieved in the 19th
and 20th centuries.
The USA and the Western vassals promote, train and finance separatists in Xinjiang, Tibet,
'South' Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, even 'Manchuria'. Such civil discord would cause millions
of deaths, but it gets worse.
The Imperial hatemongers never cease to vilify the CCP. The 'New Nazis', 'It is 1939 again,
and 'appeasement' is treason', human organ harvesters etc. All lies, all the crudest
projection. But the CCP is 100 million strong, and the Chinese CCP Government enjoys 95%
satisfied or highly satisfied rating from the populace, according to the latest Harvard poll.
So the entire population is complicit, 'Xi's willing executioners' etc, and must be punished.
SARS CoV2 was obviously meant to kill millions of Chinese and devastate the economy, but the
'blowback' has been cosmic retribution, and that has only made the Western genocidists even
more enraged.
The Western oligarchy does not do mass high kultur. Kultur is a commodity and a venue for
narcissistic display and mass kultur is base, exploitative and mind-destroying, keeping the
plebs permanently obtunded, morally, intellectually and spiritually. 'Feed 'em muck' as Nellie
Melba recommended.
Worldometer/coronavirus today: Tanzania population >60 million; CV19 cases <600. Dear
Scott, that cannot be correct! (If all the brainwashing serves me right.)
RIP President Magufuli, the man who busted WHO with their fraud -- or scientific
incompetence. Ha. This story could have been the lead paragraph, and no stone should be left
unturned to find out if Magufuli was murdered. This especially includes death by a deadly viral
infection, ala Operation Zyphr ?
Minor correction: Biden does not represent the American people. Those who think they support
him are unaware of their Stockholm syndrome.
Now, let's arrest our schadenfreude about Israel's acts of sabotage spoiling their own
coastline. Our fragile seas are too precious for that sort of vindictive spirit. Nevertheless,
it is okay be encouraged about this colossal blunder, because it proves the controllers are
really not in control at all. And they damn well know it.
Finally, forget not Shere Khan totally trumps Kaa. But as fate would have it even he loses
in the end.
Unless neocons are insane, I don't think that they want to start a war with Russia and much
less China. The U.S. can't even win a war against goat herders with homemade explosives. The
U.S. military is more concerned about having black transgender soldiers than about being
efficient.
Also, China practically owns the U.S. and Canada at this point.
This is probably just another distraction to keep people from noticing that they are
(again!) being fleeced and raped.
It now appears the Russians and Chinese are using our woke BS against us like a deflector
shield.
Putin's speech of the US projecting its own psychology on others, mentioning BLM and racism
plus the Chinese mentioning the US "persecution of blacks".
They inflict this woke shit on us but didn't realize it could also be used by their
enemies.
Ultimate blow back for the dumb fuckers in Washington. Totally hilarious.
People are all too vulnerable in the Righteous Empire. The enforcers of right attitudes can
do with you anything, anything at all. A scientist who kept quiet when he heard the word n<
> being uttered, has lost
his job . A man, Robert Hoogland, has been
sent to jail for calling his 14-year-old daughter, "daughter", and publicly referring to
her with the pronouns "she" and "her", while the girl still isn't allowed yet to buy beer
insists she will be a man. Add to that the misery created by lockdowns, and you will understand
why thousands of Russian émigrés rush back into Mother Russia.
Since 1980s, Russians considered themselves lucky if they could escape their frosty homeland
and move westward. The children of Stalin and Khrushchev, top government figures of Yeltsin
days, artists and scientists, moved to Florida or Paris. They were always ready to condemn
Putin the brutal dictator. A popular film actor Mr Alexei
Serebryakov had left Russia for Canada, angrily slamming the door, condemning the "bloody
regime" and Russia's "mix of strength, arrogance and rudeness". And suddenly – the wind
had changed, and the reverse drift has begun. Serebryakov returned from Canada, though many
Russians aren't welcoming his move back at all. A science journalist Asya Kazantseva returned
to Moscow from Tel Aviv and Bristol, UK and wrote:
An unexpected collateral effect of the pandemic is that all the friends who immigrated to
Europe a long time ago flocked home to spend the winter here in Moscow, where vaccines are
free and available, and there is no lockdown. Social life here is twice as active as it was
in peacetime. I will never be lonely again! [A popular Jewish blogger] Alina Farkash recently
wrote that in Moscow, you are a beloved child in a large family, while emigration [in her
case to Israel] is like being sent to an orphanage. That's all true. I really hope that I
will never go anywhere else, that I will always be here, and that I will firmly remember what
an endless happiness it is just to be here."
Indeed, Russia is not a wonderland; it has many faults and problems. Its oligarchs are too
rich, its people are rather poor; taxes are too low; the social gap is greater than in the US
or China, as you can read in this text (in Russian) .
However, Russia is free. You can say and write whatever you wish. There are no lockdowns.
Schools operate as usual; distance learning is rare. Churches are open. Theatres, ditto. There
are no obligatory masks; where they are obligatory, the Russians still ignore them.
The Russian government is
responding angrily to Biden's derisive comments about Putin:
The Kremlin has reacted angrily to US President Joe Biden's remarks that Russian leader
Vladimir Putin is "a killer," calling the comment unprecedented and describing the
relationship between the two countries as "very bad."
U.S.-Russian relations have been deteriorating steadily over the last ten years, and it
always seemed unlikely that Biden would improve them. Now there will be even less of a chance
that Biden can work constructively with his Russian counterpart. The president's blunt answer
to a rather silly question from George Stephanopoulos has further damaged the relationship to
neither country's benefit. Anatol Lieven
observed recently that this is a "completely unnecessary confrontation with Russia" at a
time when the U.S. needs Russian cooperation on some important issues. Lieven cites U.S.
reentry into the JCPOA and extricating U.S. forces from Afghanistan as his examples of issues
where Russian cooperation could be very valuable, but he could have added new negotiations on
future arms control agreements as well. Making progress on any one of these becomes much more
challenging when our president is gratuitously insulting theirs. For an administration that
prides itself on practicing diplomacy, they have a funny way of showing it.
The Joseph Biden administration has named Richard Nephew as its deputy Iran envoy. As the
former principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy for Barack Obama's State Department,
Nephew took personal credit for depriving Iranians of food, sabotaging their automobile
industry, and driving up unemployment rates.
Nephew has described the destruction of Iran's economy as "a tremendous success," and
lamented during a visit to Russia that food was still plentiful in the country's capital
despite mounting US sanctions.
Nephew's appointment to a senior diplomatic post suggests that rather than immediately
returning to the JCPOA nuclear deal, the Biden administration will finesse sanctions
illegally imposed by Trump to pressure Iran into an onerous, reworked agreement that Tehran
is unlikely to join.
Nephew's "simple framework" for "sanctions to perform their expected function" reads like
a torturer's manual (replace "target state" with "prisoner"):
- identify objectives for the imposition of pain and define the minimum necessary remedial
steps that the target state must take for pain to be removed
- understand as much as possible the nature of the target, including its vulnerabilities,
interests, commitment to whatever it did to prompt sanctions, and readiness to absorb
pain
-develop a strategy to carefully, methodically, and efficiently increase pain on those
areas that are vulnerabilities while avoiding those that are not
-monitor the execution of the strategy and continuously recalibrate its initial assumption
of target state resolve, the efficacy of the pain applied in shattering that resolve, and how
best to improve the strategy
Combatting malign influences in the Americas: OGA (Office of Global Affairs) used
diplomatic relations in the Americas region to mitigate efforts by states, including Cuba,
Venezuela, and Russia, who are working to increase their influence in the region to the
detriment of US safety and security. OGA coordinated with other U.S. government agencies to
strengthen diplomatic ties and offer technical and humanitarian assistance to dissuade
countries in the region from accepting aid from these ill intentioned states. Examples
include using OGA's Health Attaché office to persuade Brazil to reject the Russian
COVID-19 vaccine, and offering CDC technical assistance in lieu of Panama accepting an offer
of Cuban doctors.
Old neocon still is dreaming about imperial greatness and full spectrum Dominance, when the
country is significantly and irreversibly crippled by neoliberalism and its accumulation by
dispossession which eliminated a large swats of well paid workers and professionals. It is now
the country where the Congress is now hiding from people behind barbed wall.
It is difficult to teach old dog new tricks. Intimidation of the opponent replaced diplomacy.
Semi-Dementia mixed with arrogance in action. "White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden
would continue to look to cooperate on efforts to stem Iran's nuclear program and, more broadly,
nuclear nonproliferation. But she said Biden did not regret referring to Putin as a killer and
pushed back against suggestions that the rhetoric was unhelpful."
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Director of National Intelligence came out with a report today saying
that Vladimir Putin authorized operations during the election to under -- denigrate you,
support President Trump, undermine our elections, divide our society. What price must he
pay?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: He will pay a price. I, we had a long talk, he and I, when we -- I know
him relatively well. And I-- the conversation started off, I said, "I know you and you know me.
If I establish this occurred, then be prepared."
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You said you know he doesn't have a soul.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I did say that to him, yes. And -- and his response was, "We understand
one another." It was-- I wasn't being a wise guy. I was alone with him in his office. And that
-- that's how it came about. It was when President Bush had said, "I looked in his eyes and saw
his soul."
I said, "Looked in your eyes and I don't think you have a soul." And looked back and he
said, "We understand each other." Look, most important thing dealing with foreign leaders in my
experience, and I've dealt with an awful lot of 'em over my career, is just know the other guy.
Don't expect somethin' that you're-- that -- don't expect him to-- or her to-- voluntarily
appear in the second editions of Profiles in Courage.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he's a killer?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Uh-huh. I do.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So what price must he pay?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The price he's gonna pay we'll-- you'll see shortly. I'm not gonna--
there's-- by the way, we oughta be able that ol' -- that trite expression "walk and chew gum at
the same time," there're places where it's in our mutual interest to work together.
That's why I renewed the start agreement with him. That occurred while he's doin' this. But
that's overwhelmingly in the interest of humanity, that we diminish the prospect of a nuclear
exchange. But that and SolarWinds as well. He's been -- they've done some mischievous things,
to say the least. And so we're gonna have -- I'm not gonna announce what I'm doing, but he's
gonna understand that --
Vladimir Putin issues new 'kill list' - and six of the targets live in Britain
EXCLUSIVE: The warning of a deadly post-pandemic campaign comes from same spy who alerted
that Salisbury novichok victim Sergei Skripal was earmarked for assassination
The SAS and other units in the Special Forces Group will likely work alongside MI6 to
conduct covert surveillance operations against Russian spies and military units.
Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, the chief of the general staff, told The Telegraph that special
forces will be tasked with tackling "hostile state actors".
The move comes ahead of the publication of the Defence Command Paper, the MoD's
contribution to the Government's Integrated Review of foreign, defence, security and
development policy, which will be published on Monday.
How can one interpret this except as an attempt to curry favour in Washington? Why now?
Presumably, because the USG has just said that it is focussing on Russia. Even if this
is a policy shift why announce it? This is the sort of information that, (You
might think!) discovered and passed to the Russian Embassy would get you locked up for a long
time! If this has any effect, I imagine it would be that if/when the Russians come across any
unexplained Brits in (say) Syria, they will KNOW what they are there for and will deal
with them accordingly. A more poodle-like action is hard to imagine.
As a practitioner of permaculture I look for patterns, including power constructs of the
U.S./5 eyes mafia. Here's one.
Look at Luis Almagro, enthusiastic mouthpiece and cheerleader for the U.S. empire. Now look
at NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. They could be brothers or cousins judging their resumes and
history of kissing the rings of powerful mafiosos. Norwegian has already given us a summary
of how Stoltenberg "failed up" and Almagro's history is similar. He's most known lately for
being the screamer who triggered the coup in Bolivia over a year ago.He didn't ask for my
advice. I'd have told him: "run away and hide!" He's still in the limelight as he once again
stepped up to call for Jeanine Añez's release from jail for her crimes during the
nazi/keystone (cops) reign of terror. Bolivia is responding much like the Russians, Chinese
and Iranians: they are standing firm AND now considering prosecuting Almagro!
https://orinocotribune.com/oas-almagro-defends-coup-plotters-in-bolivia-declares-court-case-political-persecution/
https://orinocotribune.com/bolivia-considers-taking-legal-action-against-oas-secretary-general-luis-almagro/
To me, it is like Almagro is walking around naked and trying to act as if he has clothes on.
Almagro is similar to Kamala in that his own people in Uruaguay don't like him: national hero
and former Tupac Amaru revolutionary hero before he became president Jose Mujica canceled
Almagro. He snuggled up to Pompeo and now seamlessly genuflects before... pick a name:
Blinken, Kamala, Colombian born frat boy Juan Gonzalez. Fear of the U.S. is diminishing. Same
in Ecuador. Alliances are growing stronger--Venezuela and Iran are a shining example of the
way forward. They are not hiding their actions... they are BRAGGING about them! https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15133
Bottom line-- obvious dimwit psychopaths Elliot Abrams and Pompeo are gone, replaced by new
guys who are not that bright but they think they are while they are losing the only leverage
left: threats. No one likes them and no one fears them. China and Russia's smackdowns will
resonate throughout Latin America. Alliances will grow at an increasingly rapid pace.
Meanwhile, watch the Ecuador election results April 11. Arauz is strong and gaining more, the
people there are getting more mobilized. another game changer in South America.
Blinken, like his boss, is a complete moron. He blew it with his patronising threatening
'rules based order' drivel because he has no expertise. Blinken has been doing this for a
decade or two: Syria, Libya, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, and on and on. He has the form of a
killer, the mind of a killer and the intentions of a mass murderer. He has proven the latter
and is the type of global ambassadorial psychopath that one should meet with once and then
never meet again.
The USA has lost its mind and every day that passes proves that point.
This bar deserves broader analysis of other quarters of the planet and no more references
to the Guardian or NYT.
Biden under pressure to tap fewer political ambassadors than Trump, Obama
Donors are growing impatient as Biden delays naming coveted ambassador posts.
I know that the United States and its leaders are determined to maintain certain relations
with us, but on matters that are of interest to the United States and on its terms. Even
though they believe we are just like them, we are different. We have a different genetic,
cultural and moral code. But we know how to uphold our interests. We will work with the
United States, but in the areas that we are interested in and on terms that we believe are
beneficial to us. They will have to reckon with it despite their attempts to stop our
development, despite the sanctions and insults. They will have to reckon with this.
The author provides basic but essential definition of conflict resolution. The USians either
don't understand or defy it.
Your link to statement by Blinken & Sullivan is propaganda as you say. It is also an
expression of how deeply limited and very stupid these two are. They have no idea what just
hit them.
I'm in the middle of Armstrong's
essay and am at the first reference to Kagan's vision:
"What should that role be? Benevolent global hegemony. Having defeated the 'evil empire,'
the United States enjoys strategic and ideological predominance. The first objective of
U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve and enhance that predominance by strengthening
America's security, supporting its friends, advancing its interests, and standing up for its
principles around the world .'
It's absolutely clear that Kagan has no clue as to the reality of what is actually the
objective of the Neoliberal Parasites running the Outlaw US Empire; for aside from "advancing
its interests," the Parasites have zero motivation to do any of that as their sole
ambition/goal is to vacuum up all the wealth they can and leave a shell just as they planned
and failed with Russia, but have succeeded elsewhere. And as for principles, the reality is
it has none, nor does it have any friends, just vassals and victims. This analogy by
Armstrong's excellent:
"The U.S. is sitting on a dragon and it daren't get off or the dragon will kill it. But
because it can't kill the dragon, it must sit on it forever: no escape. And dragon's eggs are
hatching out all around: think how much bigger the Russian, Chinese and Iranian dragons are
today than they were a quarter-century ago when Kagan & Co so confidently started PNAC;
think how bigger they'll be in another....
"But the more sanctions, the stronger Russia gets: as an analogy, think of sanctions on
Russia as similar to the over-use of antibiotics – Russia is becoming immune."
And tying it all up is this excellent summation:
"Has there ever been a subject on which people have been so wrong for so long as Russia?
How many times have they said Putin's finished? Remember when cheese was going to bring him
down? Always a terminal economic crisis. A year ago they were sure COVID would do it. A U.S.
general is in Ukraine and Kiev's heavy weapons are moving east but, no, it's Putin who, for
ego reasons – and his "failing" economy – wants the war. Why do they keep doing
it? Well, it's easy money – Putin (did we tell you he was in the KGB?) wants to expand
Russia and rule forever; therefore, he's about to invade somebody. He doesn't, no problem,
our timely warning scared him off; we'll change the date and regurgitate it next year. In the
meantime his despotic rule trembles because of some-triviality-of-the-moment. These pieces
write themselves: the anti-Russia business is the easiest scam ever. And there's the
difficulty of admitting you're wrong: how can somebody like Kagan, such a triumphantasiser
back then, admit that it's all turned to dust and worse, turned to dust because they took his
advice? Much better to press on – it's not as if anybody in the lügenpresse will
call him out or deny him space. Finally, these people are locked in psychological projection:
because they can only envisage military expansion, they assume the other guy is equally
obsessed and so they must expand to counter his expansion. They suspect everybody of
suspecting them. Their hostility sees hostility everywhere. Their belligerence finds
belligerence. The hyperpower is forever compelled to respond to lesser powers. They look
outside, see themselves and fear; in their mental universe the USA is arrogantly strong and
fearfully weak at the same time."
The Walking Dead is finally becoming a metaphor for the Outlaw US Empire, its
policies, and what it terms values--which aren't values but vices. But TWD was fiction and
was thus capable of reforming itself. The Empire's goals and polices are essentially the same
as in 1940 and even further back to 1913, and haven't changed very much, being just as
illegal and immoral then as now. What's different are the "Dragons" which didn't exist in
1918 or 1944, and the Parasites have almost total control that's finally seeing domestic
pushback.
It's absolutely clear that Kagan has no clue as to the reality of what is actually the
objective of the Neoliberal Parasites running the Outlaw US Empire.
Why do you give him the benefit of the doubt?
Are we really to believe that Kagan, and others like him, talk of these things for DECADES
and yet aren't aware of the ramifications?
IMO it is absolutely clear that he knows the neoliberal reality as well as the neocon and
neocolonial realities.
But we are supposed to avoid cynicism and be polite so as to not be thought a
malcontent?
=
@karlof1 The need for more cynicism is a theme of mine (which I've written about at moa
many times) so please don't respond in a knee-jerk way.
"China and the US are two major world powers. No matter how many disputes they have, the
two countries should not impulsively break their relations. Coexistence and cooperation are
the only options for China and the US. Whether we like it or not, the two countries should
learn to patiently explore mutual compromises and pursue strategic win-win cooperation ."
[My Emphasis]
The big question: Does the Outlaw US Empire possess enough wisdom to act in that
manner.
Well, the Outlaw US Empire team just got sacked three straight times and must now punt.
Sophomoric attempts to twist Putin's words won't work. I highly suggest reading the entire Kremlin
transcript b cited and I relink as it dovetails with Putin's speech at the anniversary
celebration I cited and relink . Furthermore, in the area of
historical research being undertaken in Russia to ensure historical events are recounted
accurately, there's this current effort dealing
with The Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921 and The 1921 Treaty of Riga. Putin is
speaking:
"Two states striving to achieve ambitious goals confronted each other during the
Polish-Soviet War. Polish leaders perceived the reinstatement of the old-time borders of
Rzeczpospolita as their task. Bolshevik leaders dreamed of a world revolution. The Polish
Army's offensive on the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet republics, linked with Soviet Russia
by allied agreements, preceded fighting at the approaches to Warsaw in August 1920. I would
like to recall that Polish forces had seized most of Belarus and all of Western Ukraine by
late 1919, and that they and their allies, commanded by Symon Petlyura, had entered Kiev on
May 7, 1920.
"Signed in Riga on March 18, 1921, the treaty touched upon territorial issues and was
therefore largely similar to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Today, we can see that the then
re-division of Europe, the often arbitrary and unfair demarcation of borders had stepped up
confrontation between states and helped create conditions for a new world war.
"The Soviet side was forced to agree with the fact that Poland had established control
over 50 percent of modern Belarus' territory and 25 percent of modern Ukraine. The transfer
of Belarusian and Ukrainian territories to another state did not meet the then ethnic,
cultural or social realities. On the one hand, it facilitated discrimination against the
local population; and, on the other hand, it helped encourage extreme nationalist ideas. We
also recall the tragic fate of the Red Army soldiers who were taken prisoner; many of them
perished in Polish camps."
As with earlier Great Patriotic War exhibitions, this exhibition has numerous aspects as
described below that will surely interest other historians:
"The historical documentary exhibition The Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921. The
Treaty of Riga 1921, dedicated to the armed confrontation between Soviet Russia and Poland
and the resolution of the conflict by diplomatic means opened on March 16 in Moscow. It
displays historical documents from the holdings of the Russian State Archive of
Socio-Political History, the Russian State Military Archive, the State Archive of the Russian
Federation, the Russian State Archive of Modern History and other federal archives, the
Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation and the Foreign Policy Archive of the
Russian Empire, contributed by the Foreign Ministry's Department of History and Records, the
Archive of the President of the Russian Federation and state archives of Belarus. The
exhibition also features unique museum items, sound recordings and newsreels. An internet
project with full-length electronic copies of over 1,000 archive documents is also part of
the exhibition."
That's a lovely little compilation about Putin and his family, thanks.
The narrative says that Putin's mother survived the siege of Leningrad, but it doesn't go
into the details. You can get the story from one of the several Russian documentaries about
Putin - I forget which one but I could dig for it if pressed.
Putin's father came back from the front, wounded and on crutches. He showed up just as
medics were taking his wife out to whatever transport they were using to clean up the dead
bodies - she was practically dead, and the witness to this says she was "washed up". Putin's
father fought the medics away with his crutches and took his wife back into their home, and
nursed her back to life.
Thus runs the story, and this is the woman who later gave birth to Putin, already with two
brothers dead that he never knew. It sounds exaggerated when I write out the story like that,
but I never disbelieved it when I heard it, and I still don't.
So this is the depth of the man who heads the Russian Federation. Personally touched by
war, personally grieving for the losses of Russia, personally committed to the safety of
civilians and to minimal death in general.
~~
While I'm on the subject, two other stories occur to me. One was when he first took
command of Russia and addressed the war in the Caucasus - his famous episode with his
military commanders in the tent, when he said they would not drink to success until they had
achieved it (I paraphrase), and put his glass down untouched. To drink prematurely, he said,
would be to dishonor all those who had already died in this war. First, to stop the
dying.
But the story I wanted to say about that was that he also forcefully told his generals to
be very careful how they conducted operations: they were entering places where civilians
lived - old people, those who had fought in the Great Patriotic War, those to whom everyone
present owed their lives. He was very serious about taking great care not to harm those most
honorable people.
The second story is when the Berlin Wall went down, and crowds surged to invade the Stasi
building, ripping its secrets into the open. They also came to the KGB building. The chief of
that bureau fled, leaving by the back way. That left Putin as next in command. He went down
to address the crowd. He stood in front of them and they asked who he was and he lied and
said that he was "the interpreter". He said that this building was the property of the USSR.
In his gun he had twelve bullets, he said, eleven for those whom he faced and the last for
himself. The crowd understood that this building was not East Germany but the Soviet Union,
and that this officer would defend it with his life. Whatever they thought, they turned away
and left the building unmolested.
~~
I'm impressed with the character and caliber of this human being called Putin, for good
reasons, I find. There's a heroic scale to him that comes from Russia itself and the
experiences that Putin was born into and from. And yet he personally is a naturally modest
man. He bears that heroic dimension of scale with the grace that comes from ordinariness. He
loves ordinary people. He renews his own mental health from being in their company. The
security state of Russia chose the best person it could find, in a last-ditch attempt to save
their country. It worked.
[D]ifficult, dramatic, and bloody events abound in the history of every nation and every
state. But when we evaluate other people, or even other states and nations, we are always
facing a mirror, we always see ourselves in the reflection, because we project our inner
selves onto the other person.
You know, I remember when we were children and played in the yard, we had arguments
occasionally and we used to say: whatever you call me is what you are called yourself.
This is no coincidence or just a kids' saying or joke. It has a very deep psychological
undercurrent. We always see ourselves in another person and think that he or she is just
like us, and evaluate the other person's actions based on our own outlook on life.
There is an additional passage of interest which sets out rules for future talks that I
have not seen reported in 'western' media:
I know that the United States and its leaders are determined to maintain certain
relations with us, but on matters that are of interest to the United States and on its
terms. Even though they believe we are just like them, we are different. We have a
different genetic, cultural and moral code. But we know how to uphold our interests. We
will work with the United States, but in the areas that we are interested in and on terms
that we believe are beneficial to us. They will have to reckon with it despite their
attempts to stop our development, despite the sanctions and insults. They will have to
reckon with this.
We, with our national interests in mind, will promote our relations with all
countries, including the United States.
The 'takes one to know one' quote is not a direct quote from Putin, it is a claim by
Biden.
Here is the Daily Beast's take on it. (Yeah, I know it's a ridiculous source, but it
was the first source I found that correctly attributed that quote to Biden.)
Biden recalled: "We had a long talk, he and I, when we... I know him relatively well. And
the conversation started off, I said, 'I know you and you know me. If I establish this
occurred, then be prepared.'"
The president also confirmed that, some years ago, he was alone with Putin in his
office and he brought up the topic of Putin's lack of a human soul. "I said, 'I looked in
your eyes and I don't think you have a soul,' and he looked back and said, 'We understand
each other.' The most important thing of dealing with foreign leaders... is just know the
other guy."
The Guardian's translation of "it takes one to know one," which has been amplified by
western media and social media, is absolutely incorrect. It implies that Putin is
admitting that he is a 'killer,' which he absolutely does not do. Anybody that has a
working knowledge of Russian will be able to translate the saying that Putin uses to mean
that he is suggesting that Biden is projecting. In fact, Putin provides context for this
statement by referring to US History.
I say bullshit. "It takes one to know one" - suggests some equivalence for the two
people. That meaning is not in Kremlin transcript of Putin's words. Putin is saying "you
are projecting (your own problem)".
I understand that this is just semantics, but something as widespread as this has become
in western media can have a big impact on perception of lazy westerners if the
interpretation is incorrect. This should be obvious, regardless of the supposed "elegance"
of the phrase.
"Takes one to know one" does not imply projection, it rather implies hypocrisy. Putin is
not accusing Biden of hypocrisy, he is accusing Biden of projection. "Takes one to know
one" gives a western audience the suggestion that Putin qualifies an admission of being a
killer with an accusation that Biden is also a killer. Putin, in fact, does not do
this. He only suggests that Biden is projecting and only projecting.
Minister Lavrov today confirmed Putin's words,
saying " [We] will be ready to cooperate only in those areas that are of interest to
us, and only on terms that are beneficial to us ".
In my opinion, the Chinese representatives gave a good answer to the American side,
although this answer will obviously not be heard.
The Americans have completely lost the culture of negotiation. If there are no elementary
human manners, then what kind of agreements can we talk about?
A sad picture. And dangerous. A madman with nuclear weapons (and chemical weapons, by the
way) is not the best option for a reliable negotiating partner.
"In a desperate bid to thwart the strategic partnership between Russia and Europe,
Washington is resorting to ever-more frantic threats of sanctions and other disruptive
measures. Biden is playing the personal insult card in a gambit for blowing up bilateral
relations with Russia as a way to sabotage Nord Stream 2.
"It's a pathetic move, one that actually speaks more of America's historic enfeeblement
rather than pretensions of power. Russia would do well to stay calm and let the Americans
make fools of themselves."
It seems Russia's doing just that--attending to the vital business of developing its
nation and peoples. Russia's geared for numerous patriotic celebrations throughout the
year, and Biden's comments were made on the eve of Crimean reunification with Russia, which
only served to cement Russians closer and hold Putin in even greater esteem. Talk about an
Own Goal!
Outlaw US Empire Nord Stream policy is close to being the same as literally torpedoing
it, making it an act of war against the EU and Russia. Somehow, I don't think Blinken
understands that fundamental fact.
"I know that the United States and its leaders are determined to maintain certain
relations with us, but on matters that are of interest to the United States and on its
terms. Even though they believe we are just like them, we are different. We have a
different genetic, cultural and moral code. But we know how to uphold our interests. We
will work with the United States, but in the areas that we are interested in and on terms
that we believe are beneficial to us. They will have to reckon with it despite their
attempts to stop our development, despite the sanctions and insults. They will have to
reckon with this."
This statement is a positive, that is the mark of a government that adheres to real
values, beneficial to the growth of humanity, and not just for the enrichment of a greedy
minority of it's citizens.
The most peculiar aspect of Biden's outburst is its timing.
If there was one moment in time when it would be ill advised for even the most brass
necked, cynical American exceptionalist not to restrain himself from accusing anyone of
murder, it would have to be that moment in which the bulkiest object in the "Out" tray on
the Presidential desk happened to be a crude coffin like box containing the butchered
remains of the Washington Post journalist and long established CIA asset Adnan
Khashoggi.
Now there was the victim of a killer, the Crown Prince, acting with the permission of
the US government and in the spirit of the Deep State which put Joe Biden in office.
Joe was perhaps thinking of Khashoggi-a beltway denizen he must have run into in one of
the cocktail parties or brothels on the circuit- when he murmured admiringly, to himself,
blissfully unaware of the presence of George Stephanopolous- one of the grande horizontales
of American culture- and the TV camera, "That guy, whatsisname, the one from whatsitcalled,
Russia, is a killer."
Putin fell into a trap. He should have not said a damn thing after Biden spouted off
about him being a killer. The western MSM on both sides of the Pond are now running with
the incorrect translation and narrative that Putin admitted to being a killer. The western
MSM is now also claiming that Putin's wishing Biden good health means he's threatening to
poison him.
Putin should have heeded Mark Twain's wise words:
"Don't wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."
The western media was captured many years ago and serves only its propaganda business
model.
America is number one instigator and developer of conflict across the entire planet and is
increasingly unworthy of anyones trust or respect.
The US media has degenerated into a slave to the propaganda business model that it has
chosen to adopt.
The US is the Number One instigator and manipulator of conflict across the planet and is
unworthy of anyones trust or respect. The American way defines all that is devious and
corrupt.
None of this is new. There was some disruption for a few years recently, but now that all
obstacles are permanently neutered the destruction of the future for personal gain can get
back into top gear once again.
@Boogity | Mar 20 2021 19:42 utc | 141, and others Barflies...
Putin don't wrestle with the pig.
1) as b., and thanks for his Job, all of us must go to the original and extensive
version. MSM and chats are narrative tools reducing and calibrating our souls.
2) with regards to China and Russia stay tune about context
3) be careful about "translation".
To Biden as an old man, Putin just wish him Good health.
"I would say "stay healthy." [... ] I am saying this without irony or tongue in
cheek."
But "secondly, taking a broader approach to this matter" "to the US establishment, the ruling class – not the American people who are
mostly honest, decent and sincere people who want to live in peace and friendship with
us", he said something like [you are not qualified to speak to Russia from a position
of strength]
their mindset [of US ruling class] was formed in rather challenging circumstances which
we are all aware of. After all, the colonisation of the American continent by the
Europeans went hand-in-hand with the extermination of the local people, the genocide, as
they say today, outright genocide of the Indian tribes followed by a very tough, long
and difficult period of slavery , a very cruel period. All of that has been part of
life in America throughout the history of the United States to this day. Otherwise,
where would the Black Lives Matter movement come from? To this day, African Americans
face injustice and even extermination.
The ruling class of the United States tends to address domestic and foreign policy
issues based on these assumptions. After all, the United States is the only country to
have used nuclear weapons , mind you, against a non-nuclear state – Japan, in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WW II. There was absolutely no military need for the
bombing. It was nothing but the extermination of civilians.
I am bringing this up, because I know that the United States and its leaders are
determined to maintain certain relations with us, but on matters that are of interest to
the United States and on its terms. Even though they believe we are just like them, we
are different. We have a different genetic, cultural and moral code. But we know how to
uphold our interets .
[...]
despite their attempts to stop our development, despite the sanctions and insults. They
will have to reckon with this.
We, with our national interests in mind, will promote our relations with all
countries"
And he said that on March 18th, 7th anniversary of Crimea reuniting to Russia.
Yang Jiechi stated China's position at his opening remarks, saying China hopes this
dialogue is sincere and honest.
Opening remarks were for 8mn (4x2mn),
But after Yang Jiechi spoke Blinken broke protocole agrement, recall journalists in order
to show is strength. They came to 90mn press conference.
Strength was on chinese side:
"we thought the US would follow the necessary diplomatic protocol In front of the Chinese
side, the US side is not qualified to speak to China from a position of
strength"
"the US must focus on its own human rights issues -- like the Black Lives Matter
movement -- and not meddle in the country's internal affairs "
Putin's elaboration of the history and founding culture of the USA was brilliantly well
done, I thought. As an academic lesson it could hardly be more concise, nor more
penetrating and accurate.
He was speaking to his home constituency of Russia, but he was well aware that the whole
world would listen. The so-called Global South listens to these words for the same reason
we do, to know what has now been said out loud and thus can now be referenced in future
discussions and in future geopolitical positions and stances.
In this sense, all of these words, and words like them, are strength to the backbone of
the world. It clarifies what Russia is now prepared to say out loud, and it suggests very
clearly where a lesser nation might stand, perhaps, and even solicit the support of Russia
- at the UN or in diplomacy at least, if not with S-400s.
And so as these words are sent out into the real world as things that can now be
"noticed", to use the judicial sense of the word, the growing world alliance coheres around
these words, and the world changes in its global attitude.
Those who believe that none of this matters - and this would obviously include the
ruling class of the US, described so perfectly by Putin - are in for a shock.
I can't easily demonstrate how greatly these words matter, other than to remind us how
things used to look half a dozen years ago, when the US was such an ogre, and how things
look now, when the US is more literally a dotard than ever before, and when the fear of
challenging the US is beginning to disappear from the world, overcome by disgust.
These are dangerous times - for the US. Being described accurately is a small step from
being in someone's cross-hairs.
...., the US neurotic dynamic is to escalate blindly until it achieves control. This is
the dynamic that must be defeated.
Yes that's problem all right, but can you ever defeat that dynamic given that the gorilla
owns 10,000 nukes and has no moral qualms whatsoever of using them? Until a near perfect
anti-nuke defense system is developed I surmise the world would just have to live with, and
get used to, the juvenile antics of King Kong because it has stated time and again it would
escalate all the way up to using its nukes, because that's what they are for according
to a former Sec. of State.
I'm a pessimist on this issue. I'm afraid we'll just have to endure and live with a wild
beast for a while to come.
i've been a reader of moa for quite a few years now, but never contributed to the forum.
mostly because after a while i found what i wanted to say anyway, and why pile on?
I really enjoy the civility of the forum, and it's internationality. And of course b's
insights. as a German myself I share many points of view with him in matters i have knowledge
in, or think that i do.
For example i think that trump sure might be seen as a disaster by many, but it was a gift
to Europe, and Germany in particular, because he opened the eyes of many, many people here
who for decades thought murrica is our friend, our big brother, who will always protect us
from the evil of the world - namely communism, Russia and lately china. a majority of the
people here, as well as in the rest of the so called "western world" have been brainwashed
for about 7 decades to think that way, even when America committed the most obvious, heinous,
horrible crimes against humanity and our civilization as a whole.
there was always a spin, "human rights", "democracy", "free trade" and so on, values that
had to be "defended" - when in reality it was always an offensive aggression or even a
"pre-emptive strike". people just swallowed what the media fed them and went on with their
daily chores.
Trump changed that, suddenly the ugly side of the empire became visible, and i will always
be grateful for that. because now it cannot be hidden anymore. it wasn't just the unruly
behaviour of a "new rich" and uneducated bully who accidentally became president.
politically, the general attitude was always the same, trump only worded it much more
obvious, making it harder for politicians and media to spin. that's why our politicians and
media (for the most part fed by trans-atlantic "think tanks") hated him almost more than
Americans themselves - he made their lies obvious and transparent. if it wasn't so sad, it
sometimes was almost funny to see them squirm, having to explain why our friend and protector
suddenly became so selfish and hostile.
All of them welcomed of course the new Harris administration, being so progressive, just
and friendly again - only to witness a change of paradigm they probably didn't even think
trump was capable of, or willing to: i think in later years, this week will mark the
"official" beginning of the new cold war era. this behaviour against Russia and china was not
a slap, but a punch in the face and will NEVER be forgiven nor forgotten. the only question
for europe is: does it finally have the balls to emancipate and stand up against the bully?
or will it submit and become a collateral damage of it's downfall? in form of a nuclear
wasteland maybe?
I think that Nord stream II is a turning point. If Germany caves in here, there's little
hope to get rid of the leash for it and the whole of Europe.
If it stands tall, europe might become a buffer instead of a frontline. knowing and seeing
our politicians, i'd say it doesn't look good.
17 March Russia withdraws it's US Ambassador for consultations:
"Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov has been summoned to Moscow
for consultations in order to analyse what needs to be done in the context of relations
with the United States.
The new US administration took office about two months ago and the symbolic 100-day
mark is not too far away, which is a good occasion for trying to appraise what Joe
Biden's team has managed to do and where it was not very successful.
The most important thing for us is to identify ways of rectifying Russia-US
relations, which have been going through hard times as Washington has, as a matter of
fact, brought them to a blind alley.
We are interested in preventing an irreversible deterioration in relations, if the
Americans become aware of the risks associated with this."
Pres. Putin invite Pres. Biden for a live on-line public discussion of issues:
"I want to invite President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that
we do this actually live, as they say, online. Without any delay, but directly in an
open, direct discussion. It seems to me that it would be interesting for the people of
Russia, for the people of the United States, and for many other countries", Putin said
on air on the Rossiya 24 broadcaster.
The talk to be tomorrow (Friday). If not, then Monday, as he is spending free time in
the Taiga (oblique reference to North Korea going up the sacred mountain to re-majorly
rethink policy). This also places a live face to face in Prime media time, avoiding the
dead news weekend.
Biden is an intelligent man, but can't appear on an unedited live TV show with Putin -
not because of his age-related related memory recall difficulty - this is normal - but
because it risks exposing the cartoon-like tropes, lies, racism, & duplicity of the US
Govt. approach.
Especially when compared and contrasted with the serious and adult approach of the
Russian President. Nearly 100 days in, USA Govt. has been given the chance, and it is
clear USA Govt aggression and attempts to interfere in Russian domestic policy will
continue. Should Russia abandon soft diplomacy and strategic patience with USA?
Perhaps it is all theatre, coordinated by the Presidential envoys.
Perhaps a 'crisis' is created, Ukraine creates a threat to Europe, climate must be
cooperatively addressed, the Middle East could explode at any moment, a new peace treaty
in the Gulf required, blah blah, blah.
A live face to face airs the issues from both sides publicly, done respectfully,
sensibly, no political point scoring or spittle-mouthed fabrications from the US Govt
side.
The Press filter is sidestepped - a Trump tactic. It would be intended as a circuit
breaker, and the start of a new course for USA Govt. Russia is ready, has been for years,
and repeated it over and over.
If the USA Govt fails to step up it will hardly be the end of the world. But it will
show what a lot of short-sighted, self-interested, careerist, and functionally useless
time-servers most of the US political class are.
They will identify themselves as impediments to the health and welfare of the American
people.
The president named the fight against the pandemic, regional conflict resolution, and
strategic stability issues as possible topics, noting that he would be ready to talk to
Biden on Friday or Monday in an "open" chat.
"I would like to suggest to President Biden that we continue our discussion, but on the
condition that we actually do it live, without any delays, directly in an open, live
discussion," Putin told the Russia 24 TV channel on Thursday. "I think it would be
interesting for the people of Russia and the people of the United States and many other
countries," he added.
It would be so delicious to actually witness such a debate. By asking for it to be
streamed live, Putin is subtly calling out Biden's lie that he "told Putin he had no soul"
(whereas it's unlikely that Biden actually had a 1:1 meeting with Putin during the Obama
administration) as well as making Biden look weaker when Crash Test Dummy doesn't respond to
the invite.
Biden"s time is limited. Cannot be trusted near a microphone, no matter how well prepared
or how thoroughly edted. Has trouble walking, begins to have trouble standing up.
Kamala is still very much a problem. First, no one likes her. Not the public, not her
peers. The public is not prepared for her accession. Her competence is possibly even lower
than Biden's. She may be better able to read a TelePrompter, she still annoys everyone when
she speaks. May turn out to have some aptitude for riding herd on the advisors, we shall see.
She may be able to function as some sort of ringmaster but will contribute nothing, she knows
nothing.
It shall be government by advisors and functionaries and hidden hands. The advisors and
functionaries are all steeped in hegemony and exceptionalism. They have no idea of anything
else. Anyone who ever had a thought in their head was weeded out of academia and out of
public life a long time ago. That leaves the hidden hands. We will never know much about
that. It does appear they are perhaps ready to close down the American project and move
on.
If those within the US government were so stupid as to swallow Russiagate's bullshit thus
resulting in a "deep hatred of Russia," why would Russia want to deal with such obtuse idiots
incapable of logic or critical thinking?
IMO, the current goal of Russia/China/Iran is to completely ice-out the Outlaw US Empire
from having any practical impact on global affairs. The new initiative to Re-ratify the UN
Charter is a case in point for such a policy. The not agreement capable nation now has a
figure head that can't be allowed to talk without minders, a fact Putin would like the entire
world to observe. The world has no way to deny that it sees a nation talking like a Gangster
and acting like a Gangster as its recent behavior's been very explicit and public. IMO, such
behavior hasn't been observed since 1938, but there'll be no appeasement or betrayal of
another nation this time. China's already invited Lavrov to Beijing once its diplomats return
from Alaska. Yet the Empire lies to itself when it says it has more tools to deal with
Russia. The reality is it has no more cards to play--not even its nukes.
Absolutely no difference in foreign policy?
B, I think you're pandering to your audience.
I wonder what President Putin would think- or perhaps "feel" about teamBiden versus
Trump?.
How would you like to be called a "killer, without a soul"? Not withstanding all the
theatrical bellicosity of Pompeo, Putin at least understood that Trump admired him as a
person. I contend this is a big difference.
Do you think the Dems want any comparison with the Trump administration? They are after
contradistinction.
The Dems, the internationalists and the Blairites imagine themselves to be on a roll. Putin
is in their crosshairs.
This time the belligerence is the real thing.
International Music Festival volunteer coordinator and representative of Crimea Federal
University Polina Bolbochan: Mr President, I have a somewhat personal question for you.
Yesterday, President Biden got quite tough in his interview, including with regard to you.
What would you say to him?
Vladimir Putin: With regard to my US colleague's remark, we have, indeed, as he said,
met in person. What would I tell him? I would say "stay healthy." I wish him good health. I
am saying this without irony or tongue in cheek. This is my first point.
Secondly, taking a broader approach to this matter, I would like to say that difficult,
dramatic, and bloody events abound in the history of every nation and every state.
But when we evaluate other people, or even other states and nations, we are always
facing a mirror, we always see ourselves in the reflection, because we project our inner
selves onto the other person.
You know, I remember when we were children and played in the yard, we had arguments
occasionally and we used to say: whatever you call me is what you are called yourself. This
is no coincidence or just a kids' saying or joke. It has a very deep psychological
undercurrent.
We always see ourselves in another person and think that he or she is just like us, and
evaluate the other person's actions based on our own outlook on life.
With regard to the US establishment, the ruling class – not the American people
who are mostly honest, decent and sincere people who want to live in peace and friendship
with us, something we are aware of and appreciate, and we will rely on them in the
future – their mindset was formed in rather challenging circumstances which we are
all aware of.
After all, the colonisation of the American continent by the Europeans went hand-in-hand
with the extermination of the local people, the genocide, as they say today, outright
genocide of the Indian tribes followed by a very tough, long and difficult period of
slavery, a very cruel period.
All of that has been part of life in America throughout the history of the United States
to this day. Otherwise, where would the Black Lives Matter movement come from? To this day,
African Americans face injustice and even extermination.
The ruling class of the United States tends to address domestic and foreign policy
issues based on these assumptions. After all, the United States is the only country to
have used nuclear weapons, mind you, against a non-nuclear state – Japan, in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WW II. There was absolutely no military need for the
bombing. It was nothing but the extermination of civilians.
I am bringing this up, because I know that the United States and its leaders are
determined to maintain certain relations with us, but on matters that are of interest to
the United States and on its terms.
Even though they believe we are just like them, we are different. We have a different
genetic, cultural and moral code .
But we know how to uphold our interests. We will work with the United States, but in
the areas that we are interested in and on terms that we believe are beneficial to
us.
They will have to reckon with it despite their attempts to stop our development,
despite the sanctions and insults.
They will have to reckon with this.
My bolds, to bring out the essence.
Essentially, he is saying 'We reject your posturing and rudeness, do what you want. We are
ready, and will go our own way. You are not worthy of our cooperation. It' over'.
So, the ball, once again, is in the USA Govt court.
"... Nord Stream 2 is of vital importance to Germany's energy security. The German public was rather hostile to President Trump and Biden's victory was seen with relief. But when it sees how Biden pursues the same policies, and with a similar tone, it will turn on him ..."
"... Since Washington is now in conflict with a goodly part of the public it sees that creating foreign policy crises and enemies as an excellent course of action to shore up support. Americans are always ready to react against enemies no matter how slender the proof of the wrongdoing ascribed to the enemy. There is never a penalty to pay for lying in the US if you are in the mainstream media or in the political arena. Since the CIA controls much of the European media and their ruling class it would take quite a lot for Europeans to drop their status as vassal states. ..."
Nord Stream 2 is of vital importance to Germany's energy security. The German public
was rather hostile to President Trump and Biden's victory was seen with relief. But when it
sees how Biden pursues the same policies, and with a similar tone, it will turn on him .
<-- b
However "hostile", Germany contributed to uni-lateral Trumpian sanctions, and so far,
North Stream 2 is the only beacon of independence. Take Ukraine: Germany and France form half
of Normandy Four, and provided name for Steinmeier formula. Ukraine resolutely resists
proceeding with any obligations under that formula. Germany is silent on that and support
annual extensions of sanctions, not to mention sanctions on Syria, Venezuela and whatever EU
sanctions.
Syria is an interesting example. It could be actually popular among German voters to
facilitate reconstruction in that country and return of the refugees to their homeland. Iran
and Russia are potentially good customers for German industry. Independence of German banks
and other companies from whimsical sanctions from USA would help too.
Seemingly, ingrained masochism is hard to overcome.
Thanks for posting Pepe's comments, some of which are in his current article I linked to
on the open thread. In my comment related to Pepe's article I noted his excerpt of Chinese
academic Jisi and this specific part:
"the Americans are eager to deal with problems before they are ready to improve the
relationship."
That observation is consistent with that of an entity that only wants its orders obeyed
and seeks no relationship or friendship with any other entity since it sees itself as Top
Dog, and #1 in every way. As with the Nord Stream project, we see the Gangster mentality--Do
as I say or else!
Not only does the Emperor have no clothes or much of a working memory, he's got erectile
disfunction too that's well beyond the ability of Viagra to fix.
So here we have Blinken, Winken and Nod providing direction for failing empire
Blinken is obvious
Winken is that behind the scenes, wink, wink, nod, nod (there ain't no class structure here)
type VP and
Nod is the new normal as US President.
I am sure they will try to take America to new places, yet to be dreamt of....will the
brainwashed of the West follow?
About Germany and Nord Stream II.....To a degree that I am not sure of, Germany is like
Japan, a fully owned colony of empire....this may be the time that the Germany nut gets
cracked wide open....interesting times indeed.
Where are the details of Blinken telling China how to behave? I can hardly wait for the
next act of Blinken, Winken and Nod
"Why, after so many bad words towards it, would China help the U.S. with solving the North
Korea problem? It has zero incentive to do so."
This (as well as the Germany/NS2 thing) sounds like a rather naive view. Western headlines
are for western internal consumption. And what's happening behind the scene, what incentives
are offered and what threats are made in exchange for what specific actions, we simply don't
know.
I notice a lot of accusations that Washington is "stupid" but that's not true. You have to
understand how Washington works before you make such statements. The Deep State knows that it
can control the minds of most Americans by inventing "truths" without any need to prove
anything.
Since Washington is now in conflict with a goodly part of the public it sees that
creating foreign policy crises and enemies as an excellent course of action to shore up
support. Americans are always ready to react against enemies no matter how slender the proof
of the wrongdoing ascribed to the enemy. There is never a penalty to pay for lying in the US
if you are in the mainstream media or in the political arena. Since the CIA controls much of
the European media and their ruling class it would take quite a lot for Europeans to drop
their status as vassal states.
Remember, Washington can throw endless amounts of money around and fund everything from
terrorism, crime waves, sexual indiscretions a la Epstein (the CIA had it's own whorehouse
which my father pointed out to me decades ago--it was in Roslyn Virginia and it used underage
girls and boys to improve its soft-power).
So far, no one has paid a penalty for lying or corrupt practices in Washington if they
were "made" men or women (Trump never got that far).
As long as Europe, Japan and some other countries continue to be vassal states the US can
and will get away with anything. Nordstream 2 is the issue that may change all that. Once
Germany rebels the rest may follow.
germany breaking rank will be first big turn in nato. nordstream is a non negotiable issue
for germany. meanwhile the US is not agreement capable. on anything and the vaccine hoarding
is a big F U in EU to so called allies. all the pieces are set. just need time to let it all
play out. the global south woke to it before the slower europeans can see the world anew.
as for the US china alaska meeting, it does seem to me that the US administration and deep
state or whatever you want to call it are not coordinated or fully aligned with each other.
the timing of the US sanctions on hk officials seem designed to thwart any possible dialogue.
as if some elements are working to ensure the meeting resolves nothing.
the china global times calls this move the US stick that comes down before any negotiation
and says it's a continuation of trump era tactics. maybe. I see it more as designed to make
the meeting fail instead of designed to achieve anything such as extracting concessions from
china. not being agreement capable because it is sabotaged from within.
but at this pt in the crumbling empire it is perhaps foolish to analyze its tactics in
terms of means and ends. its only 'rationale' at this pt is to just keep doing what it's
doing. sanctions wars threats coercion and moral grandstanding. it only knows it is right and
there is nothing else besides.
About Vlora to be an Alternative to NS2. Just a Fake from Radio France International, paid
for by french gov. France is now full play in US hand. Macron want NS2 [and soon NS1..] to be
shut down.
Nord Stream 1 is 55 Md.M3/y
Nord Stream 2 too.
110Md.m3/year
The biggest ship to deliver US GNL in Europe is 260.000 m3. 1m3 GNL is 600m3 natural
gaz.
It's me or my computer? 3 ship per day? How many ship necessary? 60? 80?
Not an economy, a nightmare.
American capitalism was plunder and is now parasitism.
In order to get energy, Germany need Russia. Nord Stream is a direct tie in order to avoid
"reliable" intermediate like Ukraine or Poland.
In order to get everything under control US need [reliable intermediate] to cut the tie
between [oil/gas fields] from Middleeast or Russia and Germany, the sole country in Europe
with Great industrial/technical capacity.
Several Russia watchers - Patrick
Armstrong , Andrei Martyanov and
Andrei
Raevsky - are musing about a renewed attack by the government of Ukraine on its eastern
Donbass region. The Donbass separated in 2014 after the U.S. driven coup in Kiev installed an
anti-Russian government which then waged a war on its ethnic Russian east.
"I would like to warn the Kiev regime and the hotheads that are serving it or manipulating it
against further de-escalation and attempts to implement a forceful scenario in Donbass,"
[Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova] said, commenting on the statement of
head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Contact Group for settlement in Donbass Leonid
Kravchuk on some "radical steps" of Kiev if Russia refuses to recognize itself as a conflict
side in eastern Ukraine.
...
Zakharova recalled that the Minsk Agreements clearly outline the conflict sides in Donbass as
Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk. "The unwillingness of Ukrainian negotiators to recognize this fact
and their refusal to find agreements with Donbass is the reason that hinders the
establishment of long-lasting peace in the region," the diplomat noted.
[T]he Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) recently plunged the country into one of its
deepest crises in its 30-year history. Specifically, on October 27, 2020, the Court declared
that the main elements of Ukraine's anti-corruption legislation, adopted between 2014 and
2020, were unconstitutional. In response, President Zelensky introduced legislation calling
for the early termination of all Constitutional Court judges. Later, in December, he
suspended the chairman of the Court for two months.
The result was widespread chaos in Ukraine's political system. Zelensky's actions were of
questionable legality and provoked harsh criticism from all political sides. The
ramifications of the Court's decision include the cancellation of over 100 pending corruption
investigations, a development that potentially could endanger future EU-Ukraine trade and
economic cooperation Ukraine under the 2014 Association Agreement.
After the 2014 Euromaidan coup an 'independent' National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) was
created to oversee the investigation and prosecution of corrupt state officials. The NABU has
since been used by the U.S. embassy to bring criminal cases against those oligarchs it dislikes
and to cover for those it likes. The constitutional court found that NABU is a criminal
investigation agency outside the control of the executive branch which is a contradiction to
the Ukrainian constitution.
The crisis has since escalated:
President Zelensky has now taken several provocative steps, including proposing legislation
that voids the Constitutional Court's anti-corruption rulings and begins the process of
dismissing and replacing those justices who supported that decision. None of these actions
are supported under present-day Ukrainian law. The rhetoric between the president and the
Constitutional Court is also escalating, with Constitutional Court Chairman Tupitskyi warning
that the president's actions threaten the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Calls for
impeachment proceedings are being raised in the Rada, and Zelensky yet again escalated the
crisis on February 3, 2021 by blocking pro-Russian TV channels controlled by Victor
Medvedchuk. The legality of the latter action was even questioned by the EU, who told
Zelensky that while Ukraine possessed the right to protect itself from disinformation, it
still had to comply with international standards and "fundamental rights and freedoms."
The pressure on Zelensky is growing as he tries to navigate the fine line of obeying the
law as written while simultaneously claiming that the very integrity of the country is at
stake. And Zelensky's problems are only mounting, with the Cabinet of Ministers recently
calling for the dismissal of the head of NABU and the IMF delaying the next tranche of
financial support, in part because of Ukraine's failure to implement a comprehensive
anti-corruption program.
A war against the eastern separatist could be a Hail Mary attempt by Zelensky to regain some
national and international support.
But nothing will happen on the frontline without the consent or even encouragement from
Washington DC. The Biden administration is filled with the same delusional people who managed
the 2014 coup in Kiev. They may believe that the NATO training the Ukrainian army received and
the weapons the U.S. delivered are sufficient to defeat the separatist. But the state of the
Ukrainian military is worse than one might think and
the separatist will have Russia's full backing. There is no question who would win in such a
fight.
If the US is not careful it is going to give the Russians another opportunity to show to the
World their military prowess, the flexibility of their Military District system allowing
multi front operation and their unfailing support for an ally. As well as potentially letting
the Russians show to Europe that they have nothing to fear, if they stop at 30 miles or so
and basically go back home. All whilst the US demonstrates the opposite, but then reinforcing
DC may trump the World.
Posted by b on March 13, 2021 at 17:30 UTC | Permalink
If Ukraine is not careful, they could easily lose all their territory up to the Dnieper
River. With Russian support the separatists could launch offensives and gain massive
territory west. If pro-Russian separatists managed to capture that much territory, that would
solve alot of problems for Russia.
1. A land bridge to Crimea.
2. No more water/power distribution problems to Crimea.
3. Less chances for the ongoing sabotage efforts against Crimea from the northern border.
4. Permanent exclusion of Ukraine from NATO unless Ukraine simply gives up and recognizes all
the lost as sovereign independent republics. A win/win for Russia.
"A war against the eastern separatist could be a Hail Mary attempt by Zelensky to regain
some national and international support." It would be an odd way to 'regain national
support', as he was elected on precisely the opposite platform, the peace platform.
Meh. Whatever the calculations - to suppress pro-peace opponents and compete against the
pro-war parties for their electorate? - it seems unlikely to succeed. A case of totally
fucked up attempt at populism, methinks.
"Just a few weeks ago I wrote a column entitled "The Ukraine's Many Ticking Time Bombs" in
which I listed a number of developments presenting a major threat to the Ukraine and, in
fact, to all the countries of the region. In this short time the situation has deteriorated
rather dramatically. I will therefore begin with a short recap of what is happening.
First, the Ukrainian government and parliament have, for all practical purposes, declared
the Minsk Agreements as dead. Truth be told, these agreements were stillborn, but as long as
everybody pretended that there was still a chance for some kind of negotiated solution, they
served as a "war retardant". Now that this retardant has been removed, the situation becomes
far more explosive than before.
Second, it is pretty obvious that the "Biden" administration is a who's who of all the
worst russophobes of the Obama era: Nuland, Psaki, and the rest of them are openly saying
that they want to increase the confrontation with Russia. Even the newcomers, say like Ned
Price, are clearly rabid russophobes. The folks in Kiev immediately understood that their bad
old masters were back in the White House and they are now also adapting their language to
this new (well, not really) reality.
Finally, and most ominously, there are clear signs that the Ukrainian military is moving
heavy forces towards the line of contact. Here is an example of a video taken in the city of
Mariupol:
Besides tanks, there are many reports of other heavy military equipment, including MLRS
and tactical ballistic missiles, being moved east towards the line of contact. Needless to
say, the Russian General Staff is tracking all these movements very carefully, as are the
intelligence services of the LDNR."
Because the establishment was successful at installing one of their own into the White
House. In fact, the empire's need to secure total victory in Ukraine was part and parcel of
why Biden had to "win" regardless of how blatant the scamming of the election ended up
being.
Not only will the wars in Ukraine and Syria heat up to a boil again, but we will begin to
see terrorist attacks in western China start up once more after several year hiatus. We all
knew that this is what would come of a Biden win.
Ukraine still has a flotilla of functioning nuclear power plants. The Zaporozhye complex is
the largest in Europe by far. Anything goes wrong and Chernobyl comes back, in spades. So
what if we have a little war and Russia stops at Donbass, the rump of Ukraine is in chaos?
An atomic bomb requires 3 kilos of fissile material. A reactor will have tons. Hundreds of
tons of highly radioactive spent fuel. There is a lot to be said for stability. Lots of
trouble with high stakes poker.
I agree, and further to your points, I suspect Russians are engaged in a long term project
of re-absorbing Ukraine minus the Catholic oblasts. The tactic is intermittent episodes of
limited war, in response to a Ukrainian provocation, real or manufactured, or imagined -
followed by the loss of more territory by Ukraine.
The most interesting thing about this story is ... Myanmar.
Since the coup in that country began the Fake News (most MSM news) has given Myanmar
saturation coverage. EVERY "news" broadcast in Oz AND the so-called International News has
led with some tosh about Myanmar. It's an effing rowdy riot for Christ's sake. Guess how
surprised I wouldn't be to hear that MI6 & CIA are behind Myanmar? It's a Boring, same
every day, story and it's going nowhere.
Imo, Myanmar was always cover for prep for something more nefarious elsewhere. And
anything with shooting involved would be MORE nefarious than Myanmar. Now the real stories
are seeping out.
I hope they start with Ukraine. Putin is an asshole. But he's my kind of asshole and certain
people, who don't listen, are going to wish they hadn't been born. And when VVP has finished
with Ukraine, some of them may as well not have been born.
What ever I read I never hear the views of the people of Ukraine - the country is at risk of
being broken up by the actions of all governments since independence. I bet the Hungarians
and Poland are watching closely as they also have interests in Ukraine.
You people need to get your stories straight. If Biden is so senile, then manipulating him
slows down the full-court press and makes all policies erratic, the product of the last
person to whisper in the ear. (Which is why Dr. Jill would be Edith Wilson and Nancy Reagan.)
Plus, saving the zombie corps are higher on his agenda. Most of all of course, the theory
that Biden has already ordered the MSM to bury the bodies in Ukraine means he has zero need
to do favors for anyone there. (There is zero evidence Hunter was selling real favors,
instead of scamming crooked Ukrainians who thought they could buy influence. But it is an
article of faith, a tenet of Trumpian theology, that Ukraine was something, something,
something and therefore Biden is a traitor.)
It is in fact the transitional period that is apt to allow all unresolved disasters to
boil over while no one (not literally) is watching. Only a fool ever thought Ukraine and
Syria could continue indefinitely. (Putin may be that big of a fool, if he ever had an
endgame he's never showed any sign of it.) The economic crisis and the epidemic and the US
elections I think have tended to put people into a holding pattern to see how things develop.
But now, the epidemic is starting to shake out---the end of the beginning is in sight!---and
the world depression is entering a new phase with threatened mass bankruptcies and now is the
time to present the new US administration with a fait accompli.
In Syria, Trump had four years to end things but deliberately committed to stealing the
oil. Putin never had a plan I think to lever out the US and Turkey or even the Kurds, so he
never had a hope of ending the war in Syria. It can't go on forever.
Kharkov province came within a hair of joining Lugansk and Donetsk in rebelling. But it
is the only contiguous territory that can plausibly be joined. Odessa is majority Russian but
it is isolated. Artificially dividing the westernmost provinces from the rest of Ukraine will
not resolve the problem, not even if they were sacrificed to Poland. Poland's appetites
include western Belarus and Kaliningrad and probably parts of Lithuania too. One problem with
re-drawing borders in Europe is German revanchism for Silesia and Prussia. It may not be loud
now, but it's astonishing how fast these ideas come back.
Some updates. There is a battle in the area of #Donetsk airport. The #Ukrainian Armed
Forces
are shelling DPR positions with heavy weapons.
Around 19.30 local time, a series of kicks took place in the direction of the DAP.
I would expect a False Flag to start thing off. (The shelling has been going on for
months, but seems to be more serious this time round.)
The Russians are ready. 6 Divisions said to be on high alert. Structural subdivisions
of electronic warfare (EW) of special forces of Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have
been redeployed to the territory of the #DPR & #LPR
Electronic suppression & electronic protection goes to all points of contact with
#Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The Ukranians started flying Bayraktar TB2 drones (As used against Armenia) (Two drones
"Rece" downed (?unconfirmed) and a US drone seen in the vicinity.)
An Inhabitant of Donbas thinks that this time the Ukrainians will go for city centers.
(Thinking about the mess they made by going through the rural areas and finishing in
"cauldrons") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iixZn9r8z8
(26 minutes)
Turkey's deputy foreign minister [annexation of Crimea]: "The situation in Crimea
continues to threaten regional security." "We adopt a clear, coherent policy. We strongly
support the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. We don't recognize illegal
annexation."
The Ukes have slightly more then 100'000 men and the Donbas has about 30'000.
There are three (?) Nato force ships in Odessa. (Minesweepers, if my memory is correct -
older report) The US destroyers have left. But. The US has a carrier in the Med, and the
Charles de Gaulle (carrier) is also around.
I wonder who is pulling Ukrainian President Zelensky's strings as his actions as described
by B in his post don't match what the fellow has been doing (basically faffing about and
trying to please everybody since he was elected in 2019) up to now. There must be several
puppetmasters pulling him this way and that: the CIA and SBU certainly, the US State Dept
certainly, and Zelensky must also be feeling some heat now Uncle Creepy Joe and son Hunter
over Hunters past involvement with Burisma Holdings.
Biden does not have any policies. At this point, it should be clear that the term
"Biden" be used to designate the consortium of neocon and neoliberal technocrats, both
veterans from the Obama-admin and neophytes who are operating in place of a failing
POTUS.
Biden is a whimpering, pathetic character who should be left alone to handle his fleeting
mind in dignity. But we all know this is not what he truly deserves.
They would not allow him to do this, however, and he was instrumental in being the most
milktoast and boilerplate candidate where only pure hatred of the other (deplorables) would
suffice to win 2020.
Biden was essential to win. Now he is the equivalent of a 6' ft+ doorstop or
paperweight.
thanks b... and many good insights from the posters starting @ 1 and moving down, excepting
little stevies comment on putin.. can't have everything...
@ Gerhard | Mar 13 2021 18:22 utc | 9.. uranus is on an 84 year cycle... thanks for the
data..
@ 23 jen... i was wondering about that myself... who is pulling zelenskys strings?? if
biden can get rid of the chief prosecutor as vp to help his son out, i suspect he can do a
wee bit more now as president... i don't think he is that bright though, and others behind
the scene are pulling the strings here...
@22 stonebird - I watched the linked video. The Texan said that the Ukrainians bought winter
fuel from Belarus. Is Lukashenko still playing both sides? How sad. I wouldn't want to be on
a commercial jet flying over Ukrainian territory right now. Especially one manufactured by
Boeing.
Boeing...Boeing...gone.
God help the fine people of the DNR LNR.
RIP Givi, Motorola, Zharakansheko and all the patriots.
I am not sure if "the state of Ukrainian army" is properly illustrated by the link. The
military is almost 300,000 strong and 60,000 is deployed on the Donbass frontline. They
suffer quite a bit of losses, almost all "non-combat". For example, food poisoning, stepping
or driving over mines laid by their colleagues, poisoning with improperly made samogon
(moonshine), few killed when a samogon still exploded (strong alcohol has to be separated
from propane flames, or it explodes, "still" as a noun is a device to distill alcohol), one
soldier was so stoned that walked over the other side -- somehow not stepping on the mines,
other stoned soldiers fight with each other etc. etc.
Somehow this war machine survives on 500 million dollars per month (a half what Polish
military consumes).
"The row was triggered by a 5 March report written by the think tank's two senior members,
Dr. Mathew Burrows and Dr. Emma Ashford, urging the Biden administration to 'avoid a
human-rights-first approach' towards Moscow and warning that new anti-Russia sanctions would
only 'further damage productive relations for the sake of an effort that is unlikely to
succeed.'
"On 9 March, 22 think tank's staffers and fellows issued a tough statement distancing
themselves from Burrows and Ashford and arguing that the report in question "misses the
mark." The statement was signed by individuals known for their longstanding criticism against
Moscow, including Swedish economist Anders Aslund and former US ambassadors John E. Herbst,
Alexander Vershbow, and Daniel Fried."
Each paper is linked at the original. There's much to chew on as the Pragmatists/Realists
make their move. I'll be back later to stick my oar in, although it ought to be clear who're
the sane and insane.
@Jen: "and Zelensky must also be feeling some heat now Uncle Creepy Joe and son Hunter over
Hunters past involvement with Burisma Holdings."
About a year ago (February 6, 2020) the investigating judge of the Pecherskyi district
court of Kyiv city I.V. Lytvynova ordered to open a criminal investigation of "the big guy"
Joe. Case number 62020000000000236.
But as far as I know, Mr Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general removed by "the
big guy" Joe (Burisma's krysha ), is still there, hasn't had a car accident or
anything like that. So, for "the big guy" Joe (and The Family) Ukraine is still somewhat
dangerous. To be handled with care.
There will be no war between Ukraine and Russia. Russia is playing for time, knowing that the
West is getting weaker and will be in worse position later. NS 2 is also not yet completed.
Why would one want to start a war now if they will be in better position later?
What may happen though, in the case of provocation, is that the rebels may get newer,
fancy weapons, inflicting heavy casualties on the Ukrainian Army.
Same with Taiwan. No one is going to attack it right now. It could still happen, but
around 2050, when China is at peak power, and not today.
@Passer by,
that NS2 is not operational only means that Europe can't afford a long, serious crisis
there.
Russia still could: being able to pump gas to Europe non-stop is hardly a critical factor.
But of course the Putin administration repeated many times that it will not fight Ukraine.
So, yes, it's unlikely.
The approach there appears to be 'wait and see'. "If you wait by the river long enough,
the bodies of your enemies will float by."
Vladimir Putin, you may have noticed, is everywhere. He has soldiers in Ukraine and Syria,
troublemakers in the Baltics and Finland, and a hand in elections from the Czech Republic to
France to the United States. And he is in the media. Not a day goes by without a big new
article on "
Putin's Revenge ", " The Secret Source of
Putin's Evil ", or "10 Reasons Why Vladimir Putin Is a Terrible Human Being".
Putin's recent ubiquity has brought great prominence to the practice of Putinology. This
enterprise – the production of commentary and analysis about Putin and his motivations,
based on necessarily partial, incomplete and sometimes entirely false information – has
existed as a distinct intellectual industry for over a decade.
...At no time in history have more people with less knowledge, and greater outrage, opined
on the subject of Russia's president. You might say that the reports of Trump's golden showers
in a Moscow hotel room have consecrated a golden age – for Putinology.
...
Compared to the 40-year cycle of US deindustrialisation, during which only the rich gained
in wealth; the 25-year rightwing war on the Clintons; the eight-year-old Tea Party assault on
facts, immigration and taxes; a tepid, centrist campaign; and a supposed late-breaking
revelation from the director of the FBI about the dubious investigation of Clinton's use of a
private email server – well, compared to all those factors, the leaked DNC emails must
rank low on the list of reasons for Trump's victory. And yet, according to a recent report,
Hillary Clinton and her campaign still blame the Russians – and, by extension, Barack
Obama, who did not make a big issue of the hacks before November – for her electoral
debacle. In this instance, thinking about Putin helps not to think about everything else that
went wrong, and what needs to be done to fix it.
This evasion is the essence of Putinology, which seeks solace in the undeniable but faraway
badness of Putin at the expense of confronting the far more uncomfortable badness in front of
one's face. Putinology predates the 2016 election by a decade, and yet what we have seen in
connection to Trump these past few months has been its Platonic ideal.
"America is back" claimed Joe Biden to no ones amusement. But the world has changed
after four years of Trump and after a pandemic upset the world. The U.S. position in this
world and its role in it have thereby also changed. To just claim one is back without
adopting to the new situation promises failure.
As candidate Joe Biden promised that there would be no changes.
Former Vice President Joe Biden assured rich donors at a ritzy New York fundraiser that
"nothing would fundamentally change" if he is elected.
Biden told donors at an event at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday evening
that he would not "demonize" the rich and promised that " no one's standard of living
will change, nothing would fundamentally change ," Bloomberg News reported.
That Biden statement destroyed the illusion of those who had hoped that he would lift
the standard of living for the average Amercian.
Biden stayed true to his words at the fundraiser. There will be no rise in the minimum
wage. The $2,000 checks he promised to all voters will now be only $1,400 checks. They will
also be
heavily means tested . Those who made more than $80,000 in 2019 but lost their income
in 2020 will get no check at all.
Even as they hold the White House and the House and Senate majorities the Democrats are
unable or unwilling to deliver basic progress. This will likely cost them their House
majority in 2022 and the presidency in 2024.
Biden's "nothing will fundamentally change" attitude extends into foreign policy.
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo - 0:29 UTC · Dec 21,
2019
Today, the #ICC prosecutor raised serious questions about the ICC's jurisdiction to
investigate #Israel. Israel is not a state party to the ICC. We firmly oppose this
unjustified inquiry that unfairly targets Israel . The path to lasting peace is through
direct negotiations.
---
Secretary Antony Blinken @SecBlinken - 1:34 UTC · Mar 4,
2021
The United States firmly opposes an @IntlCrimCourt investigation into the Palestinian
Situation. We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security,
including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.
That nothing will change is also expressed in two policy papers the Biden administration
released yesterday. The early emphasis on human rights, which distinguished it from the
Trump administration, is already gone.
The common theme is now 'democracy' as if that were not just a form of government but a
value in itself.
The White House published an Interim National
Security Strategic Guidance (pdf). The paper is dripping with ideological LGBTQWERTY
librulism. Its central claim is that 'democracy' is under threat:
At a time when the need for American engagement and international cooperation is greater
than ever, however, democracies across the globe, including our own, are increasingly
under siege . Free societies have been challenged from within by corruption, inequality,
polarization, populism, and illiberal threats to the rule of law. Nationalist and
nativist trends – accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis – produce an
every-country-for-itself mentality that leaves us all more isolated, less prosperous, and
less safe. Democratic nations are also increasingly challenged from outside by
antagonistic authoritarian powers. Anti-democratic forces use misinformation,
disinformation, and weaponized corruption to exploit perceived weaknesses and sow
division within and among free nations, erode existing international rules, and promote
alternative models of authoritarian governance. Reversing these trends is essential to
our national security .
It then singles out China:
We must also contend with the reality that the distribution of power across the world is
changing, creating new threats. China , in particular, has rapidly become more assertive.
It is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic,
military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open
international system. Russia remains determined to enhance its global influence and play
a disruptive role on the world stage. Both Beijing and Moscow have invested heavily in
efforts meant to check U.S. strengths and prevent us from defending our interests and
allies around the world. Regional actors like Iran and North Korea continue to pursue
game-changing capabilities and technologies, while threatening U.S. allies and partners
and challenging regional stability. We also face challenges within countries whose
governance is fragile, and from influential non-state actors that have the ability to
disrupt American interests.
To fight China the U.S. will (ab)use its allies:
We can do none of this work alone. For that reason, we will reinvigorate and modernize
our alliances and partnerships around the world. For decades, our allies have stood by
our side against common threats and adversaries, and worked hand-in-hand to advance our
shared interests and values. They are a tremendous source of strength and a unique
American advantage, helping to shoulder the responsibilities required to keep our nation
safe and our people prosperous. Our democratic alliances enable us to present a common
front, produce a unified vision, and pool our strength to promote high standards,
establish effective international rules, and hold countries like China to account.
Good luck with that. Neither the European U.S. allies, nor the Asian ones, have any
interest in following the U.S. into a confrontation with China. It is their greatest
trading partner and they do not perceive it as an ideological or security threat.
The more we and other democracies can show the world that we can deliver, not only for
our people, but also for each other, the more we can refute the lie that authoritarian
countries love to tell, that theirs is the better way to meet people's fundamental needs
and hopes. It's on us to prove them wrong.
So the question isn't if we will support democracy around the world, but how.
We will use the power of our example. We will encourage others to make key reforms,
overturn bad laws, fight corruption, and stop unjust practices. We will incentivize
democratic behavior.
But we will not promote democracy through costly military interventions or by
attempting to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force. We have tried these tactics in
the past. However well intentioned, they haven't worked. They've given democracy
promotion a bad name, and they've lost the confidence of the American people. We will do
things differently.
The "lie that authoritarian countries love to tell, that their's is the better way to
meet people's fundamental needs and hopes" is targeted at China. But that China did and
does much better than the U.S. to meet its people's needs and hope is not a lie. The
pandemic has again demonstrated that.
The last quoted paragraph has seen some positive attention on social media. But it is
based on a falsehood. The U.S. has not once used military means to 'promote democracy'. Not
ever. It has used war to gain markets and power, to destroy its competition. The
neo-conservatives have claimed to be motivated by 'democracy promotion'. But that was
always just a pretext to hide the real reasons for waging war. Iraq became democratic not
because the U.S. wanted it to be that. In fact, after invading Iraq the the U.S. pro-consul
Paul Bremer tried to prevent universal elections in Iraq. Only the insistence of Ayatollah
Sistani on a universal vote led to a somewhat democratic system in Iraq.
Blinken is, just like Pompeo before him, focused on China:
And eighth, we will manage the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century: our
relationship with China.
Several countries present us with serious challenges, including Russia, Iran, North
Korea. And there are serious crises we have to deal with, including in Yemen, Ethiopia,
and Burma.
But the challenge posed by China is different. China is the only country with the
economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable
and open international system – all the rules, values, and relationships that make
the world work the way we want it to , because it ultimately serves the interests and
reflects the values of the American people.
That there is no change from the Trump to the Biden administration in hostility to China
is disappointing only for those who had expected some:
Pang Zhongying, a specialist in international relations at Ocean University of China,
said Beijing would be disappointed with the Biden administration's approach to "continue
and even elevate" the tough policies of the Trump era and to strengthen alliances to deal
with China.
"There does not seem to be any change yet in the serious tensions in China-US
relations," he said. "I think there may be some frustration in Beijing that after more
than 40 days [of the new administration] they have not seen any change but there is
actually more pressure from the US."
Beijing will manage the conflict and it is likely to see it as a chance.
The U.S. failure to adopt to new circumstances will accelerate its demise. The U.S.
empire was a historical abnormality and its twilight is near
:
[The Realist professors of International Relations David Blagden and Patrick Porter]
observe America's "position as 'global leader' is premised on a set of impermanent and
atypical conditions from an earlier post-war era", but " the days of incontestable
unipolarity are over, and cannot be wished back ". The result is that "overextension
abroad, exhaustion and fiscal strain at home, and political disorder feed off one another
in a downward spiral, cumulatively threatening the survival of the republic".
The US empire is, then, at an impasse. Its moral and political justification of
overseeing a global order of universal liberal democracy -- the closest real-world
equivalent to the Kantian perpetual peace that has both motivated and eluded liberal
idealists for the past two centuries -- is now beyond its capabilities to maintain.
...
How does this end for America? Biden and the presidents after him will be forced to make
a hard choice: whether to retrench to a smaller and more manageable empire, or to risk a
far greater and more dramatic collapse in defence of global hegemony.
Biden has made his choice. Nothing will fundamentally change under him. He is thereby
likely to repeat all of Trump's foreign policy failures. There will be no new JCPOA with
Iran nor will there be any win for the U.S. in the Middle East. North Korea will continue
to test bombs and missiles. The U.S. will continue to be stuck in Afghanistan. The
Chinese-Russian alliance will strengthen. U.S. allies will further distance themselves from
it.
We can not yet know what, at what point will cause the collapse of U.S. hegemony. But we
are coming more near to it.
Posted by b on March 4, 2021 at 18:04 UTC |
Permalink
Frankly, Biden's speech to the grand poobahs sounded more like a plea for understanding
than a promise, and if you take what the policy paper says at face value it suggests that
"Biden" understands that we have to change to compete. It is also an admission that they
have presided over a period of decline in Uncle Sugar land, so of course they don't want to
dwell on that. I think Biden is worried the "owners" wom't let him do anything.
And it is totally appropriate that Biden is the guy up there trying to deal with this
mess, because he as one of the prime intigators or the present situation, going back 40
years.
Patrick Porter's book, The False Promise of Liberal Order, is good.
But, his realist critique of vulgar liberal propaganda for US imperialism doesn't locate
the source or material roots of US grand strategy.
Realist theory understands power, hegemony and balancing only in terms of military
power. That is the only currency of power in realist thinking, because realism rests on a
state centricity which insists on the autonomy of the state from any social or economic
factors. Military power is thus all that remains.
This theory obviously fails to explain the real history of US foreign policy, which has
used militarism and other tools in support of strategic economic interests on a global
scale, primarily in the South. The military balance of power is by and large only an
expression of the economic balance of power and the class interests of ruling classes
derived from it.
Porter and other realists point out the contradictions of liberal theory and practice
but fail to provide a scientific explanation for consistent US policies.
There is a partnership currently but it's not yet an alliance. The rationale for one is
very strong. Russia needs China or it will be overwhelmed by a hostile US and fairly
hostile Europe. China needs Russia to save it from a resource embargo by US and allies.
Together they will form a huge power bloc in Eurasia combining their respective territories
with joint influence over Central Asia. Other countries in Asia like South Korea, Vietnam
and India will see bloc and decide to stay neutral or side with the China-Russia bloc.
As compelling as this vision is it hasn't happened yet. It takes time sure but there
must be reluctance from within the countries and other challenges. Which side is dragging
its feet more? It would be interesting to understand why things aren't moving faster.
As compelling as this vision is it hasn't happened yet. It takes time sure but there
must be reluctance from within the countries and other challenges. Which side is dragging
its feet more? It would be interesting to understand why things aren't moving
faster.
Posted by: dsfco | Mar 4 2021 18:54 utc | 4
A guess: PRC having vastly greater economic power thinks its share of influence should
be greater. Russia having vastly superior military power & technology, disagrees. For
example the Chinese government might like access to the most advanced Russian military
technology; the Russians having been invaded many times from both East & West, probably
take the long view.
This week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a confirmation hearing for Wendy Sherman, nominated by the Biden
White House to serve as deputy secretary of state.
The career diplomat answered the usual questions on how she views United States posture toward American rivals and official
enemies like Russia, China, and Iran. Once again it was Sen. Rand Paul who had the most direct pushback and biting
criticism against an administration that seems bent on returning to the foreign adventurism and unilateral military
interventionism of the Obama and Bush years.
"We've gone to a liberal form of John Bolton,"
Paul said of President Biden
during his turn to question Sherman. Paul is especially outraged over Biden's Syria strike without consulting Congress last
week.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/8HanUqh_-CE
During the above exchange with Wendy Sherman, Paul in his concluding remarks had blasted away at Biden's vision of the
world, citing past failed Democratic-led military interventions in places like Libya, Yemen, and Syria.
"I think we've gone to a liberal form of John Bolton with your new boss and that's
something I'm really concerned with,"
Paul said.
"All I will say is that
we're bombing now again in Syria without Congressional
approval and we're sending more convoys in there without Congressional approval
. It's a messy war - it's been
going on forever, there's nothing good that's going to come out of our involvement," Paul explained in his statement.
"People say
'well US lives are at risk'
...
yeah
because we put'em there
. We put them in the middle of a civil war that's largely over but can continue if we
keep putting troops into there... to put our troops as a 'trip wire' to get involved in a further escalation of this war."
And that's when the Republican Senator from Kentucky blasted President Biden on his Syria stance and general
interventionist foreign policy:
"I hope that we'll be sane voices and I hope that you'll be one of those," he said addressing Sherman.
"But I don't have a great deal of confidence that we've actually gone away from John Bolton,
I've
think we've gone to a liberal form of John Bolton with your new boss, and that's something I'm very concerned with
."
Sherman in response had tried to claim that the Biden admin is not trying to get more deeply involved in the Syria
conflict, but maintained the 'countering ISIS' stance that the Pentagon has used for years to argue it must continue the
occupation of the northeast portion of the country.
One of the favourite tropes of the transparent cabal who have seized power in the US and
other captive nations is that the solution to the Palestine/Israel problem is "the path to
peace is through direct negotiations.'
This proposition requires the occupied bartering away their land and amending their
borders, always for the benefit of the illegal occupier. These 'negotiations' are expressly
forbidden by the Geneva Conventions. Every functioning government in the world knows
this.
The alien invaders are under an obligation to simply get out. Every 'agreement' is null
and void.
The New Zealand government and the NZ superannuation fund has recently decided to divest
their investments in Israeli banks citing international law, the Geneva Conventions and
reputation damage as key factors.
It is sheer hypocrisy for the usual suspects to talk about human rights, rules based
international law, democracy and our values, while advocating the opposite policies in the
middle east.
Is it possible they actually believe their own propaganda and their own lies through
Bernays like repartition?
@4 dsfco
If Russia and China really ever formed a bloc Europe and several countries in the Middle East
and Asia would immediately switch firmly into the American camp and form a bloc, too. That`s
precisely what Washington wants!
Bejing does the opposite, making deals with key allies of the USA, like recently the EU,
Japan, Australia, New Zealand (RCEP) etc. - thus stalling the US efforts. The "Eurasian Bloc"
is a Russian wet dream but it`s not in the interest of China.
@42 Passer by
You are reading this wrong. It says in sweet EU diplomacy talk: "Accept a partnership on
equal level if you want our continued support."
[The US could also suffer damage.But then the US has also never been shy about losing
lives in the US to maintain its hegemony.
Interesting times ahead. The US goal of full spectrum dominance is on schedule and
raring to go.
Posted by: jiri | Mar 5 2021 3:57 utc | 73]
The US do not have a functional Nuclear Shelters for their citizens. That's a first.
It's also do not have nuclear proofed infrastructure such as power infrastructure, farms,
water system, etc.
It doesn't have citizens cohesion necessary to survive shattered government authorities
(easy to riot, looting, and murdering happen. Too divided)
Nor it trained or can be controlled in any nuclear warfare scenario protocols to reorganize
and rebuild (recent covid measures reveals their Karen mentality).
It never have or achieve food securities and independence.
It never have energy independence.
It's industrial sector hollowed up with middle managerial class the one that have the
knowledge to ensure their crews and workers can remain in production rapidly aging and or
moving aboard with no replacement due to corporate 'restructuring' culture (no regular s
became senior enough to have their level of experience).
I can go on and on of how delusional your statement is but I'll just stop for now because
it's dumb when you have to specifically point this out.
The only one that can take nuclear war and win their race for rebuilding perhaps just
Russia.
Soviet leaders were of the people as you say, yes, but when you drill into the details of
their careers before they became General Secretaries of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, you find they had careers as political administrators and propagandists. Only Leonid
Brezhnev had a technical background. They were the early equivalents of people like former UK
Prime Minister David
Cameron who went straight into the British Conservative Party after leaving Oxford
University with typical graduate qualifications for a career party hack and who for a time
worked for a media communications company; or like current Australian Prime Minister
Scott Morrison
who worked in marketing executive roles in which his most outstanding qualities were his
sheer ineptitude and flouting procurement guidelines.
From Nikita Khrushchev onwards, all General Secretaries with the exceptions of Yuri
Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko (neither of whom lasted long as leaders) had some personal
or family connection with the Ukrainian SSR. This may not have been coincidence: it may
suggest that there was a network of individuals selecting future leaders for promotion based
on close personal career connections.
Until recently most people in the most senior
levels of the Communist Party of China , from whom China's leaders are drawn, had
technical, engineering or scientific backgrounds. Current members are now drawn from most
walks of life though several of them have worked in factories or done manual labour at some
point in their working lives.
As a south east asian myself, I do think the east asians really aren't the way forward,
not until Korea is united, Vietnam and China rid themselves of "to be rich is to be glorious"
Dengists, Japan free of LDP and American sock puppetry. I'm also VERY wary of chinese
reactionaries who speak of Confucianism.
Maybe the grass is always greener on the other side, but I look favorably to the slavs and
their culture, and of course the shining beacon that was the USSR and the 2nd world until
1991 fucks everything up.
Taoism nowadays is basically superstitions. The historical taoist practiced by the ancient
and medieval chinese political class is basically free market libertarianism "just let the
market regulates itself bruh".
There's a reason that most of the greatest chinese emperors practice legalism (Qin Shi
Huang, Liu Bang, Han Wudi), which is direct government intervention in all matters,
especially in market and infrastructure, while the Taoist-leaned dynasty (i.e. the Song)
resulted in mysticism and the take-over of China by the khitdan and then mongols.
In the West, "Taoism" and "Buddhism" are rebranded as some kind of new age exotic
philosophies, but in Asia proper, Taoism is kookery and Buddhism is militarist/nationalist
state religion, see Myanmar and Thailand.
I see you qualify your comment by specifying Hong Kong Chinese. They most certainly are
not Mainlanders and have a culture polluted by British Imperialism that's closer to the
Gangsterism of Chiang Kai-shek than Mao's Collectivism.
You may recall the book and video Affluenza that does a good job of explaining how
traditional conservative mores are assaulted and trampled by affluent modernity. Such
outcomes aren't restricted to North America but are global thanks to human similarity.
If one were to develop a moral equivalency chart evaluating all global cultures and major
sub-cultures, you'd see a majestic hodge-podge with very little uniformity, which also
relates to the very uneven state of human development in all its facets. The great task of
humanity over the next several centuries is to peacefully level out those disparities. But as
I wrote on the Shia thread, the remaining Imperialist nations are a very large impediment in
attaining that goal and need to be removed so humanity can evolve.
There is no reason to speculate. Chinese culture, history, stories, have the answers.
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, for example, has:
3 brothers who are put forwards as "godly". There is a celebrated image of the three of
them making the vow of brotherhood in an orchard. The leader, Liu Bei, is a prince of the
declining dynasty. He basically constantly virtue signals, but basically mostly does as the
rest, which is fight, kill, and grab other people's territories. His two other brothers
include a psycho drunk and a supremely self satisfied other. They look good next to a
character like Cao Cao;
the intelligentsia are basically bunch of self satisfied gurus of varying degrees of
competence that compete with devising deception schemes against other kingdoms.
the military is hardcore, brutal. also stuck on formations, aesthetics, which can be a
weakness.
the general population are docile cattle.
What the world hasn't seen for 2 centuries is the famous Chinese arrogance that was their
reputation until they truly pooped the pooch of their country with the arrival of Jews and
Europeans.
A certain fragrance of superstition and sentimentality also is always present, at various
degrees.
Obsequious to superiors, inhuman to inferiors. This is what you can expect from a world
order with Chinese characteristics.
Lurking Dragon 66
Obsequious to superiors, inhuman to inferiors. This is what you can expect from a world order
with Chinese characteristics.
Well, this is what we are seeing from our western "partners" as was bestowed upon the
globe by so many self righteous defenders of human rights, democracy and the "white man's
burden"
See for an example Halliburton's mercenaries, ISIS and other creepy creatures invented and
bestowed upon civilisation by people that believe that if you are not jewish, you are not
human and, therefore, can be dispensed at will if of no use to the chosen ones.
Yes, the western hippie generation is very fueled by drugs and new age philosophies. But
note that these rebranded exotic religions do not resemble the native ones.
For example in Asia proper, you have actual deities to worship in Taoism, and it's not
just a philosophy waxing about the Dao like in the west. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daode_Tianzun
And Taoist priests are still an actual thing, and you can hire them to check Feng Shui and
even exorcism.
Still, it's superstitions and money making schemes, and I wouldn't put much trust in
them.
Obsequious to superiors, inhuman to inferiors. This is what you can expect from a world
order with Chinese characteristics.
Posted by: LurkingDragon | Mar 6 2021 1:17 utc | 66
That sounds pretty much like every job I have had here in the USA all of my life. (Except
the union jobs.) There is a reason they hate unions, especially ones that have not been
domesticated yet.)
Hong Kong culture is very different from the culture of Mainland China, thanks in no small
part to HK having once been a link between China and the rest of the world for a long time
and becoming very wealthy as a manufacturing and financial services centre as a result. HK
people are very materialistic and status-conscious, and look down on other Chinese (to say
nothing of what they think of other Asians and other non-white people) who do not speak HK
Cantonese. The only people HK people respect are English-speaking white British and
Americans.
My parents visited HK back in the 1990s and my mother tried speaking Taishanese (our
native language: it is related to Cantonese and is spoken just west of the Pearl River delta
not far from Macau, in Guangdong province) to shop assistants. They ignored her and it was
only when she switched to English that their attitude changed dramatically and fell over one
another to help.
Before the 1980s, huge numbers of Cantonese people living in English-speaking countries
were actually Taishanese speakers. My parents visited San Francisco's Chinatown in 1988 and
nearly everyone they came across spoke Taishanese. It was the dominant language there.
My dad's second (and current) wife is Chinese. He met her online in the late 90's, and she
moved with her young son to Wisconsin and married him around 2000.
I think my dad was looking for a docile women after his previous marriage and girlfriends,
and on the surface, Xue Lin seemed docile...in reality she is not docile, but subtle, a
characteristic I found true of her, her son and the Chinese people I have met thru them.
Nobody ever got my dad to work as hard or be as frugal as she!
They came over with money and bailed my dad out of a tax mess. She still owns apartment
buildings in China. Both are very hard working, smart and frugal, but not materialistic.
Jake (her son) and I ended up being pretty close. He received an MBA from the University
of Wisconsin and worked in the natural gas business in Texas before moving back to China
where I've had the pleasure of visiting him.
My impression of China and the Chinese is largely positive, the extreme work ethic can be
a bother given I am a pothead hippy slacker. There is a lot of optimism and energy there, it
makes the USA feel like a barbaric backwater country whose best days are past.
@66
Sounds like projection. You have nicely described my experience in the USA! Aside from my
union jobs, it has been kiss up and kick down...even self-employed.
"A certain fragrance of superstition and sentimentality also is always present, at various
degrees." Growing up in a small, conservative religious town, this is a great description of
my experience.
I will say, the general American population isn't docile, but are herded about like cattle
none the less. I'd also say the Chinese aren't so much docile as they are subtle, which I
believe is far more effective than rowdy but dumb.
The stereotype of the Chinese as the greedy merchant in SE Asia comes from the colonial
era. Western colonization of China created a Chinese comprador elite who was allowed many
commercial privileges within the Mainland (as middlemen) but also in the SE Asian region. As
every Latin American well know, comprador elites are the worst of the worst. No wonder the
peoples of Indonesia, Philippines etc. etc. see the Chinese as a negative force in their
countries.
The same is true for the stereotype of the Chinese as a mafioso in Latin America: the
Chinese who emigrated to Latin America are mainly triad and hyper-capitalists from Taiwan or
pre-communist China (who may or may not have indirectly come from Taiwan in later
decades).
The same is true for the stereotype of the Chinese as the arrogant, pro-laissez faire
upper middle class individualist in Canada, USA, Australia and Western Europe in the modern
times. They are most tourists and/or a selected bunch of upper middle class Chinese who are
lured into real estate schemes in those countries (Australia, Vancouver etc.).
As we can see, peoples make up stereotypes of other peoples based on small and heavily
skewed samples. That's why we have statistics, and they tell us the Chinese are one of the
most if not the most down-to-Earth, non-religious, socialist and tolerant peoples of the
world today.
@chris
access to the natural resources of Russia? Why should the USA sanction Russia for building
the Nord Stream II pipeline which would carry Russian natural gas to Europe? Western
hostility to Putin's Russia is predicated not on lack of Western access to Russia's natural
resources but on Putin's buildup of Russian military might based on its nuclear arsenal,
hypersonic missiles, missile defense systems and fifth-generation fighter jets.
Russian military power is the main obstacle to the complete domination of Europe by the
USA Empire. Only by 'neutralizing' Russian military power could the US Deep State achieve its
dreams of conquering Europe which is exactly what NATO aims to do.
I'm no fan of the greedy Davos bunch, nor of the rising inequality across the globe.
And this is not a defense of their actions, which are causing global financial crises.
But Russia and Putin are no better, nor answers to those growing inequalities of the
"West".
Russian billionaires and Aristocrats, whom Putin answers to, are just as bad as their
American counterparts.
Ditto for Chinese Billionaires.
And Indian Billionaires.
And so on
Take a look at the following chart from the World Inequality Database: https://wid.world/country/russian-federation/
That inequality in Russia has exploded since 1991.
Similar to most countries.
What interests me most, is not only how the 1% are complaining more & more about their
own 1% making greater strides, but how many more global billionaires are complaining of how
much less they have compared to the wealthiest global billionaires.
Meanwhile billions are living in true poverty.
Regardless whether "free market", "socialism" or "communism", greed currently rules.
And the "capitalists" (wealth-hoarders) of each of those economies are using their wealth to
influence governmental & public policy to their advantage, for special-interest
legislation to gain ever-more wealth.
I firmly believe in the right to make money, and in reaping the rewards of hard work &
true innovation, but there are limits.
Even the "Father of Laissez-faire economics", Adam Smith, warned of the consequences of
unfettered wealth hoarding.
"Capitalists" themselves are destroying capitalism.
Every economy requires spending, to continue to thrive & grow.
The more a few have & hoard, the less the more have to spend, to keep an economy
healthy.
We are currently witnessing the consequences of that hoarding.
Thus the massively increasing rises of the massive Everything Bubbles, which will certainly
eventually pop.
A pandemic not often talked about is the seeming global human insecurities I see
continuing to grow.
Humans unable to face their own mortality, or their own self-worth, minus massive wealth.
At the end of January, Putin was given the opportunity to address the World Economic Forum
(WEF) in Davos, Switzerland (online). The WEF is a prestigious assembly of political leaders,
corporatists and billionaire elites many of who are directly involved in the massive global
restructuring project that is currently underway behind the smokescreen of the Covid-19
pandemic. Powerful members of the WEF decided that the Coronavirus presented the perfect
opportunity to implement their dystopian strategy which includes a hasty transition to green
energy, A.I., robotics, transhumanism, universal vaccination and a comprehensive surveillance
matrix that detects the location and activities of every human being on the planet. The
proponents of this universal police state breezily refer to it as "The Great Reset" which is
the latest make-over of the more familiar, "New World Order". There's not a hairsbreadth
difference between the Reset and one-world government which has preoccupied billionaire
activists for more than a century. This is the group to which Putin made the following
remarks:
"I would like to speak in more detail about the main challenges ..the international
community is facing . The first one is socioeconomic .. Starting from 1980, global per capita
GDP has doubled in terms of real purchasing power parity. This is definitely a positive
indicator. Globalisation and domestic growth have led to strong growth in developing
countries and lifted over a billion people out of poverty .Still, the main question is
what was the nature of this global growth and who benefitted from it most ..
developing countries benefitted a lot from the growing demand for their traditional and
even new products. However, this integration into the global economy has resulted in more
than just new jobs or greater export earnings. It also had its social costs, including a
significant gap in individual incomes . According to the World Bank, 3.6 million people
subsisted on incomes of under $5.50 per day in the United States in 2000, but in 2016 this
number grew to 5.6 million people.. ..
Meanwhile, globalisation led to a significant increase in the revenue of large
multinational, primarily US and European, companies In terms of corporate profits, who got
hold of the revenue? The answer is clear: one percent of the population .
And what has happened in the lives of other people? In the past 30 years, in a number
of developed countries, the real incomes of over half of the citizens have been stagnating,
not growing . Meanwhile, the cost of education and healthcare services has gone up. Do
you know by how much? Three times
In other words, millions of people even in wealthy countries have stopped hoping for an
increase of their incomes. In the meantime, they are faced with the problem of how to keep
themselves and their parents healthy and how to provide their children with a decent
education .
These imbalances in global socioeconomic development are a direct result of the policy
pursued in the 1980s , which was often vulgar or dogmatic. This policy rested on the
so-called Washington Consensus with its unwritten rules, when the priority was given
to the economic growth based on a private debt in conditions of deregulation and low taxes on
the wealthy and the corporations .
As I have already mentioned, the coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated these problems.
In the last year, the global economy sustained its biggest decline since WWII. By July, the
labour market had lost almost 500 million jobs . In the first nine months of the past year
alone, the losses of earnings amounted to $3.5 trillion. This figure is going up and,
hence, social tension is on the rise." (" Session of Davos Agenda 2021Online Forum,
Putin Addresses World Economic Forum, Jan 27, 2021)
Why is Putin telling his elitist audience these things? Does he think these fatcats don't
know how the system works or how it was originally set up? Does he think they are unaware of
the glaring flaws in a system that shifts all of the profits to obscenely wealthy corporations
and scheming elites while working people slip further into debt and desperation?
Putin knows how globalisation works, just as he knows who it was designed to benefit. It's
no secret. Check out this quote from the Russian president in a speech nearly 5 years ago:
"Back in the late 1980s-early 1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the
globalization process but also to give it a different quality and make it more harmonious and
sustainable in nature. But some countries that saw themselves as victors in the Cold War,
not just saw themselves this way but said it openly, took the course of simply reshaping the
global political and economic order to fit their own interests.
In their euphoria, they essentially abandoned substantive and equal dialogue with other
actors in international life, chose not to improve or create universal institutions, and
attempted instead to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organizations,
norms and rules. They chose the road of globalization and security for their own beloved
selves, for the select few, but not for everyone." (President Vladimir Putin, Meeting of the
Valdai International Discussion Club)
"To the victor belongs the spoils"? Isn't that what Putin is saying, that Washington figured
its Cold War triumph entitled them to create a system whereby they could pillage and loot the
rest of the world with impunity?
Indeed, that is precisely what he's saying. And he knows what he's talking about, too.
Putin has followed developments in global trade for over 20 years. He knows the system is
rigged and he knows who rigged it. And now he's telling them in no uncertain terms that they
are responsible for the mess the world is in today. "The world is in crisis, because you
fu**ed up." That's what he's saying. It's not a subtle message, he's simply laying it on the
line. Check out this blurb from an earlier speech by Putin where he shows that he's not just a
capable leader but also an astute critic of social trends linked to globalization:
"It seems like elites don't see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion
of the middle class (but the situation) creates a climate of uncertainty that has a
direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that
people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky
and bleak . This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same
time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events
and shaping policy. As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the
sensible, sober and responsible minority – we are not talking about populists or
anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in
the ruling class. That is the problem . " (President Vladimir Putin, Meeting of the
Valdai International Discussion Club)
In this one brief comment, Putin shows that he has a better grasp of 'what is going on' in
the west than any of the numbskulls in congress today. And notice how he ignores the hype about
"racial justice", BLM, "white supremacy" and the other "racialized" bunkum that's
propagated in the media today. He's not hoodwinked by that nonsense. He knows it's just
another diversion promoted by the cadres of dirtbags who use race and identity politics to
conceal their role in the ongoing class war. That's what's really going on. The men that
Putin is addressing in his speech are the very same men who are doing everything in their power
to eviscerate democracy, skewer the middle class and grind America's working population into
dust. It's plain old class war dolled-up to look like racial unrest. Here's more from
Putin:
" During the past 20 years we have created a foundation for the so-called Fourth
Industrial Revolution (AKA–"The Great Reset")based on the wide use of AI and
automation and robotics. The coronavirus pandemic has greatly accelerated such projects and
their implementation . However, this process is leading to new structural changes, I am
thinking in particular of the labor market. This means that very many people could lose
their jobs unless the state takes effective measures to prevent this . Most of these
people are from the so-called middle class, which is the basis of any modern society.
. The rise of economic problems and inequality is splitting society, triggering social,
racial and ethnic intolerance . Indicatively, these tensions are bursting out even in the
countries with seemingly civil and democratic institutions that are designed to alleviate and
stop such phenomena and excesses.
The systemic socioeconomic problems are evoking such social discontent that they
require special attention and real solutions. The dangerous illusion that they may be
ignored or pushed into the corner is fraught with serious consequences." ( Putin, WEF)
Putin understands that the Covid-related lockdowns and closing of "non-essential" businesses
is merely prelude for the massive societal restructuring project elites have in store for us.
They've already put millions of people out of work and expanded their surveillance capabilities
in anticipation of the social unrest they are deliberately inciting. Putin thinks this
futuristic strategy is unnecessarily reckless, disruptive and fails to account for intensifying
social animosities and widening political divisions that are bound to have a catastrophic
impact on democratic institutions. But Putin also knows that his appeal for a more cautious
approach will be brushed aside by the billionaire powerbrokers who set the policy and call the
shots. Here's more:
" Society will still be divided politically and socially. This is bound to happen
because people are dissatisfied not by some abstract issues but by real problems that concern
everyone regardless of the political views that people have or think they have. Meanwhile,
real problems evoke discontent. "
This is a recurrent theme with Putin and one that shows that he has a deeper understanding
of what is really happening in both the United States and Europe than any of his peers.
Populist candidates, like Trump, have not gained momentum due to thier abilities and charisma,
but because the financial situation of millions of Americans continues to deteriorate forcing
them to seek remedies outside the establishment candidates. The economic distress is real and
widespread and, as Putin notes, it is expressing itself in outbursts of discontent, frustration
and rage. Here's more:
"So, the key question today is how to build a programme of actions in order to not only
quickly restore the global and national economies affected by the pandemic, but to ensure
that this recovery is sustainable in the long run, relies on a high-quality structure and
helps overcome the burden of social imbalances. Clearly economic growth will largely rely on
fiscal incentives with state budgets and central banks playing the key role.
Actually, we can see these kinds of trends in the developed countries and also in some
developing economies as well. An increasing role of the state in the socioeconomic
sphere at the national level obviously implies greater responsibility and close
interstate interaction when it comes to issues on the global agenda.
Calls for inclusive growth and for creating decent standards of living for everyone
are regularly made at various international forums. This is how it should be, and this is an
absolutely correct view of our joint efforts.
It is clear that the world cannot continue creating an economy that will only benefit a
million people , or even the golden billion. This is a destructive precept. This model is
unbalanced by default. The recent developments, including migration crises, have reaffirmed
this once again." ( Putin, WEF )
Putin's recommendations, of course, are going to be dismissed with a wave of the hand by the
men in power. The last thing these sociopaths want is "inclusive growth.. and decent standards
of living for everyone." That's not even on their list, and why would it be. After all, they
know what they want. "They want more for themselves and less for everyone else." (George
Carlin) Which is why the system works the way it does, because it was constructed with that one
solitary goal in mind.
Putin also acknowledges the need for greater state intervention in the economy to
counterbalance the more destructive effects of "smash and grab" capitalism. And, while he
rejects the swift and far-reaching structural changes (The Great Reset) that would precipitate
massive social upheaval, he does support a larger role for the state in providing essential
fiscal stimulus, employment and a more equitable distribution of the wealth. This does not
imply that Putin supports state socialism. He does not. He merely supports a more regulated and
benign form of Capitalism that veers from the "scorched earth" model backed by powerful members
of the WEF and other elitist organizations.
With that in mind, Putin makes these specific recommendations:
"We must now proceed from stating facts to action, investing our efforts and resources
into reducing social inequalit y in individual countries and into gradually balancing the
economic development standards of different countries and regions in the world. This would
put an end to migration crises."
The focus of this policy aimed at ensuring sustainable and harmonious development
are clear. They imply the creation of new opportunities for everyone, conditions under which
everyone will be able to develop and realize their potential regardless of where they were
born and are living
I would like to point out four key priorities , as I see them.
First, everyone must have comfortable living conditions, including housing and
affordable transport, energy and public utility infrastructure. Plus, environmental
welfare, something that must not be overlooked.
Second, everyone must be sure that they will have a job that can ensure sustainable
growth of income and, hence, decent standards of living. Everyone must have access to an
effective system of lifelong education, which is absolutely indispensable now and which will
allow people to develop, make a career and receive a decent pension and social benefits upon
retirement.
Third, people must be confident that they will receive high-quality and effective
medical care whenever necessary, and that the national healthcare system will guarantee
access to modern medical services.
Fourth, regardless of the family income, children must be able to receive a decent
education and realize their potential. Every child has potential." (Putin, Davos )
What does it mean that the current president of Russia is now throwing his weight behind
a program that is nearly identical to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's economic Bill of
Rights? Doesn't that seem a bit odd? After all, Putin is a devout Orthodox Christian, a
strong proponent of the traditional family, a self-avowed social conservative, and a
hardscrabble survivor of the failed Soviet state. Who would have thought that such a man
would support a program that provides a decent standard living to every member of society
regardless of their circumstances?
But it makes sense, doesn't it? Putin is pushing for a return to the heavily-regulated
"Heyday" of 20th Century capitalism, when workers' wages were still on the rise, when college
tuition and health care were still affordable, and when the American Dream was still within
reach of the average guy. People were happier then, because they felt that if they applied
themselves, worked like hell, and stashed their savings in the bank; they'd eventually reach
their goal. But that's not true anymore. People are much more pessimistic now and no longer
believe that America is the land of opportunity.
Putin wants to rekindle that optimism. He wants to avoid social unrest by implementing
programs that provide a more equitable distribution of the wealth. This isn't a return to
Communism. It's sensible way to soften the harsher effects of unrestrained capitalism ,
which is presently ravaging the West. Here's Putin again:
"This is the only way to guarantee the cost-effective development of the modern economy,
in which people are perceived as the end, rather than the means . A strategy, also being
implemented by my country, hinges on precisely these approaches. Our priorities revolve
around people, their families, and they aim to ensure demographic development, to protect the
people, to improve their well-being and to protect their health. We are now working to
create favourable conditions for worthy and cost-effective work and successful
entrepreneurship and to ensure digital transformation as the foundation of a high-tech future
for the entire country, rather than that of a narrow group of companies.
We intend to focus the efforts of the state, the business community and civil society on
these tasks and to implement a budgetary policy with the relevant incentives in the years
ahead ." ( Putin,
Davos )
Imagine a political leader who actually put the needs and well-being of his people before
the special interests of his deep-pocket donors and shady corporate buddies. Imagine a leader
who stood eye-to-eye with the big money guys and told them that their system "sucked" and that
they were taking too much for themselves leaving nothing for anyone else. Imagine a leader who
invited more criticism, hectoring, demonizing and punitive sanctions for "speaking truth to
power" in order to stand on the side of ordinary working people, pensioners, cast-offs and the
other victims of this globalist rip-off system.
The reason Putin spoke out at the WEF confab and put himself at risk, was because Putin is
one of the "good guys" who actually believes that everyone deserves a shot at a decent life.
And that's what sets Putin apart from the other leaders in the world today. He doesn't just
"talk the talk", he also "walks the walk."
IF the above comment by BHObama is really him he is arguing that we should hold the course
of American exceptionalism and dominance. I personally, after 70 years of hearing how "we
should tell the world that only we matter" and expect them to ignore their own needs and
aspirations is why China (in particular) is on the rise and the 'myth of America' is
crashing. The recent rebellion among people sick of the way things are heading (typified by
the so-called tRUMP diversion) should serve as a wake up call that something is horribly
wrong.
It wasn't tRUMP that was the problem nor was his idiocy a solution. It is the results of
years of flagrant propaganda that created a nation that considers itself exceptional. We are
exceptionally selfish and war like.
Had the US corporate/banking/Wall Street NOT MADE the egregious mistake with millions of
jobs "offshored"
It was not a mistake. It was done consciously by design by the NWO ELITE CABAL, knowing
the Consequences is going to bring to the 99.9%. The Transnational Globalist Elites do not
have allegiance to a country any more. All they care about is more profit and power.
After reading Putin's statements and Whitney's commentaries, I am further convinced that
whenever some individual or organization constantly and consistently badmouths Putin and
Russia ; these messages come from the enemies of humanity.
It depends on what is meant by globalisation. Globalisation of trade is not necessarily a
bad thing. The problem is that "trade" is not the operative word of the elites, "loot"
is.
That thing doesn't exist. Every complex society in history has eventually collapsed and had
to be regrown from a new basis. Trying to "design a system" is self-defeating. I guess one
could rig governmental buildings with self destruct charges and sarin gas containers controlled
by random nuclear decay to keep the monster in check and to shed useless load from time to
time. "Schrödinger's Office Warmers". I'm going to patent that.
There is too much of a focus on "isms". Right policy is right policy no matter the system.
But the ghosts of Cecil Rhodes still exist. There is a certain group that believes it is their
divine right to rule over all others. There are some who dont belong to their group but will
agree with them as long as they can reap crumbs. Hence the struggles in the world. God alone
will eventually "fix" the problems of man. Until then it is a constant squabble.
The premise that Putin is not the dangerous evil that the US Military Industrial Complex
makes him out to be, is certainly valid. He is trying to carve out a profitable role for Russia
in the future, that depends on participation in Western economies. Germany is on board with
that, but not the USA.
But, like claiming Trump is a populist, there is a certain naivety in suggesting Putin is an
advocate for the common man. I agree with all his words, which fall on deaf ears in the West,
but like Trump, Putin takes care of himself first. Trump sought to destroy universal health
care and was able to pass another tax cut for the rich, designed by the Aynn Rand nutcase Paul
Ryan.
Still it should be recognized that when Clinton and Larry Summers bamboozled Russia into
reorganizing their society into a dozen Oligarchs, the average Russian suffered greatly, which
ultimately led to Yeltsin resigning in tears and handing the reins of Government over to Putin.
Under Putin the average Russian income doubled.
Meanwhile, the USA is doing its best to reignite the cold war. Given our engineered reliance
on Chinese goods today, this doesn't make a lot of sense. These Putin speeches make a lot of
sense yet contradict the current economic structure of Russia and China today, not just the
West.
For those of us in the West taxing the rich is a partial solution to designing a sustainable
economy, which promotes the general welfare, as declared in our constitution. This is an issue
which only Sanders, Warren and a fresh delegation of progressive representatives support today.
They are still a minority.
""To the victor belongs the spoils"? Isn't that what Putin is saying, that Washington
figured its Cold War triumph entitled them to create a system whereby they could pillage and
loot the rest of the world with impunity?"
Putin is an Orthodox Christian and I greatly admire that.
He is also pro family, pro traditional values and a social conservative.
But some people might think that his conservative leanings make him more "free market" than
he really is.
Putin does not worship the market or the people who are able to exploit the system to
their own advantage. Remember, in order to put Russia back on the right track, Putin had to
reign in the oligarchs who had split up the country's wealth under Yeltsin leaving the economy
in dire straits.
This is the lesson that Putin has for us all: If you can't reign in the Bill Gates,
George Soros and other cutthroat oligarchs who want to own and control everything, than you are
not going to have a free and prosperous society .
I was hoping that Trump would meet Putin so Putin could give him so pointers on this issue.
But now the oligarchs have their puppet in the White House so we're screwed.
I've been admiring Putin for several years now. However I can't get one particular thought
out of my head. And it goes to Trump too. Why did he give his credence to Covid19? Why hasn't
he, or any major leader, stood up to the 'science' and rebuked the world wide reaction to this
obvious psy-op? I'm not saying there isn't a set of symptoms (and that's the CDC definition)
that define Covid19. What I'm saying is what any one with a thinking brain is pondering: Why is
everyone wearing a useless mask, closing their pub, standing on a specific X when in line,
bumping elbows, and acting like a certain type of cattle? Why is MSM dedicating 50 minutes of
every hour to a set of symptoms we have all lived with our entire life? I'll answer my own
question. Remember 911 and the news coverage then? If you don't let me remind you. It was 24/7
Osama Bin Laden, Iraq Iraq Iraq, Muslim bad, weapons of mass destruction. Over and over again.
And today we are living with the consequences of our silent acquiescence. And if you don't know
what the consequences were you haven't been on an airplane. There's a reason the media reports
the way they do. It's not really reporting, it's a particular method, a method of
indoctrination, previously known as brainwashing. Ala Edward Bernays.
We have been criminally assaulted by Big Tech, the MMSM, and corrupt politicians, and there
should be consequences.
It was NOT a mistake. Just ask Romney or Paul Ryan or any "American" CEO. The people behind
the offshoring knew exactly what would happen. How could they not? They didn't care as long as
they made personal fortunes out of it.
Go back to the London Conference 1953 and see how The West rigged export surpluses in West
Germany's favour together with 66.2% Debt Reduction and limits on repayments to permit export
surpluses.
This deal alone guaranteed Trade Deficits in UK and USA and a violation of IMF and GATT
rules on persistent trade surpluses. Look how Germany had an undervalued D-mark made
convertible in 1957 and not until 1972 did USA try to reverse it with a Forced Revaluation of
D-Mark. That is when the Werner Plan put the EEC on course for a Single Currency. – which
1991 Germany locked in at an undervalued rate against D-Mark thus gaining persistent surpluses
when Unification should have meant trade deficits.
Distortions of World Trade to serve Western geopolitical interests led directly to higher
inflation in USA and UK which required OPEC to recycle surpluses through Western Banks into
Second World economies. The distortions are what skewed global trade and currency crises for 50
years.
Globalisation was simply a means of exploiting cheap labour and welfare standards to
FINANCIALISE the economic system and facilitate Unbalanced Budgets in The West consistently and
on an upward trend.
China has simply exploited The West and accessed technology and manufacturing capacity to
render The West a non-industrial society of paper-shufflers and transaction-traders wholly
dependent on China for physical goods
@the
grand wazoo more of the same? Bomb Syria. Check. More troops to Syrian and Afghanistan.
Check. More sanctions on Russia. Check.
In Syria, they are stealing 140,000 barrels-day. That is a Trump legacy. But Bidet is
doubling down. They now have 11 bases in Iraqi Kurdistan-North Syria province. They seem to
want to create a de facto country in North Syria.
They are also focusing on Thailand and Myanmar. This is fundamentally 'If we can't have it,
we destroy it.' And a f#ck you to China.
I expect that under Bidet we are going to see Israel dictate American Foreign policy to the
point where the U.S. is no more than a Thug. BiBi the Clown faces another election. I wonder
how that will play out?
@GMC
is why they stepped in to help Syria. Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa
– the real reason it was invaded is because Gaddafi had been influencing African leaders
to switch Africa to a gold standard and to price all African commodities in a new African
currency. That would have pushed out France and the US economic influence over Africa. So for
that he had to die – and now Libya is among the worst places in Africa. But France reaped
what it sowed. Refugees on top of refugees using Libya as their spring board.
Europeans should thank Putin because the refugee problem could be even worse from Syria
right now. But they have themselves to blame anyway.
Christianity is actually more humane than leftist secular humanism or any of its
ideological offsprings.
Did anyone compare number of victims during Christian forced conversions, inquisition and
compare it to victims of other ideologically inspired terror and atrocities?
Orthodox dogma is VERY VERY different from Vatican or Protestants that is much closer to
Plato's time when God and Mother Nature were synonymous.
@Franz
investment in clandestine media control in Russia (Max Blumenthal article), sanctions, Syria,
the neocons are circling Russia and getting ready to strike and Putin is going to this Davos
dufus derby talking about stagnant US wages. There's a deafening lack of focus here.
The whole point with Russia, in case some might have missed it, is that the Empire sees the
need to control Russia as an existential priority. Not just to eliminate it as a threat but
because they know that if China has free access to Russia's natural resources, the Empire is
finished.
It's for this reason that I think that if Putin doesn't see this, he's ceded the field
already.
@Anonymous
derstands this now, but Russia is still stuck at the reaction part of the
problem-reaction-solution cycle. They are being bombarded with problems and can't catch a
break. I see some attempts by the Russian government to form some sort of a political line and
seek real political allies but it looks like they are being blocked by Germany and the
Russian oligarchs. We shall see.
Mike Whitney is reading way too much into Putin's Davos speech, it's simple politics –
praise globalization some to make Xi happy, poo-poo it some to appeal to the average Westerner,
add happy talk about fairness, stir, not shake and serve cold – there's nothing more to
it.
For all these many years now Putin has been relentlessly demonized as a thug, dictator,
threat, you name it. Many Americans have bought into these images under the influence of the
American propaganda machine. One can see the reason for this campaign when one looks at what he
actually says. Americans might get some idea that a president should be looking out for their
interests and that would be bad. Putin can give speeches, field questions, give his personal
analysis on different subjects whilst standing on his feet. Compare him to the current addled
mental midget we have and note the vast difference.
@chris
oy the USA. In an ideal world, the US Deep State would like the USA Empire to have an exclusive
monopoly on nuclear weapons while preventing other geopolitical rivals from acquiring nuclear
weapons. That is exactly what happened at the end of WWII when Truman decided to drop two
atomic bombs on Japan to intimidate Stalin who frantically embarked on a nuclear weapons
program.
What the Yanks wants to do is to 'defang' the Russian bear so they no longer have to fear
Russian nukes, without which Russia would no longer pose an 'existential threat' to the USA.
The Yanks could then do anything, such as bomb any country they want and pretty much rule the
world, FOREVER.
{" What shocked me then about Trump, and now about Putin is that they don't seem to get
it, this isn't some kind of friendly game of Cricket or something, their opponents don't just
want to beat them they want to destroy them "}
Don't be fooled by Putin & Co speeches to the West.
Don't be fooled either by them using terms like "our partners" and such.
Russian leadership got a rude awaking after Yeltsin: Putin is quite aware of what
GloboSorosaNATO is trying to do. He is a former KGB officer posted to East Germany and knows
quite a lot about West/NATO mindset.
@Flying
Dutchman han to its own? And particularly a people that suffers from the mania of
objectivity as much as the Germans. For, after all this, everyone will take the greatest pains
to avoid doing the enemy any injustice, even at the peril of seriously besmirching and even
destroying his own people and country.
Now it is entirely unlikely that a KGB agent cum President of Russia is ignorant of matters
relating to propaganda.
Isn't it perfectly understandable that the whole country ends up by lending more credence to
enemy propaganda, which is more unified and coherent, than to its own?
...I concede that here's plenty of US racism expressed by wars of aggression against
countries outside the USA but that's supported by all races within the USA and both main
parties. In foreign policy, there's only one War Party, dedicated to ruling the world, in the
most aggressive country on earth. That's nothing like the reality within the USA. Yanks don't
want to treat other Yanks like they treat disobedient foreigners and they certainly don't want
to copy Israeli Jews. [email protected]
Absolutely agree.
Russia lacks solid, political structures-from a written constitution and time honored customs
and conventions-and Putin knows this. I thought his reforms were meant to address this
area?
Russia needs some more time, some more babies and good men at the helm. We can hope.
@antibeast
ct and practical causes than the more theoretical nuclear threats it poses.
Owning the significant Russian natural resources would make the US bullying of China,
Europe, the Middle Eastern vassals all the more effective. Yeah, the official story might be
nukes but the vastly more significant pay-off is the control of all the other actors. The proof
is the fact that the neocons are absolutely in a frenzy about destroying Russia, and yet
nuclear stuff never even comes up.
And if you wanted to neutralize a threat, you don't make a frontal attack on it, you would
be better served to befriend the country and create better ties than to try to overtly destroy
them.
The Afghans (including the Taliban) do not want the US to leave their country. The flow of
US$ into the country (including the flow of heroin$) is what the Afghans have lived on for
many decades. Its not like the Afghans don't have control of their own country. They have
complete control of all the parts of the country that they want to control. They are
perfectly happy to allow Americans to control small parts of the country as long as the $$$
keep flowing into the whole country.
The US power elite may have figured out that just like every other power that has ever
tried to occupy Afghanistan that it is a black hole that sucks the life out of the power
trying to conq
@76 Tom
Interesting! Been too busy for reviewing the new military appointees until I read your post.
It looks like this is a last ditch attempt by Trump to get troops out of Afghanistan and
Syria...
"withdrawing troops from Afghanistan may well be exactly what TPTB want."
Posted by: jinn | Nov 12 2020 23:34 utc | 81
Well, they have had, what 19 years years to do that and now that President Trump makes
another push for it, all hell breaks loose from the forever war team, you know that team of
Democrats and RINO's who are now vying for a spot on Biden's team of psychopaths for war. The
we came, we saw and aren't leaving team.
"withdrawing troops from Afghanistan may well be exactly what TPTB want."
Anything is possible, but given the pushback that is taking place (quietly of course, lest
the masses get awoken) that is seriously doubtful.
Afghanistan can be likened to one of the central squares on a chessboard...control of
central squares is vital as it reduces the mobility of your opponent and lays ground for
offensive action.
China has a border with Afghanistan, as does Iran...were Afghanistan to free itself from
USA occupation, it would make a great conduit for the BRI.
That is without getting into Afghanistan's role in opium trade and the related black
budget, nor its wealth in rare minerals. One might say for the Hegemon to remain the Hegemon
it needs to control Afghanistan.
The problem for the hegemon is Afghanistan is expensive to hold on to...and this is
without Russia, Iran or China putting any effort in to chase US troops out via arming and
training proxies...that could be done quickly, and I am guessing the groundwork is already in
place.
Well, they have had, what 19 years years to do that
_________________________________________
Well sure but you need to remember the story of why we were there in the first place.
They can't just dump all the BS that they have been feeding us for nineteen years and say
"never mind" like Roseanne Roseannadanna.
As for the warmongers who support attacking Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc that was done to send
a message to any country that does not want to knuckle under to the $$$ hegemony and thinks
about trying to escape it.
That messaging does not apply to the Afghan war. That war sends the exact opposite
message.
My apologies if this has already been posted. Aaron Mate continues to rise in stature--
IMO-- as he keeps digging into Russiagate and exposing deeper and deeper proof of U.S. and
U.K. plots, programs and coverups regarding Russia. In this video Mate and Max Blumenthal
start by explaining how Twitter inadvertently boosted the Grayzone's explosive uncovering of
the BBC, Bellingcat and others' programs designed to do what Russiagaters accuse Putin of
doing; the difference is that Blumenthal gives evidence in the form of emails. impressive.
bottom line, "R2P""Russia bad"... the wheels are falling off.
Putin is considered the richest man in the world for the amount of wealth he
controls , not the amount he owns. Alexei Navalny is considered the bravest man in the
world for returning to Russia after recovering from Novichok poisoning in Germany. Putin had
Navalny's returning flight diverted to avoid mobs of protestors, then arrested Navalny at the
airport.
Never lacking a certain Russian sense of humor, Putin charged Navalny, whom he calls "the
blogger," with violating parole
... ... ...
Putin called the EU's bluff, expelling three E.U.
diplomats from Russia during a visit by the EU's foreign minister, Josep Borrell, on
February 5. Putin's pugnacious foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, spoke disapprovingly of the
E.U. in a press conference standing right next to the humiliated minister. This is the same
Lavrov seen laughing in a famous White House
photo with U.S. President Donald J. Trump on the day after Trump fired FBI Director,
James Comey.
With the E.U. suddenly voting 28-0 against Russia, with Joe Biden proclaiming "America is
back," and with Tony Blinken promising Russia must pay for the recent SolarWinds cyber attack
against the U.S., Vlad the Underpants Poisoner must be feeling his briefs getting
uncomfortably snug.
As Putin desperately tries to wriggle out of the sanctions surrounding him and his
oligarch buddies, he faces the ultimate decline in his fortune: the green new deal.
The
majority of Putin's wealth is still in the ground , and it's worthless if the world turns
away from fossil fuels as quickly as it appears to be. Without the NORD-2 pipeline shipping
gas from Russia to Germany, without the corrupt contracts to supply satellite nations with
fuel, Russia has nothing to sell except tourism and nesting dolls.
Putin will encounter the same problem the nations of the Arab Spring encountered:
domestic youth realizing their futures look nothing like the lives they see on their phones.
The Russian people are not stupid. They know they're not enjoying the same quality of life as
their European neighbors. Even though Western Democracies fail to provide for basic living
needs, they are at least exciting and hold the possibility of getting unbelievably
rich.
... ... ...
STEVE O'KEEFE is the author of several books, most recently Set the Page on Fire:
Secrets of Successful Writers , from New World Library, based on over 250 interviews. He
is the former editorial director for Loompanics Unlimited.
After reading Escobar's essay, I began trying to find all the volumes of Vernadsky's
History of Russia which I read while self-learning Russian history in 1993 thanks to the
University of Hawaii Manoa's libraries. The first volume is linked @21. Volume Two,
Kievan
Russia ; Volume Three, The Mongols and Russia ; Volume Four,
Russia at the Dawn of the
Modern Era ; Volume Five, The Tsardom of Moscow ; and his overview
volume, A History of
Russia . The series Vernadsky and his academic partner Michael Karpovich initially
envisioned was never completely finished as Karpovich died in 1959, and Vernadsky passed in
1973.
I found the series to be the best balanced and most in-depth of all the histories of
Russia I've read, somewhere around 3,000 pages in all. I suggest leaving the overview volume
for last. Do enjoy!!
Biden has been a major disappointment for those who hoped that he'd change course
regarding America's pathological involvement in overseas conflicts
Who hoped that? He didn't run on such a platform. "Engagement with the world" and a
"restoration of the pre-Trump era" was his platform. Don't ask me why but this made him
more popular. He was literally the VP in the most interventionist Presidency in US
history.
... People like Giraldi sometimes seem like plants put in place to discredit
anti-interventionism by trying to make it synonymous with anti-semitism.
In the late 1980s, Rannie Amiri, an independent commentator on political affairs, challenged
then-Senator Joe Biden on his stance toward the Israel-Palestine conflict following a campus
speech that Biden gave, asking him:
Rather than succumb to the influence of various lobbying groups in Washington, such as
AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- which promotes the views of Israel's
right-wing Likud Party], and the untold amount of money they use to dictate policy,
wouldn't it be more prudent to examine the real effects that collective punishment, daily
humiliation, and countless civilian casualties inflicted by the Israelis have on an
occupied population, and use that understanding to formulate a more rational approach
toward the Palestinians?
Here is Biden response to that:
At the end of the exchange, Biden turned, put his arm around Amiri's shoulder, and
addressed the audience.
If this was not such a fine, articulate, and sincere young man, and he implied that my
vote had been bought, I would give him a swift kick in the ass.
The audience roared in applause, and Amiri sat back down to his chair defeated.
However, a friend rose up to defend him, telling Biden: "If my father heard you say such a
thing, I believe he would have done the same to you first."
The tribal stupidity of the people who support Israel first is beyond words. Who would
think in the 20th and the 21th century we would be led by primitive thinking of tribal
fantasies from thousands of year ago?
Most of the us in the west did not know that this has been going on for so long since we
have been deluded with the term "free press" to describe our press in the west. We are slowly
waking up to reality with some "freedom" here and there on the internet like this site.
So, Biden has been a major disappointment for those who expected that he might change
course regarding America's pathological involvement in overseas conflicts while also having
the good sense and courage to make relations with countries like Iran and Israel responsive
to actual U.S. interests.
You're giving the morons way too much credit, Sir. It's doubtful even 5% of voters know or
care about geopolitics, and probably less than 1% who voted based on fraudsident biden's
foreign policies.
For 5 years it was nonstop Trump-hatred from the ((( lügenpresse ))) even as Trump
did weasel jared's bidding. Stevie Fking Wonder could see the election was rigged.
The USA is kaput, the supreme joke spineless
The ((( Underminers ))) are a c ** t-hair away from total control.
The Free United States must part ways with the devils in DC. Texas, Florida,
Oklahoma, the Dakotas and Montana for starters.
You would think they would hire people who have some idea as to what might be plausible
when they invent these stories? It's very strange to see. There has been a long string of
these unconvincing stories aimed at Russia. The claim the supported Trump after 2016 was a
watershed too, all caution to the winds after that. Skripals, Navalny, one after another that
makes no sense. It's like they want to make a point and are failing. Or maybe propaganda is
all they have.
Most Americans consider Kissinger a war criminal too, and informed Americans know that
Zbignue Brzenski has lost all credibility. He was a cold war era Anti-Russian. He has said
little if anything relevant since the collapse of the USSR.
Informed Americans would prefer a doplomatic relationship with their neighbors south of
the border. It would be much more economically and environmentally sustainable to have a
cooperative agreement with Venezuela, rather than the KXL advocates north of the border, that
Biden thankfully banned. It may be the only thing tbat he ends up doing correctly. I hope
not. I did not vote for him, Trump, or anyone else. Biden, Blinken, and Austin speak about
wanting to go back to the JCPOA and START, but whether they are willing to give up their
policy errors of force through sanctions, and falsely blaming Iran for the attack on the
Irbil Iraq airport will probably determine whether they can do this successfully or not.
Everyone is sick of the bullshit from the American government, including American citizens!
The government does what they Globzi investors demand from them. They really do not give a
damn about anyone else. Everyone is just a means to an end to them, and unkess someone is
exceptionally wealthy, they are an irrelevant pain in the ass to the government, unless they
are willing to sell out their own interest in order to elevate the corrupt government.
That's true. As a barometer of establishment thinking, Foreign Affairs is indeed
useful. I would just make a distinction of using it to understand establishment thinking
versus using it as a source for good policy, which is evidently questionable if its editors
still think Robert Kagan has anything useful to propose.
I have to say that specific advertising policy of the former head of MCST Babayan in the
form of periodic high-profile claims that the new processor Elbrus E2K is about to "break"
Intel, permanently ending zilch, being zero from the beginning, has raised in me distrust
of this company since the beginning of the 2000s. Moreover, when Babayan with a team of
leading employees left for Intel in 2004, I thought that this was definitely all.
And yes, the company went quiet, and all the following years just quietly profited from
something for the defence industry, almost without communicating with the outside world. It
withdrew into itself. With long interruptions, it dryly posted new versions of processors
on its website:
2005 – Elbrus-2000, which turned out to be a very simplified version of the E2K.
Processor technology 130 nm, frequency 300 MHz, 1 core.
2010 and 2011 – Elbrus-S and Elbrus-2C+. Processor technology is 90 nm, the
frequency is 500 MHz, 1 and 2 cores, respectively.
All of this was produced and financed for the defence industry, and so everything would
have been sluggish and continued further, if not for the events of 2014. The fall in the
ruble exchange rate and the sanctions of the western world have led to the need to have
their own computing equipment not only in the military, but also in the civilian segment.
But, I must say, the Medvedev government was particularly slow to do so.
Medvedev again, what a miserable turd.
Thank you for the 68000 referal. I will take a peek but I might avoid repeating the glory
of my youth and aim for keeping my orchard in good condition and the occasional walk in
ancient woods. I still tinker but with small things.
@Arch Bungle #218
That's because the USSR/Russia never cared about the consumer side.
Thus all of their work is military/intelligence agency related.
Consumer: cheap. Military: durable.
Consumer: small (closely related to cheap). Military: works.
Consumer: throw masses of transistors at the problem. Military: create a custom design that
addresses the need.
Consumer: good enough. Military: As good as is practical given above.
Now, to be fair, small does yield speed so the tradeoff isn't fully branched.
But Russian electronics work just fine - the radar, target acquisition and targeting systems
for the hypersonic missiles and the S400/S500 system are clearly extremely fast and
efficient.
Thing is - do you really need 7 nm tech for that? Answer is: no.
Silicon is also not particularly rad or EMP resistant.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Feb 23 2021 15:34 utc | 218
Why do the Russians not have their own fancy chips?
I think c1ue got it right, not interested in commercialization, high-density chips and
speed are marketing points rather than an answer to some need. I would add that they have
likely not abandoned analog methods to the extent we have, not having the commercial
incentive to do that, and realizing that digital is not the answer to every control
problem.
They are going to have to make some sort of changes soon anyway, I don't see X-Ray
lithography being a thing. Or we could realize that for most purposes what we have is fine,
and for what isn't fine, we need something new and better.
I had an 8088 with and 8087 co-processor for some time in the 80s, cut my teeth on it.
Incredibly slow but you could program "on the bare wires".
c1ue: Re #154: thank uou, took me quite a while to get to that point of view. One of the
positive results of the last 20 years is to make it all very plain.
@Bemildred #238
I have no idea how much further the commercial processes will go.
However, it is abundantly clear that the commercial benefit for these new processes is
extremely limited.
One of the primary reasons why the PC and laptop market was stagnating for year prior to
COVID and WFH was that there really was minimal difference in performance between 2 or even 4
generations of hardware.
I am typing this on a refurbished laptop whose progenitor was originally purchased in 2016. I
say progenitor because this is now the 3rd chassis which the hard drive and one or two other
components have been migrated to.
In the 90s, you could visibly see the difference between computers bought in different
quarters. In the 00s, business and engineering/technical specialist software migrated to
laptops, thus absorbing the performance increase.
In the last 10 years? Much less clear. A former coworker of mine - I just helped him buy a
64GB Ram, 2 TB NvME SSD laptop with a graphics coprocessor for $1600. It is 90% pure ego why
he bought it - there are a few corner cases where that performance *might* help.
On my side - I will buy a refurb laptop with 32GB Ram, 512 GB NvME SSD plus 1TB hard drive
for $1099 mostly because I am literally unable to connect to a number of wifi setups due to
my OS being Win 7 still. That's the only reason.
On the cell phone side - the benefit of additional compute power has long since passed
necessary. There just isn't the interface to even make use of it - all that power is mostly
playing cat videos and using social media.
But I would note that analog design is still very much with us. The major power consumption
sink in a cell phone is the cell signal comms; the digital is increasingly minimal.
Similarly, while WiFi is pretty old now - latest generations of WiFi are 1000mbps or more
which ups power consumption significantly.
But overall - not at all clear that there is a growing market anymore for PCs and laptops.
That's what ends the long, profitable growth ride of the semiconductor industry.
"Our calls for vigilance and boldness were heard in the US Congress, which pressed on
with measures designed to stop this dangerous, divisive project. We call on US
President Joe Biden to use all means at his disposal to prevent the project from
completion", the pair added.
They think they have a voice in the US Congress? Should apply for Statehood then.
The ministers suggested that if completed, the project will add to Russia's drive "to try
to convince the Ukrainian public that the West doesn't care about its own principles, and
ultimately, about the security and prosperity of Ukraine".
But wasn't the critique against socialism from the Soviet space that it was "utopian",
i.e. that it put its "principles" (ideology) before economic fundamentals?
Poland, Ukraine Urge Biden to Do His Best 'to Put an End' to Nord Stream 2 Project
vk @ 109. Congress of the USA to interfere with the completion of Russian-German Nord stream
II project because the LNG cartel in USA governed Texas, Lousisana , Oregon want to require
every man women and child in Europe to pay monopoly prices for LNG. As I see it failure of
Nord Stream II will be extremely dangerous to the survival of the solar and wind renewable
energy efforts; its a do it or die situation for dominate energy is the goal of the LNG
cartel...
RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 11 FEBRUARY 2021 by Patrick Armstrong
WAR PLANS. US/NATO war plans always start with a heavy bombardment. The expectation is that
complete air superiority will be quickly gained so that aircraft and cruise missiles will have
unrestricted freedom to destroy vital infrastructure. This succeeds against countries like
Iraq, to say nothing of Afghanistan. But it won't happen if the first few minutes of the war
see the destruction of half of NATO's airfields, hangars, ports and EW assets in a cloud of
hypersonic missiles.
Russia sends another message to Washington and Brussels – don't even think of it.
But, of course, they are thinking of it .
Shoygu called for increased
production of hypersonic missiles . Not, they say,
easily detectable by radar . A US ship entering the Black Sea would have about three
minutes to detect and defend against Kinzhals fired from 550 kms away in Crimea.
The just-deployed Bastion system
would take longer. Russia isn't trying to do
everything everywhere , just defend its own territory: that's an achievable goal; the other
isn't.
FINES. Moscow fines RFE/RL for
failure to declare 'foreign agent' status on material aimed at Russians. Washington will have
the fantods but this is just Moscow's version of the US FARA legislation in
action.
POLICE BRUTALITY. Here's the video Moscow is giving every
visitor who comes to lecture it.
RUSSIA-CHINA. A piece in the Russian media
suggests that the two are very close to concluding a formal military alliance and enumerates
the mutual advantages to the world's largest economy and best military (too soon to call it
that? Should we wait a few years when it will be obvious?). It's coming.
It starts with a quote from an article a few years back from Col. Douglas Macgregor about
the true costs of peer on peer warfare that should - should - make one think. But given that
the anti-Russian neocons like Victoria "Cookies" Nuland are back in the government, such
well-founded worries might be lightly tossed aside.
Andrei tries to convey the serious consequences of such ill-considered hyperaggresiveness
on the part of the US/NATO/EU. The Russian Federation will not be punked. But with Biden "in
charge" (i.e., being led by the nose by overconfident morons), one may legitimately fear for
the worst.
On Slow Joe, these words from an old Virginia farmer seem apt:
if it weren't for the USSR – 80% – and the Anglosphere – 20%
– they'd all be goose-stepping around in leather giving each other Hitler salutes
I've heard rumors that the Anglosphere supported Hitler and his attack on Russia
early on, that Hitler based his racial laws on similar policies in the USA and UK, and that
the Anglosphere began attacking Hitler's Germany only after it became clear that Germany was
losing to Russia. Some even said Franco was supported by the Anglosphere in the name of
'anti-communism' until his death in 1975. Can you confirm/dispute any of these? Thanks.
Russian diplos certainly turning up the heat on the hapless EU this week. Some kind of sea
change? Charges against NATO folks behind the Maidan and ongoing shelling of civilians in
Donbass?
"If you want peace, prepare for war!" Sergei Lavrov, 11 February 2021 speaking on cutting
relations with the EU
In a televised interview on Russian state television yesterday, Russian Minister of
Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov made this declaration together with the threat to cut relations
with the EU if Russia's vital economic interests were put in danger by any further sanctions
they might consider imposing. His remarks were clearly calculated to turn on a light in the
thick skulls of EU Parliamentarians, of the EU Commission run by former German Defense
Minister von der Leyen, and of her deputy for external relations Borrell.
"Prepare for war" is an old bit of wisdom that we have heard from time to time coming from
the Kremlin together with related folk wisdom such as : if you do not finance properly your
own army, you will be financing someone else's army; and if you cannot deal with Lavrov, then
you will have to deal with Shoigu (Russian Defense Minister).
(Continued at link above).
PA,
Re:Covid19 - I read the tripe, and I think tripe is too good a term to describe it - the
author claims that the impressive 1.2 billion doses ordered is solely based on positive
memes!
With Sputnik V and the failure of Astra Vectra (against the new variants) Russia has major
leverage.
The EU primarily imports oil and gas from Russia, and give Chinese growth (and EU
anti-growth), it seems likely that Russia could easily shift these EU exports east -
china-Russia trade has doubled in the last four years, which could absorb most of the oil and
gas directed at the EU in a few years.
I am guessing Nordstream 2 will be finished and not used to allow for it to be turned on
(perhaps at a premium) at a future date (perhaps when the EU breaks up).
in which Alanbrooke was not shy about describing the need to rein back Churchill from
making premature commitments to schemes and scheduling. His portrayal of Churchill was
thought to be the main reason he was passed over in the postwar awards of plum
appointments.
(The British delegation flight back from Moscow to Tehran is notable for the off-the-cuff
poem by Wavell on why there will be no Second Front in 1943).
The discussions with US commanders are never less than extremely interesting.
@irf520 Solar-powered tanks. Sounds great -- wars in the desert only.
But thanks for this: I an contemplating a paper about how NATO uses its military as a captive
group for social experiments while at the same time wanting to fight everybody
everywhere.
Tentative title "mincing towards war"
This is good material.
"On February 2nd, less than two week after Biden's inauguration, we noticed a complete
shutdown of VPN services. No other servers on the internet were affected. These were only the
VPNs. They became terribly, terribly slow.
Did you notice? Did you think that was your VPN provider screwing up?
It wasn't. It was the US Government.
They used a special type of technology called DPI(Deep Packet Inspection) that was able to
differentiate regular server traffic with traffic that was using a VPN.
This was all uncovered by one of the most seasoned tech experts on the internet. A new
video by a tech privacy guru named Rob Braxman Tech was how I learned about this issue.
Fortunately, there are ways around this issue which Rob Braxmen has brought up.
There are ways of what tech experts call "obfuscating" so it does not look like VPN
traffic. People in China have been developing ways to fight these VPN sniffers for
decades.
So, Liberty Lover, it might actually be with the help of very intelligent people in China
who have already figured out how to defeat firewalls so that we can defeat the Deep State and
protect our First Amendment rights."
Putin surprised me. He flatly refused the offer of Schwab and his ilk. He condemned the
manner of recent pre-Covid growth, for all the growth went into a few deep pockets. Moreover,
he noted that digital tycoons are dangerous for the world. In his own words , "Modern
technological giants, especially digital companies, are de facto competing with states. In the
opinion of these companies, their monopoly is optimal. Maybe so but society is wondering
whether such monopolism meets public interests".
The tycoons were probably amazed. In 2007 in Munich, they laughed at him. Max Boot, a
Russian Jewish émigré, called Putin,
"The louse that roared" and added, "in Putin's sinister and absurd rhetoric, you can hear an
empire dying". Mad Max didn't know yet which empire is dying.
Putin was supposed to be softened up by pro-Navalny demos on January 23 (The Davos talk was
on January 27), but he was not. Quite the reverse. The Russian President does not like to be
pushed. The demo on January 31 was met with force; those detained were sentenced to heavy (by
Russian standards) fines. Three European diplomats were expelled from Russia for joining the
demonstration. Josep Borrell, a Spanish diplomat and a representative of the EU, went to Moscow
and was harshly treated. In the concluding press-conference, the Russian minister for foreign
affairs Sergey Lavrov told the press that Russia does not (repeat, not) consider the EU to be a
"reliable partner". The expulsions were carried out at the same time. In addition, Putin warned
the West that 'sanctions' (acts of economic warfare) could cause Russia to use direct military
force. It was probably the first such warning since 1968.
At the same time, Russia practically ended corona restrictions. Bars and restaurants have
been opened for night revellers; sport events have returned; schools are open; in some parts of
Russia, the masks became "recommended" instead of "compulsory". Russians are now allowed to
travel and return freely from many countries. The Russians have easy access for their vaccine
Sputnik-V that was deemed by The Lancet the best of all existing Corona vaccines. It is a coup
comparable to the first Sputnik launched in 1957, the Western experts said. Thus Russia has
derailed the Grand Reset.
This development had caused a huge shift in consciousness in Russia. If until now (since
1970, at least) the Russian educated classes tended to feel inferior to the West, the
prosperous lands of the free, then this has now changed. One of the leading Russian theatre
directors, Constantine Bogomolov declared that
the West is undone. The West's compulsory political correctness, its culture-cancelling, its
kneeling and boot-licking of BLM, its cult of transgenders, its fear of 'harassment' and sex,
its obligatory smile, its wokeness, its fear of death (and of life!), are comparable to the
behaviour of Alex, the victim of Clockwork Orange therapy, said Bogomolov.
The young man [Alex] does not just get rid of aggression – he is sick of music, he
cannot see a naked woman, sex disgusts him. And in response to the blow, he licks the boot of
the striker. The modern West is such a criminal who has undergone chemical castration and
lobotomy. Hence this false smile of goodwill and all-acceptance, frozen on the face of a
Western person. This is not the smile of Culture. It is a smile of degeneration.
He concludes:
The West tells us: Russia is at the tail of progress.
Wrong.
Just by chance, we have found ourselves at the tail of a runaway train, rushing headlong
into [Hieronymus] Bosch's hell, where we will be greeted by smiling multicultural,
gender-neutral devils.
We should uncouple our carriage off the train, make a sign of cross and start rebuilding
our good old Europe, the Europe we dreamed of. The Europe they have lost.
Take notice of his call to 'make the sign of the cross'. In the West, the churches are
barred, service had been discontinued. The Anglican Church is on the verge of dying ,
with its Archbishop of Canterbury celebrating BLM, removing statues from the churches,
accepting every SAGE edict locking the churches up. Meanwhile Russian churches are all open and
worshippers are pouring into their cathedrals every feast and Sunday.
Russian boys and girls are flirting with each other, fearless of MeToo and harassment
charges. Russian cafes are open. Whoever wants, can get a jab against Covid, or ignore it.
For the first time in many years, Russia shows the way for the West. This is good. Perhaps,
the West, after a long-needed correction, will be able to overtake Russia again. Though Russia
showed the way of socialism to Europe, the best results of socialism were achieved elsewhere,
in the North of Europe. Good old Europe (and the US, its overseas offshoot) are still able to
repeat this feat and get rid of the plotting tycoons and their preaching of compulsory love. At
this occasion, perhaps banning all tycoons is a good idea. In the better world before their
rise, there were no multi-billionaires. History is not over; we are entering the most
interesting part of it. Be of good cheer!
Bravo! Israel Shamir. I enjoyed every syllable of that essay. It frames the shocking
reality that is nowhere treated so forcefully in print in the decadent West. These tycoons
not only purchasse their corrupted governments but are positioned to trade them in concert
like Monopoly board properties, all in plain sight of our blind mass media.
Putin courageously stepped up a notch when he said as much to the Davos crowd and then
demonstratively restored to his own countrymen many of the basic freedoms that have just been
erased in the locked-down EU.
How long will it take for Europe's venal career politicians to realize they are in danger
of becoming just expendable hirelings in the new world order they have so gleefully promoted?
Probably nothing short of a revolution could now save the United States from the new
feudalism.
But Putin's warning must have resonated among the European politicians, whose status and
relevance still derives from a long tradition of statism with a strong social components.
Will the national governments finally grasp that the gravest threat is not the hated populism
but relegation to irrelevance by corporations and plutocrats. The stakes are clear; either
governments will reassert their prerogatives or plutocrats will govern.
For the first time in many years, Russia shows the way for the West. This is good
. Perhaps, the West, after a long-needed correction, will be able to overtake Russia
again.
This is good and timely and needs to be repeated often.
Actually, near where I'm at, "Russia" has been showing the way since Putin got rolling,
even before they tried pulling the Obama rug over our eyes when our hollowed-out economy
became obvious in the days after Bush W. ("War President") made large segments of the old
working class ashamed to be American again.
By all means, let Putin pull out a dusty copy of Ron Reagan quotes and start punting them
back to the United States of Blah.
How did Ron put it in 1982? Oh Yeah: "A nation that cannot honor its own people's rights
cannot be trusted anywhere else."
Putin can simply quote the Dead Cowboy. The current Plutocracy won't get it, the
economically wrecked in the USA already knows it, and everyone else can enjoy the Old Truth
that always gives a wicked return: What goes around comes around.
thank you mr. shamir for the uplifting analysis of this brave new world order being
foisted upon us.
I don't think we will be able to throw off our billionaire overlords unfortunately, as the
average citizen is too compliant and indoctrinated to understand what is happening to
them.
We have no vladimir putin to slay the dragon here. i'm just glad that russia is here as a
counterweight to the kleptocratic cthulhu wrapping its tentacles around the world.
Max 'Jack' Boot's comment reminds one of Croesus. Contemplating whether to attack Persia
or not, he consulted the Pythia at Delphi and the oracle declared that, if he attacked, a
great kingdom would fall. He attacked, but the Empire that fell was his, not Persia. And
brilliant example of Zionazi hubris.
The State must observe intricate arcane rules, while the tycoons have no such limits. As
a result, they shape our minds and lives, making the State a poor legitimate king among
powerful and wealthy barons.
Just by chance, we have found ourselves at the tail of a runaway train, rushing headlong
into [Hieronymus] Bosch's hell, where we will be greeted by smiling multicultural,
gender-neutral devils.
We should uncouple our carriage off the train, make a sign of cross and start rebuilding
our good old Europe, the Europe we dreamed of. The Europe they have lost.
There are some fine sentiments – and many in the West would like to joint the
project.
The greatest problem confronting the ECHR in the Navalny pantomime is that of being
presented with evidence that is determined by people with a high potential of bias and even
malice. Any prosecution or hearing that is based on evidence from people with mala fide (in
bad faith) is fraught with erroneous judgement UNLESS the procedure is doubly cautious in
testing every presentation. One can't know for certain unless one reads the entire
transcript.
So far (from the snippets in press) I can see that there might be good reason to doubt
anything from the German Military labs, from the lady with the drink bottles, from Navalny
the peripatetic pharmaceutical carrier/consumer.
Considering the entire story is premised on a less than 2%er political figure directly
funded by foreign sources to seek power in a nation under propaganda and economic siege (and
failing miserably at that) THEN the court will need to demonstrate some credible evidence as
to how the Novichok failed to infect every passenger and crew in a closed circulation plane
cabin.
Or are we to believe that Navalny has the balls within his underwear to absorb it all?
The ECHR court is being asked to give legitimacy to state propaganda and black ops. This
is a very sad downfall from ethics and common sense. But it certainly won't bother the EU in
perpetrating its pernicious game.
The ECHR also made recent decisions directed against Russia regarding alleged "ethnic
cleansing" in Georgia 2008, and alleged "illegal annexation" in Crimea 2014.
The pathetic attempts to confirm Sainthood onto Navalny when he's clearly one of the
Devil's men is just beyond--outré, is more precise. What does that then make those who
make such attempts? It shows they are further Devil's men and not at all in control of
themselves. Tools are used; they don't use/operate themselves. Trolls are also tools. There
are many of those here that are made to look like they control themselves but ultimately they
remain tools. Too many are treated as humans. I once fought them as Don Quixote fought the
Windmill, but no more; and I very seldom engage them unless the attempt to distort is too
deceptive and must be addressed.
Russia Oil Output Below OPEC+ Quota Amid Cold Siberian Weather The OPEC+ member pumped 1.38 million tons a day of crude and condensate on average from Feb.
1 to 15, according to two people with knowledge of production data, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. That equates to a daily rate of 10.115 million barrels, about 44,000 barrels lower
than January's level.
Rosneft oil production to decline as it parts with legacy assets Russia's Rosneft is braced for a decline in oil production this year despite a gradual
removal of output restrictions that have been imposed on the company by the Kremlin under its
commitments to members of the Opec+ alliance.
Speaking on a conference call on Friday, Rosneft first vice president Eric Liron said the
oil giant expects annual output of oil and condensate to fall by 5% in 2021.
In 2020, Rosneft reported an 11% annual decline in oil and condensate production to 4.1
million barrels per day and a 6% drop in gas output to 63 billion cubic metres.
Putin's response to the Duma Speaker is worth citing fully. Too bad so few will read his
words:
"What you have said regarding the so-called platforms, the IT companies, presents a major
challenge, and not only to us alone. You can see what happened in the United States. This is
a watershed running across the world as a whole, an ideological watershed, which is
absolutely obvious . I have said this before, but I can repeat it now: if they behave
like this in their own country, how will they treat others if they think themselves
exceptional? This is a serious matter, and we certainly need to think about it in
advance, this is the obvious thing.
"As for freedom of speech, the situation is perfectly clear to us as well. The so-called
double standards have manifested themselves so vividly recently that we have no doubt about
how our so-called opponents will behave towards us, no doubt at all.
"Just take a look at Ukraine, where three leading channels have been shut down at the
stroke of a pen. And everyone keeps silent, while some have even given them an approving pat
on the back.
"How can we comment on that? The only thing we can say is that they are using these
instruments to attain their own geopolitical goals. This is also true for Ukraine. Why are
the developments pivoted on Nord Stream 2? They want Russia to pay for their Ukraine
geopolitical project, that is it. In fact, this is a rather primitive and simple thing. We
have become aware of this long ago, but this is the world we are living in.
"Or take a look at what has happened in Latvia. They have clamped down on 16 of our media
outlets, but the only reaction to this is silence. Why have the Western truth seekers not
provided any assessments of what is happening to freedom of expression there, in Europe? No,
there are no evaluations, as if this is how it should be, because they are allegedly fighting
propaganda. As if what they are doing is not propaganda. What is it then? This is an
instrument of attaining their geopolitical goals, in this particular instance, with regard to
our country.
"We must take this into account. I would like to say once again that this is nothing out
of the ordinary. I believe we have been observing this, seeing this happen for a long time,
but the recent events have especially vividly confirmed the correctness of our views and
assessments." [My Emphasis]
Myself and many others would certainly like to know what Putin sees as "their geopolitical
goals" as well as those "with regard to our country." I know Putin's said he sees the Outlaw
US Empire is trying to deter Russia's development, but that seems too simplistic to me
knowing that the #1 policy goal is Full Spectrum Dominance.
The last outstanding nugget from Putin's conference is an admission by Putin of his
political-economic philosophy made during his reply to the Communist Party's Gennady
Zyuganov:
"The growth of unemployment during the pandemic – it is not big but it is still here
and we are seeing and recording it. I speak about this all the time and encourage the
Government to do what is necessary to reach pre-crisis levels. In general, the situation is
improving and has proven to be better than preliminary forecasts. But you are right. It is
clearly necessary to focus on this all the time .
"Of course, I know that the Communist Party is always concerned over issues of
privatisation. I have also spoken about this. Probably, our approaches to this matter do not
always coincide, but at any rate I believe we share the common view that privatisation for
the sake of privatisation is unacceptable for us, especially the way it was carried out in
the 1990s in some areas. It must be beneficial for the economy; it must improve the economic
structure. We must proceed from the premise that any step in this context must create a
better, more efficient owner de facto, in practice rather than formally . But obviously,
this must be done in a certain environment so as not to give away what costs millions and
maybe billions for next to nothing. This is the bottom line for us." [My Emphasis]
Lots of trolls accuse Putin of promoting Neoliberalism. The above proves them liars.
Putin's foremost concern has always been for the welfare of his fellow Russians. If I
haven't made that clear over the years of my reporting on his speeches and pressers, then the
failure must be on those feigning blindness when they can see perfectly well.
IMO, the four main political parties are all fundamentally nationalist, even the
Communists. I don't think anyone/party anti-Russian/pro-Neoliberalism has any chance
politically, and won't for many years. However, it's what I'll term progressive nationalism
that seeks to promote the same in its partners--even in those nations that don't deserve such
treatment. Russia takes the high road and doesn't deviate, which I find commendable. It's my
hope that the Eurasian Bloc will follow the examples of Russia and China, but selfishness and
greed are formidable obstacles, not to mention exceptionalism.
Yesterday's Lavrov presser has finally had the Q&A section added to it and its a
doosey! Lavrov's sounds incendiary in print! "Question: Your recent interview generated a lot
of controversy. You implied that Russia admits the possibility of breaking off with the EU.
How do you see this break and what conditions would have to happen for it to occur, that is,
where does Moscow draw the red line?"
Lavrov: "This interview took place on February 12, and the EU High Representative for
Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell was here on February 5. Upon his return, he
made a number of statements to the effect that Russia had failed to live up to expectations
and to become a modern democracy and is rapidly moving away from Europe. That is, it sounded
as if Russia was a hopeless case. This happened several days before the interview. Hence, the
question as to whether we were ready to break off with the EU during the interview with
Vladimir Solovyov based on those remarks about Russia. As a matter of fact, anyone who is
even slightly interested in the situation in Europe has long known that a break-off has been
underway for many years now. The EU has been consistently tearing down our relations.
"2014 was a turning point. A coup took place in Ukraine, and the EU showed it was helpless
and unable to comply with the agreement that was reached between the government and the
opposition right before the coup. Importantly, Germany, France and Poland put their
signatures under it. The opposition spat on these signatures and on the EU, which thought it
was important to comply with this agreement. It was then that the EU was really humiliated.
Everyone knows what happened next. By and large, the EU turned a blind eye to the attacks
against the residents of Crimea and eastern Ukraine on the part of the ultras and neo-Nazis
who came to power, and decided to put all the blame on the Russian Federation.
"The EU has consistently destroyed all the mechanisms without exception that were based on
the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, including the biannual summits and annual meetings
between the Russian Government and the European commissioners and presidents of the European
Commission, projects to form four common spaces, over 20 sector-specific dialogues and almost
every other more or less important contact, as well as the Partnership and Cooperation
Council's annual meetings with the Russian Foreign Minister and the EU High Representative
for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. These meetings were supposed to be used to conduct a
full review of all areas of cooperation between Russia and the EU. To reiterate, all of that
has been destroyed. Not by us, mind you."
That's the most candid I've read of his answers to the events of that time. Lavrov turns
down his fire and brimstone to make this very important distinction as he finishes his
answer:
" Importantly, we do not have any problems in our relations with individual European
countries , I would even say, most European countries. Russia's relations with Finland
are a very good example of how they are being built systematically and based on general
principles, primarily, equality and mutual benefit, and how they are translated into the
language of specific economic, cultural and other projects that are of interest to both
sides.
" The EU should not be confused with Europe. We are not leaving Europe, we have many
friends and like-minded people in Europe, and we will continue to expand mutually beneficial
relations with them ." [My Emphasis]
It's the NATO/EU combo controlled by the Outlaw US Empire that's the problem. And another
blast aimed at the EU over Navalny related events:
"In evaluating the questions expressed by Mr Haavisto, we heard that our colleagues from
Finland and other EU countries always bring them. We know that they are edited and written by
the EU, in Brussels, and are a subject of consensus. We hear this regularly enough, and these
statements are practically the same, word for word. If the organisation called the European
Union has made this decision, we take it as a certainty. We reply to problematic issues,
and the main point we express is how the EU consistently, diligently and deviously avoids
specific discussions that are fact-based rather than accusations often made against us for
some reason or without any evidence ." [My Emphasis]
In the last Q&A, Lavrov again restates what he earlier said about the EU being at
fault for the utter erasing of relations that were painstakingly built up over many years,
and he repeats what Merkel said at the time foe emphasis, for Russia was innocent of all the
crap it was being accused of in 2014:
"At this point, German Chancellor Angela Merkel specially took the floor to say in public
that Russia must be punished and that in this situation politics must prevail over the
economy. This was very unconventional for a representative of Germany."
This ought to remind people that this proved Merkel to merely be a cheap prostitute
unworthy of any trust, who should have been ousted from her position years ago.
"... The information discussed is from government files which outlay various projects and from companies and -- interestingly -- from charities who make bids to run the FCO projects. All underlying files are available for download as one archive file (~80 MB). ..."
"... The budget for the various anti-Russian projects runs at dozens of millions pounds per year. The first programs were launched in 2016 and some continue through this year. ..."
"... Note that 'Russian disinformation' is whatever Britain does not like about Russia. 'Exposing' such 'disinformation' is best done by spreading one's own. These are not defensive programs but attacks on Russia. ..."
"... Many years of painstaking work of HMG through its embassies and intelligence cutouts precede a chemical attack. They create Media, CSOs and pseudo humanitarian organisations that happen to be just at the correct place and in the correct time with their cameras ready when 'suddenly' a dreadful accident 'shocks every one into action'. ..."
"... Do you believe HMG staged the 'Navalny accident' as part of some kind of a secret operation? Did HMG create Media outlets, nurture bloggers and stringers that it controlled? Did it engage Russia's youth and CSOs? Did it try to demonise Putin just like it had done with Assad by labeling them Evil Dictators who poisoned their people with forbidden chemical weapons? Do you know what all of this is needed for? They need it to delegitimise a leader of a country and convince people around the world that 'no holds should be barred to fight a mad dictator'. Can you grasp the gravity of what is going on? ..."
"... That view is not even exaggerated. The 'west' has the knives out against Russia. We previous mentioned a report from the Pentagon think tank RAND which evaluated how to best 'unbalance and overextend' Russia. ..."
"... The aims we have towards Russia are very big. We do not want anything less but regime change in Russia, which is difficult to achieve by economic pressure. ..."
"... The new documents also reveal some interesting new points on Navalny who seems to be on the British government payroll: ..."
"... By now you must have guessed the identity of one of the popular YouTubers investigating corruption. After obtaining EXPOSE Network files and examining the case studies two years ago, we didn't figure out which YouTuber the FCO supported through ZINC. We refrained from making any preliminary conclusions even when journalists discovered that Vladimir Ashurkov, a close ally of Alexei Navalny, was a part of the Integrity Initiative cluster. ..."
"... But when we saw Mr. Navalny and Bellingcat together, things started to make sense. By digging deeper, we discovered another Navalny's supporter who lives in London - some shadowy Maria Pevchikh who is promoting a system of smart voting in Russia. The Labour used a similar voting system to take the votes of the Conservatives. So, basically it is highly likely that the UK recommended the system to Mr. Navalny. ..."
"... It also turned out that Navalny began a smear campaign against the RT - one of the few media outlets in the West that allows those who disagree with the official position of western government to speak out. Note that Navalny's campaign was running in parallel with that of the Integrity Initiative. A reasonable question is - why Navalny who is mostly engaged in political battles inside Russia spends time fighting a TV network operating outside the country? ..."
"... Not only countries bordering Russia, a cell existed in Spain and it had consequences, when the new government came to power the local cell ran a campaign against the new nominee for National Security for not being tough on Russia as required, he was out of the job, and the main local newspapers were and are in bed with British intelligence dutifully reporting how bad Russia is and how good Navalny and his boys are, journalists working for the media with the largest readership in the country. ..."
"... Devinette: when was the last time a state which was not supported by the US has committed a chemical attack? ..."
"... BTW Maria Pevchikh accompanied Alexei Navalny from Omsk to Berlin. She was the one who was supposed to have gone to his hotel room in Tomsk and picked up the water bottle supposed to contain Novichok, at least until information came out that she acquired the water bottle from a vending machine at Omsk airport en route to Berlin. Pevchikh was the one person in Navalny's entourage who did not submit to questioning by Russian authorities on Navalny's poisoning. ..."
"... I recall that I first found the video below from a MofA comment, but very pertinent to this discussion and maybe it is discussing the same program: Top French Intel Boss Reveals Operation Beluga: US UK Plot to Discredit Putin and Destabilize Russia ..."
"... It gives me pause to try to understand the ethics / morals / humanity of the thousands of western bureaucrats working on these elaborate (sometimes comical) plans to destroy other nations. ..."
"... One visible thing about the complete "undermining of Russia", is that a large amount of bureaucratic planning has gone into it. The quantity of companies that have been employed and with specific duties to perform is shocking. An incidental factor is that the UK and French participants get well paid. £975 or £700 per day, in comparaison to "locally found" participants. ..."
The reporting was based on the British Integrity Initiative's internal files which some 'anonymous' organization had acquired
and published.
Data acquired from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office by the same group
revealed large British propaganda programs in support of Jihadis in Syria as well as British influence operations designed to
undermine the security institutions of Lebanon and to secretly influence its population.
Now another large set of files has been published by the same source. These describe an extensive British government program designed
to undermine Russia by organizing and financing 'independent' Russian language media, by 'training' Russian journalists and by secretly
paying Russian influencers. It is certainly not the only British anti-Russia program but it probably has, secretly, the most public
influence.
The anonymous author has laid out the complete Undermining Russia program in four extensive parts:
One ,
two ,
three ,
four .
The information discussed is from government files which outlay various projects and from companies and -- interestingly -- from charities
who make bids to run the FCO projects. All underlying files are available for
download as one archive file (~80 MB).
The most interesting files are the bids the companies make for projects. They reveal previous projects, methods and people and
thereby create the larger picture.
The budget for the various anti-Russian projects runs at dozens of millions pounds per year. The first programs were launched
in 2016 and some continue through this year.
ENGAGE – working through the British Council to implement people-to-people activities between ethnic Russians and
local communities to develop links along the lines of 21st century skills – includes English language skills and media literacy,
social enterprises and cultural activities;
ENHANCE – supporting independent media in Russia's near abroad to bring balance and plurality to Russian language
media, in the Baltic States and Eastern Partnership countries;
EXPOSE – by debunking and exposing Russian disinformation in real time, which can be reported in mainstream media
with the goal to expose malign state disinformation in countries that are targeted by it. If you expose disinformation, it
is less likely to be impactful; therefore, the Russian State becomes less credible.
ENABLE – working with allied governments through the Government Communication Service to improve their strategic
communications to their populations.
Note that 'Russian disinformation' is whatever Britain does not like about Russia. 'Exposing' such 'disinformation' is best
done by spreading one's own. These are not defensive programs but attacks on Russia.
Projects to achieve the above were to be implemented in nearly every country that borders Russia and has a Russian speaking minority
as well as in Russia itself.
The British government does not want you to know about such projects. The 'Supplier Event' sheet says:
Security
No unauthorised disclosures of activity on this work. Contract will need to take a look at who we are working with. Basic IT
security reasonable steps should cover our requirements but the FCO may request an explanation of what steps have been taken to
ensure security and Duty of Care.
It should be noted that for security reasons, some grantees will not wish to be linked to the FCO. It should be noted that
the Programme Team would prefer the programme documents do not end up in the Russian media. We know that they are following us,
and we are expecting an expose soon.
What is the overall purpose of such secret programs? The author of the Undermining Russia series
explains that with regards
to the 'poisoning' of Alexei Navalny:
Many years of painstaking work of HMG through its embassies and intelligence cutouts precede a chemical attack. They create
Media, CSOs and pseudo humanitarian organisations that happen to be just at the correct place and in the correct time with their
cameras ready when 'suddenly' a dreadful accident 'shocks every one into action'.
Do you believe HMG staged the 'Navalny accident' as part of some kind of a secret operation? Did HMG create Media outlets,
nurture bloggers and stringers that it controlled? Did it engage Russia's youth and CSOs? Did it try to demonise Putin just like
it had done with Assad by labeling them Evil Dictators who poisoned their people with forbidden chemical weapons? Do you know
what all of this is needed for? They need it to delegitimise a leader of a country and convince people around the world that 'no
holds should be barred to fight a mad dictator'. Can you grasp the gravity of what is going on? Well, you ought to. They
are preparing us for war with the Russians and the Chinese. They are looking for casus belli, and only the truth can stop them,
because 'if wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth'. (Julian Assange)
That view is not even exaggerated. The 'west' has the knives out against Russia. We previous
mentioned a report from the Pentagon think tank RAND which evaluated how to best 'unbalance and overextend' Russia. In the
end it was clearly aimed at regime change in Russia, or if not otherwise possible, war. On Friday
Gabriel Felbermayr , the president of the Kiel
Institute for the World Economy, was asked by a German radio station about new sanctions the EU might impose on Russia. He is skeptic
that those might work
because (my translation):
The aims we have towards Russia are very big. We do not want anything less but regime change in Russia, which is difficult
to achieve by economic pressure.
The new documents also reveal some
interesting new points on
Navalny who seems to be on the British government payroll:
These self-exposing documents show that the FCO has established a network of popular YouTubers in Russia who investigate corruption
in the government, and the YouTubers get assistance from some journalists from the Baltic States. Also, the FCO has experience
of instigating protests in Russia.
By now you must have guessed the identity of one of the popular YouTubers investigating corruption. After obtaining EXPOSE
Network files and examining the case studies two years ago, we didn't figure out which YouTuber the FCO supported through ZINC.
We refrained from making any preliminary conclusions even when journalists discovered that Vladimir Ashurkov, a close ally of
Alexei Navalny, was a part of the Integrity Initiative cluster.
But when we saw Mr. Navalny and Bellingcat together, things started to make sense. By digging deeper, we discovered another
Navalny's supporter who lives in London - some shadowy Maria Pevchikh who is promoting a system of smart voting in Russia. The
Labour used a similar voting system to take the votes of the Conservatives. So, basically it is highly likely that the UK recommended
the system to Mr. Navalny.
It also turned out that Navalny began a smear campaign against the RT - one of the few media outlets in the West that allows
those who disagree with the official position of western government to speak out. Note that Navalny's campaign was running in
parallel with that of the Integrity Initiative. A reasonable question is - why Navalny who is mostly engaged in political battles
inside Russia spends time fighting a TV network operating outside the country? Was RT really such a problem for him? No, it wasn't.
It was a problem for the Western imperialists and apparently, they told Navalny to join in.
Anyway. Here are again links to the four parts of 'Undermining Russia':
One ,
two ,
three ,
four .
They give extensive insight into the methods the 'west' is using to destroy foreign countries. Knowledge that one needs to really
understand what is happening in this world.
Posted by b on February 15, 2021 at 19:24 UTC |
Permalink
Projects to achieve the above were to be implemented in nearly every country that borders Russia and has a Russian speaking
minority as well as in Russia itself.
Not only countries bordering Russia, a cell existed in Spain and it had consequences, when the new government came to power
the local cell ran a campaign against the new nominee for National Security for not being tough on Russia as required, he was
out of the job, and the main local newspapers were and are in bed with British intelligence dutifully reporting how bad Russia
is and how good Navalny and his boys are, journalists working for the media with the largest readership in the country. Some
got fired when the scandal went public, others went through the revolving door, that simple. They had a lot to do with the Assange
case, as explained in the link bellow.
Russian authorities are more sophisticated that the British, not to mention Americans. The way I see it, American flunkies tend
to make most glaring mistakes routinely, and with propaganda efforts they may get some mileage in Latin America -- not as much
as they could wish. But in Europe and Middle East, it takes the British to keep track which country is which etc.
In that vein, Russia is not so eager to clobber Navalniks with political accusations. To a larger degree than China and the
West, Russia wants to allow free access to information etc., and focuses on discrediting "Navalniks". Let them have 40 offices
around the country plus a slew of foreign ones, online TV channels etc. In the same time, Russia is copying Western methods.
For example, tagging people as "foreign agents" if they use foreign money to operate.
Converting stories "discrediting the regime" into flops, like "Putin palace".
Imposing rules that make it hard for new parties to run in elections -- copied from New York State?
Imposing rules that make it hard to run demonstrations where you want and issuing pesky penalties for violations.
In the same time, collaborating with the West puts people who do it in an unpopular box. Navalny tries to circumvent those
limitation with rank demagogy, but he still suffers by contagion, and from condemnations from less cynical followers of other
Western projects -- for accepting Russian Crimea, frowning on immigrants etc.
On the US side, the program 60 Minutes just aired a segment where president of Microsoft claimed that the Russians used 1000+
hackers for the SolarWinds flair. No wonder Microsoft produces such crap software. If the Russians could manage 1000+ engineers,
then they should be outsourced for all of DOD's software.
The Biden admin is supposedly now deciding what new sanctions or actions to take against Russia. And this psyop comes out.
Timing. All about timing. Somebody timed this.
Just confirms that the Biden regime will take the US into a shooting war with Russia just as the Brits were going toward that
if their propaganda failed to oust Putin.
Thanks b.
Skimmed through part 1.
I see you are quoted. A question (which may be answered in a later part of the same), are the connections to the "five eyes" as well as the Spanish
(re. Paco post) organised by the UK or are they joint efforts? (Anonymous doesn't think too much of the others.)
The FCO seems to be the operative, but is it really the originator? In the sense that at present the financial and "sanctions"
elements are part of US/Israel policy. They may have been suggested by the FCO discretely?
-----
I note that Corbyn was attacked for anti-semitism by the FCO and also by Israeli media. They also seem to be deeply involved in
the same setup. Were the Israelis involved in the planning?
Many things to consider given this new information. It provides extra dimensions to
Today's Crooke
essay and the
one by Tim Kirby I posted yesterday. Agent Smith tried to pooh-pooh it all by saying the international culture wars are a
side show when in reality they are the crux of the matter since at the end of the day everything boils down to First Principles--Values.
Truth, Virtue and Promotion of the Individual to Advance the Many versus Lies, Deceit and Denigration of the Individual to Advance
The Few.
@10 erelis. Noticed the paid advert on 60 minutes last nite, also. But after watching for 5 minutes, had to switch channels. Saw
b's latest write up on Solarwinds which I would tend to trust note than ms / CBS. A follow up from b would be nice.
The poisoning narratives touted by the Western oligarchies and their corporate media should be seen for what they are, hilariously
funny. As I said on a previous occasion, I laughed out loud for about half a minute when I read that Navalny had been poisoned
with a 'novichok-like substance'. In the most literal sense those stories do not pass the laugh test. From the
Litvinenko-polonium
story to the Navalny- novichok underpants story they have all been a tissue of quite absurd lies.
Worryingly, despite the absurdities and the frequent changing of details in these narratives, people who are demonstrably quite
intelligent in their daily lives appear to be buying into the anti-Russian narrative. People who can watch 'Game of Thrones' and
comprehend a fictional character's argument when he asks the question 'why would I frame myself' are seemingly incapable of applying
the argument in real life situations. Why would the FSB frame themselves? Why would they use a substance that has not yet succeeded
in killing any of the intended targets? There must be literally hundreds if not thousands of toxins that could be used and there
are countless other ways of killing a person.
Imagine a check box list of the desirable characteristics of an assassination weapon, neither 'novichok' nor polonium would
tick enough (if any) of those boxes to be considered.
So what is it about? Clearly that rubbish is not going to work on the people of the Russian Federation (at least not enough
of them to be worthwhile) That just leaves us as the target, they are quite obviously manufacturing consent. Do they actually
mean to start WW3? or is it a bluff intended to frighten the Russians into submission? Or ruin their economy with massive increases
in arms expenditure? Perhaps it is just more pressure to cancel Nordstream 2 so the US can sell their overpriced fracked gas and
delay their coming economic collapse for a short while. Only time will tell, I fear the worst.
Oligarchies usually end with arrogance, stupidity, ignorance and eventually insanity. The modern counterparts of Nero and Caligula
are running the western world. While dynasties are usually founded by exceptional people, as a rule the only exceptional thing
about their descendants is their arrogance.
Russians can, and do, watch and read western media to see firsthand how badly western press slander Putin and Russians in
general. Putin is extremely popular in Russia for saving the country from oligarchs, reuniting Crimea, shutting down western sponsored
terrorism in southern Russia and standing up to naked aggression from NATO. Western press shows Russians just how stupid western
people have become by believing the inane poisoning stories, airplane shootdowns, and Russian "invasions" such as Crimea. The
Russians only need to read western press to know the west is preparing regime change or war. Putin and the Kremlin do not need
to say a word to convince Russians the west considers them enemies.
The constant lies about Russia and threats to Europeans and Turkey are backfiring. The Germans, Turks and others are furious
over the British and Americans constantly demonizing them for making smart business deals and military purchases with Russia.
With all the "maximum pressure" campaigns and sanctions, some European and Middle East countries consider the US and UK bigger
threats than Russia.
If the west actually achieves the goal of starting war with Russia, the result will be disastrous for the west. Russia has
become so advanced militarily, there is no doubt Russia would easily crush any attacks and then counter attack. Be careful what
you wish for, Americans.
Whilst we the British people, who have no problem with the Russians, have no say in the matter.
Oh to be a fly on the wall at the next official Anglo Russian get together. That will be a 'shortest straw' gig as no British
politician will want to face Lavrov now, especially after that EU prat visit last week.
What's going on? Why this animosity towards Russia?
I'll give you my opinion.
The British leadership are VERY ambitious. The nature of their empire has changed. First, They no longer seek to become an
empire of nations, but rather an empire of national leaders - primarily Heads of State who control the domestic legal system.
Second, they are a feminist empire, with power passed from mother to daughter. They are able to do this because, while there can
be but one King, there can be multiple queens simultaneously. For example, from the death of George vi in 1952 until the death
of Mary of Teck in 1953 there were no less that three queens of the United Kingdom. Then until 2001 there were two queens. Like
chess, with two queens you always win the game.
But they can only do this while the United Kingdom exists. England alone, shorn of Scotland, loses the medieval laws and powers
that underpin this empire.
If you investigate the monarchies of Europe you will find that they all are members of the Order of the Garter (KG). This is
a sovereign order, which means that in order to join one must swear an oath to the Sovereign of the Order, Queen Elizabeth.
If you investigate the politicians of the US you will find many that have joined the Order of Bath (KB) even though it is explicitly
against the constitution for them to do so (I think it is called the Emoluments Clause, but I may have misremembered). Again,
in order to join this organization you must swear an oath to Queen Elizabeth.
It used to be that only the Republicans (Reagan, Bush, Weinberger and so on). But in January 2001 I came across a photograph
of the three Clintons "leaving Buckingham Palace following a private visit". The benefits gained by the Clintons is what has launched
the family into the big time of money and personal unrestrained power and the complete control of the Democratic Party.
This is a millennial empire. It is meant to last for a thousand years. The other great civilizations - Russia, China, Iran - are equally millennial, and are seen as a threat to the British plans
for world domination.
The other great civilizations understand all I have written. They know a fight is coming. And I think that this is the reason
that Lavrov finally took off the gloves when dealing with Borrell last week. For while he would bend over backwards to understand
the EU position in the past, the UK has now quit the EU. The only ties now to the British Empire are those personal ones to the
monarchs of Europe like, in the case of Borrell, Felipe vi and his father, juan Carlos. Both Knights of the Garter.
@ John Cleary | Feb 15 2021 22:07 utc | 19 with the description of the British empire
About that Queen thing. I can't think right now where the details are but it is my understanding that annually the Queen presents herself to the City
of London in a supplicatory manner. I agree that there is empire and that the Queen is part of the fabric of the curtain behind which are the real lever movers,
those that own global private finance.
British hostility to Russia has a long history. Indeed, we should not forget that the British Royal family supported Hitler. No
doubt this, at least in part, accounts for Neville Chamberlain's 'appeasement' Adolf Hitler, following Germany's annexation of
Sudetenland in 1938 and sequent invasion of Czechoslovakia in March, 1939.
See- A brief history of the British Royals and their alleged Nazi connections 28 Aug 2017; Link:
https://www.sbs.com.au/guide/article/2017/08/28/brief-history-british-royals-and-their-alleged-nazi-connections
Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 15 2021 21:27 utc | 14 -- "Many things to consider given this new information. It provides extra dimensions
to Today's Crooke essay and the one by Tim Kirby I posted yesterday. Agent Smith tried to pooh-pooh it all by saying the international
culture wars are a side show when in reality they are the crux of the matter since at the end of the day everything boils down
to First Principles--Values. Truth, Virtue and Promotion of the Individual to Advance the Many versus Lies, Deceit and Denigration
of the Individual to Advance The Few."
Thanks, karlof1, for yet another informative article. Saved it for study along with the Tim Kirby article.
So much to read... so much to learn.... so much to pleasure in.... first principles, eternal values, objective truth, good
governance... and did God say that the white man's burden is to go rape, pillage, rob the rest of the world?
And thanks for reminding me that his name is Agent Smith.
This is to help me remember not to engage trolls and / or idiots:
"Never again will we try to persuade a foolish person with reason, for it is senseless and dangerous. In conversation with
them, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken
possession of them. They are under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in their very being.' -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters
and Papers from Prison
... These self-exposing documents show that the FCO has established a network of popular YouTubers in Russia who investigate
corruption in the government, and the YouTubers get assistance from some journalists from the Baltic States. Also, the
FCO has experience of instigating protests in Russia ...
It would be interesting to know if the Russian-language news website Meduza.io might have some connection to this assistance
to the YouTubers. Meduza.io is based in Riga, Latvia, and employs Russian-language journalists.
Kevin Rothrock , formerly of The Moscow Times (English-language
newspaper in Moscow), is editor-in-chief of Meduza.io's international version.
BTW Maria Pevchikh accompanied Alexei Navalny from Omsk to Berlin. She was the one who was supposed to have gone to his hotel
room in Tomsk and picked up the water bottle supposed to contain Novichok, at least until information came out that she acquired
the water bottle from a vending machine at Omsk airport en route to Berlin. Pevchikh was the one person in Navalny's entourage
who did not submit to questioning by Russian authorities on Navalny's poisoning.
I think we should see a bit more (in Google's English-language translation) of what Gabriel Felbermayr said to Katharina Petz
of Deutschlandfunk:
Gabriel Felbermayr : I am sceptical about [further sanctions]. The question is always what we want to achieve with
sanctions. If we really want to bring Russia to its knees economically, we would need a large coalition of countries to do so,
and Europe alone cannot do as much as is necessary. At least China on board and, best of all, India and other [Russia's] trading
partners would need it. The fact that sanctions have worked so badly in the past has to do with the fact that they are being undermined
by other countries, that is a key problem. That is why I am sceptical that putting a on it (sic) really helps now. The objectives
we have with Russia are very large. After all, we want nothing less than regime change in Russia, which is very difficult to achieve
with economic pressure ...
... I believe that we must also see who we are hitting with the sanctions. Are these really the people who are acting and
who, in the light of the sanctions, may then reconsider their actions, or is it the general population that is hit very diffusely,
each a little bit. This does not hurt enough, so to speak, to put great pressure on the regime, but it does hit the general public.
That is why I believe that a sanctions instrument that is much more adicating (sic) to individuals is more promising and does
not affect the broad mass of Russians. That already exists, we are using it in the European Union. These could be travel restrictions,
that could be the freezing of assets abroad, and this could also be sanctions against certain companies that are very close to
the Kremlin. Perhaps there is more that can be done than Europe alone, because Russian foreign assets are not in China, so to
speak, and the second residences of Russian oligarchs are not somewhere in the Third World, but in Monaco and London and Paris.
So smart sanctions are certainly what is more promising – one has to ask whether Europe has the right instruments ...
...Yes, of course, the economic impact of the sanctions is quite different. Germany suffers from the Russia sanctions that
have been in place since 2014, more than any country in the world, in absolute terms, and is also much more affected in percentage
of economic output than in France. In Germany, this costs about 0.2% of GDP, according to various estimates, and in France this
figure is much lower. There are, of course, other European countries where the level of concern is higher, [Bulgaria] for example,
or the Eastern European Member States of the European Union as a whole. This unequal concern is certainly a political dilemma.
It is also a political problem with regard to the United States of America, which, while always insisting and pushing for
sanctions, has so far drawn little economic disadvantage from it, simply because US trade with Russia is very low. That is the
core problem when it comes to forging a broad coalition that costs are too unevenly distributed. We would certainly also have
to think about compensation mechanisms within Europe or within the Western world, so that the joint fight against the violation
of human rights, for example in Russia, must be paid for economically, not only by a few countries ...
... Yes, I would agree, I think [Nordstream II shutdown] is overestimated. The question is how much billions of export revenues
Russia generates in the European Union by selling natural gas, that is the central question. And whether natural gas enters the
European Union via Ukraine or Turkey or Germany does not matter much. It may even be the case that the possibility of shutting
down or blocking such a pipeline again, or imposing conditions, means that Germany will even get a leverage over Russia that would
not otherwise have been possible.
So I also think that Nord Stream 2 is overestimated. Here again the question would have to be asked, who does it actually
cost if you do not complete the project. A great many European and German investors are also negatively affected, and with sanctions
we want to inflict pain, above all, on the Russian power apparatus and not on ourselves. I believe that Nord Stream 2 is a bad
instrument ...
So the sanctions regime against Russia is hitting the EU, and Germany and parts of Eastern Europe in particular, harder than
it's hitting Russia and the EU needs more nations on board with sanctioning Russia.
I can't imagine the US would be willing to compensate the EU for any losses it has to sustain by sanctioning Russian government
officials and businesspeople.
The UK aristocracy and their opportunists have nothing to credit themselves but ill-gotten money or the hope thereof, they have
always been forced to equate money=virtue to pretend to any merit, between themselves and their families. This is the cause of
their eternal hatred of socialism and virtue in government, and their eternal hatred of Russia, even in the post-USSR era. If
they have no one with less money to hate, they have no claim to personal merit, and must face the truth.
Of course the same is true of the upper classes anywhere, even among the poorest. For what was the purpose of their lying,
cheating, stealing and perpetual materialism, what were the values they taught their children, if money is not virtue. Virtue
is an unknown land to them, an unforgiveable sin, for that way lies the ugly truth about them.
Lots of people living in la la land - that is - in the good old times when the West subjugated the planet.
UK economic drop 2020
-10 %
EU economic drop
-7 %
Russia economic drop
-3.1 %
Moment to reach 2019 Q4 economic level:
UK beginning of 2023
EU beginning of 2023
Russia Autumn 2021
>>Gabriel Felbermayr: The aims we (EU) have towards Russia are very big. We do not want anything less but regime change in
Russia.
Yes, Gabi, it is good that you are honest. It will only warn people of your intentions, so it is preferable to talk that way.
:) Meanwhile, in the real world, lots of EU businesses and NGOs will flew out from Russia and be replaced with Asian ones. It already happening with cars, trade, energy flows, diplomatic missions and tourists. So good riddance to bad rubbish.
>>I can't imagine the US would be willing to compensate the EU for any losses it has to sustain by sanctioning Russian government
officials and businesspeople.
The place of the EU in this whole scheme was already described by Victoria Nuland. That is - "F the EU". :)
This is not a problem though, they have long experience with it.
US will not be selling any LNG to EU/Germany to compensate for loss of NS2. The fracking business is shutting down and shutting
down right now. Wells are going offline, replacements are not being drilled. No drill, no gas. Fertilizer shortages are already
in sight. As we lose ability to grow food we will not be sending feedstock material across the ocean just because it sounded good
in a strategic fantasy.
Posted by b on February 15, 2021 at 19:24 UTC | -- "They give extensive insight into the methods the 'west' is using to destroy
foreign countries."
Thanks, B, for using the light of truth to expose the insanity of western leadership. It gives me pause to try to understand the ethics / morals / humanity of the thousands of western bureaucrats working on these
elaborate (sometimes comical) plans to destroy other nations. How does a "civil" servant like that conceive such evil, then go home to teach their children how to be human beings? This banality of evil is absolutely unfathomable to ordinary people such as I.
Reminds me of the thousands of good Germans who "went along to get along" on the way into WW2. Also, the thousands of good British "planners" who war-gamed their way into WW2.
>>And whether natural gas enters the European Union via Ukraine or Turkey or Germany does not matter much.
This ignorant euro-puppet should be fired immediately.
Having a gas pipeline via Turkey increases the geopolitical weight of Turkey and it allows it to blackmail the Balkan Countries
receiving the gas.
Using the Ukrainian route means that additional billions of euros will have to be invested in repairing the old and disrepeit
Ukrainian Gas Transit Network which is from the 80s, with good amount of the money disappearing due to corruption.
The gas then may stop due to Russia-Ukrainian disputes (as it happened in the past) or "misterious" explosions may happen on
the pipeline (as it happened too).
It is also unclear for how long will Russia be interested in saving the EU from freezing (in January the EU was forced to buy
record amounts of gas due to cold temperatures), considering the rise of Asian markets.
Right now Russia is connecting the Western pipelines and the Eastern Pipelines, meaning that "EU gas" may be reserved for the
East.
Gazprom is also looking to accelerate work on the Power of Siberia 2 (PoS2) pipeline, as part of plans to unite domestic gas
transmission infrastructure across eastern and western Russia into a single system.
TASS reports Lavorv's comments after meeting Finnish Foreign
Minister revealing the lawless nature of the EU's behavior as it abets crimes against its own laws:
"The minister paid special attention to the fact that Brussels enables brazen violations of rights of Russian speakers and
attacks on the Russian language and culture in the Baltic States, Ukraine and several other states. '
Of course, we cannot
but take into account the EU condoning blatant breaches of Russian speakers, Russians and the attacks on the Russian language
and culture that we witness in the Baltic States, Ukraine and some other countries. When Russian-speaking [TV] channels are shut
down, when criminal cases are opened against Russian-speaking journalists for simply doing their jobs, when the disgraceful institute
of statelessness remains in the EU, while the European Union watches it all without any desire to change anything, I believe that
it is not Russia distancing itself from the EU, but the very EU moves away from the Russian language, Russian culture and all
things Russian, meaning that it is drifting away from the Russian Federation ,' the minister noted." [My Emphasis]
As reported earlier, Russia will finish Nord Stream 2 and continue fulfilling its commitments. But given EU co-responsibility
for the terrorism and refugee crises combined with the recent revelations, I don't see any positive developments occurring.
Thanks for that very revealing translation of Gabriel Felbermayr's words. It shows that a man can be intelligent and insane
at the same time. He speaks as if the need for destroying Russia is a given. Sounds like he is one of those thousands who go along
to get along....
"I fooled myself. I had to. I didn't want to see it, because I would then have had to think about the consequences of seeing
it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent. I wanted my home and family, my job, my career, a place in the
community." -- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
For Psychohistorian and John Cleary, regarding the City of London...
The City was never thoroughly brought to heel by William the Conqueror with the result that it was granted a sort of autonomy
within the realm, hence its absence in the Doomsday Book, which assessed the realm's lands for taxation by the crown. Whether
or not it is part of the United Kingdom is a moot point, for its autonomy (strengthened over time) makes it, in a sense, impervious
to United Kingdom legislation that it wishes to ignore. In this regard, it is a sort of anomaly, like the Channel Islands (the
last remaining part of the Duchy of Normandy still under the British crown) and the Isle of Mann, both of which are NOT part of
the United Kingdom and were not part of the European Union, and both of which are notorious tax havens.
The peculiar status of the City of London is what has made it a great financial center, for it can regulate itself (and does,
to some extent, if only to keep the scandalmongers at bay), unlike the New York and Swiss financial centers, which are subject
to "outside" oversight, New York by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and Switzerland by the FINMA (Financial Market
Supervisory Authority).
MarkU @ 16 -- "While dynasties are usually founded by exceptional people, as a rule the only exceptional thing about their descendants
is their arrogance."
Ancient Chinese wisdom on generational wealth: First generation make money; second generation keep money; third generation
lose money. Start over.
MarkU @ 16 -- "Oligarchies usually end with arrogance, stupidity, ignorance and eventually insanity. "
Good fit for most parts of the Western (*) leadership, lying one day, reversing their own lies the next, then reverting to
their original lie, then pivoting to some other lie. Insane. They have gone past derision, gone past shame, gone past dishonour,
into insanity. Destruction cometh next.
"Now it's time to expose another intelligence cutout - BBC Media Action. Don't be surprised that the detested mainstream media
outlet BBC has its own secret firm which gets its funding from your taxes as well as from the CSSF." (Taken from part two)
One visible thing about the complete "undermining of Russia", is that a large amount of bureaucratic planning has gone into
it. The quantity of companies that have been employed and with specific duties to perform is shocking. An incidental factor is
that the UK and French participants get well paid. £975 or £700 per day, in comparaison to "locally found" participants.
Other things of note are the targeting of Russian speaking, younger age groups and the admission that the over 40's are more
difficult to change. (This is a common factor for other areas of propaganda as well.)
The "Covid story" has had an effect. No longer are " mother and daughter tea parties " with 40 participants possible.
Not a joke , but it serves to underline the thoroughness of the propaganda effort leading up to effect a "regime change".
----
About the Monarchy, and inferred connection to the "landed Gentry Aristocracy". Possible, but would rely on education in the "best"
Schools, and their production of eligible members of "secret" manipulative societies via old boy networks, as well as "ordinary"
leaders. ie Politicians, Top civil servants.
Private Schools such as Eton and Harrow have recognised "specialities" and form the basis of networks. It is not for nothing that
you have to put the names down of likely progeny almost at birth. Closed shop attitude as in a "trade Union"! ST. Johns, Leatherhead,
produces clergy for example.
The UK Monarchy was connected by intermarriage to almost all the Royalty in Europe. There are still connections (for those who
have the cash), through such goups as Bilderberg, etc.
The relation of the "Dukes" to a desire to take over Russia, is a possible source of interest. ie. The Duke of Grosvernor owns
the Square mile of the City of London. (Which is an entity in itself.) The City has the key to the finance of the UK and much
of the "dark money, and money laundering in the world.
----
all for today.
Obama, Bernie and DJT have led their flocks to nowhere. What led us to them is the establishment's desire to derail
populist Movements.
One clue (among many): Each of these so-called populists is pro-Empire.
Obama conducted covert wars and regime changes. He declined to prosecute any CIA people for rendition & torture
and dismissed privacy concerns about NSA spying. He also lied to us: 1) about a 'public option' in his healthcare plan and
2) never making the Bush tax cuts permanent (Obama participated in the 'fiscal cliff' farce that made most Bush tax cuts permanent
while cutting social programs);
Bernie , aka "Senator F35" is a closet Zionist that supports the Empire. He was Hillary's sheepdog in 2016. He then
founded "Our Revolution", a nonprofit that accepted money from large donors. Bernie folded like a tent in 2020 to support establishment
candidate Biden. Bernie put forth a bogus bill to end US involvement in the Saudi war on Yemen that would not actually end
that involvement due to an exception. And he has criticized Venezuela's Maduro as USA has been trying to overthrow him.
Trump - a billionaire conman, Clinton insider, and friend of Epstein - got in front of the Tea Party parade with
slogans like "America First". His actions show that he is a fraud who is actual "Empire First". Trump dramatically increased
spending on the military, terminated multiple peace agreements, renegged on his peace deal with North Korea, gave Israel everything
on its wish list (including killing Iranian Gen. Soleimani), militarized space, and continued the War on Whistle-blowers with
prosecution of Assange. Along the way he lied to the American people about the severity of the looming pandemic and excused
MbS's killing of Jamal Khashoggi.
Nothing will change as long as we keep falling for compromised leaders that are promoted by a compromised media.
I heard this when I was a student in London. It may be hearsay after all, as I also tried to find relevant info after your
comment. Trouble is the enormous power of the City, the Banks, and major corporations all who have a "vote" (or not) in the affairs
of the Corporation, make any detailed study next to impossible. Trusts, etc. I followed somebodies FOI request which led to .....
nothing.
Note that known Grosvenor territory (the house I had a flat in. The street belonged to them.) were part of their assets, and
in the last seven years of a 99yr lease. After which it had to be "returned in the same state as it was "sold" in the first place.
The present Duke does apparently not have much to say in the Grosvenor Family Trust. He is still rich. (according to one grovelling
article).
It does make a prime suspect for setting up the Anti-Russian saga, as those Banks/Corporations and Billionaires etc. would
be the ones to profit massively from a"regime change".
Like clockwork, the NYT begins to set a rationalization for more US imperialism in Syria. This is such a contrived article. It
doesn't come out of the blue.
These ferocious dogs never stop. The push is to rebuild the Turkish relationship, and so regain influence over Syria through 'protecting
Idlib' and its 'children.'
About Tim Kirby advises to Russia. The guy is completely delusional and really ignorant of Russia history and mental structures.Russi
is not going to metamporphose in USA or UEJohn Hermer:
http://johnhelmer.net/1000th-dance-with-bears/
But Russia is going fine with China
Thanks for your reply! I've often disagreed with Kirby; but as I wrote in my first linking to his essay, there are some suggestions
that merge with ideas we've discussed over the months here. I've written about what I see as Russia's fundamental ideology, how
it differs from the West, and fume intensely when Putin says differences with the West aren't ideological when it's so clear they
are--Putin just laid out the vast chasm in his Davos speech. Lavrov just reiterated that Russia cannot abide nations/organizations
that are pathological prevaricators. And China is the same. IMO, the First Principles of Russia and China are the ones humanity
needs to adhere to and merge with policy. They are the same as those proposed by Henry Wallace for his Century of The Common Man.
I see them as an evolutionary step forward to a Commonwealth of Humanity that would inspire a Great Leveling--which the elite
of course oppose. The most recent manifestation of the Abrahamic Religions also appeals to such an arrangement as does most Afro/Asian
philosophy.
What we have is an embattled minority trying to keep its power using every trick at its disposal. The #1 question most of us
have: Is that minority suicidal--will it see nuclear war as a way to keep its position? Putin has answered that if it does try
it will lose. And IMO, the minority knows that it currently will lose but hopes to reverse that outcome--They don't seek compromise
as they want it all. And that's where the big problem lies--How to dissuade them of their unattainable Zero-sum Fetish?
So empire (is it British, American, Jewish...) threw up Donald Trump as the attempt to gather the totally delusional around a
maniacal "strong/bully" leader to push back against the Russia/China axis and it didn't work entirely like they wanted but it
broke enough social anchors to increase the fragility/fear factors of society. When the mostly manufactured crisis does come they
trust their ability to manufacture Western outcomes that keep private finance alive and with some ongoing control over some chunk
of the world.
I don't expect to live to see private finance go entirely away anymore. I think the trajectory is set in that direction but
the timeframe will be longer than I wanted/expected. Look at the number of commenters here that still want to play whack-a-mole
bad apples games while behind the curtain the global private finance elite are continuing their species perversion through British
ways like b has shown here.
The West needs a better social system that has the broader public instead of a cult of folks as its focus or we will continue
our road to deserved extinction.
emersonreturn @ 9, I have just done the same this morning as gently as I could with family members in New Zealand. It is very
hard for them to recognize this is not all Trump's doing - especially when they are benefitting from better government themselves
as far as coping with the virus, and they remember fondly better days in the relationship with the US.
Lavrov at work, day after day. Today with Togolese Foreign Minister, a quick translation so as to induce a little smile:
Question: How do Western countries view the rapprochement between Russia and African countries?
Foreign Minister Lavrov: In different ways. Some are neutral, others, like the former US Administration, are very negative.
Former US Secretary of State M. Pompeo traveled to Africa before the end of President Trump's term and publicly urged not to cooperate
with Russia and China in the field of trade, because Moscow and Beijing allegedly proceed from geopolitical interests, trying
to benefit. The United States, on the other hand, "does it from the heart." I will not comment on this kind of position.
Recently, representatives of the new US Administration called on the Russian Sputnik V vaccine to be viewed with suspicion,
since again, this is a "Kremlin's geopolitical plan" and one must be "careful" not to become "dependent on Russia."
I think Crimea was meant to be the new homeland for Israel citizens, when the usurpator state goes down. Now they will have to save
themselves to Patagonia.
Intriguing topic.
It's anyone's guess why the Christian West's front-of-curtain leaders are training the Homeland serfs to become accustomed to
24/7 lies about remote enemies. The notion that the West can "win" a war with Russia/China is laughable. Each/both could retaliate
EFFECTIVELY if attacked. So if the bs isn't about WWIII then what is it about?
My guess is that it's nothing more sophisticated than Creative Distraction from what's been going on in AmeriKKKa and, to a
lesser extent the Rest of the West, since the Oligarchs had their own taxes slashed in the '70s, '80s and '90s. This helped to
fund the Oligarch's favourite hobby: "Privatise Every Publicly Owned Monopoly/Utility." Keeping wage-growth flat also helped to
fund the take-over.
From a country-to-country perspective the trend, whilst quite uneven, has been inexorable. And there is a notable absence of
serious debate about reversing the trend.
It doesn't matter what the ultimate goal of this social engineering may or may not be. It has to be reversed. And one way to
reverse it would be to submit every excuse Rich People use to justify their tax breaks to Public Scrutiny and laughed out of court.
In the 1950s Rich People, worldwide, paid eye-watering Taxes on all 'excess income' beyond the top marginal rate. And when
they went to Heaven their Estate was taxed on its 'excess value'. They've killed off those taxes too, by playing one country/
jurisdiction off against another - using Lawfare (high-priced lawyers whom ordinary folk can't afford).
They're too eerily inept to win a war against Russia/China. Their war is against their own countrymen. And it's aim is to prevent
as many serfs as possible from getting their grubby little mits on OUR MONEY!
Thank you, karlof1 @ 14; Crooke's essay is masterful! If only others in the West could be persuaded to read it -- the references
to Ireland and India are so persuasive, but then he doesn't stop but demonstrates how the situation today is so much worse. The
bolded quote,
"...We may have democracy, or we may have surveillance society, but we cannot have both." (Emphasis added).
has to be seen in the entirety of the article to be appreciated, and his definition of the EU as a cartel is pure genius! They
are all not even worthy of the title 'empire' -- they are all cartels!!
UK loaned 1.5b to Ukraine to build 2 warships for them...plus rebuild shipyards to re construct the navy....paratroopers are training
Ukraine forces....do they plan to go against Donbass like this....reminds me of old film a bridge too far where British forces
failed ......and Nato gonna give Black Sea a lot more trouble for Russia too.
I was just going to post the link to that transcript,
From it
much can be learned about the degree of Russian involvement in Togo and Africa as a whole; this for example:
"The Association for Economic Cooperation with the African States was created in Russia following the 2019 Sochi summit. It
includes representatives from the related departments and major Russian companies. The Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, which
is a political association, was created as well. Its secretariat is located at the Russian Foreign Ministry. We agreed to hold
the forum's annual political meetings at the foreign minister level, from Russia and the African Union Troika that is comprised
of its former, current and incoming chairpersons. In 2020, we held them via videoconference with the foreign ministers from South
Africa, Egypt and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hopefully, we'll be able to meet in person in 2021."
That's a lot of interaction that also includes Russian businesses, all of which ought to be added to China's activities. In
addition to what Paco provided, there's this closing paragraph that reveals more of the Anti-Russian nature of BidenCo:
" It wasn't long ago that representatives of the new US administration said the Russian Sputnik V vaccine should be treated
with suspicion, since it was another geopolitical plan from the Kremlin, and that one must be careful not to become dependent
on Russia . It's sad if they have nothing else to say about normal and friendly relations between countries, and if this is
the only thing that they have to say about this. We never make friends with other countries in order to oppose third countries.
If Russia and its foreign partners are mutually attracted, we have every right to develop our relations as we see fit. I hope
others will also learn their lessons and treat our ties with Africa with respect." [My Emphasis]
Russia and China act while the Outlaw US Empire focuses on fashioning a False Narrative that can easily be seen as such. However,
it seems the underlying scourge is becoming easier for English speakers to see: "All animals are equal; but some animals are more
equal than others."
Too bad the mid.ru site usually does not publish the guests comments and answers, excess of caution maybe, but it was interesting
what the Togo foreign minister had to say concerning good relations with the Soviet Union and then Russia in many countries all
over Africa, he expressed his gratitude for the many African students in Russia, students that have become high cadres in Togo
and other countries. Another interesting point was the fact that Lome is the main deep water port in all of West Africa, and therefore
the minister was talking about regional matters, Togo as a hub. Macron must have watched the press conference, after all the foreign
minister spoke in French. Russia is recovering lost presence in Africa.
Last week. during a visit by the EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, Russia's Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov
slapped down the EU's sanctimonious interference in Russia's internal policies.
Back in Brussels, Borrell, who was criticized by some EU hardliners for not directly rebuffing Lavrov's
talk, set down to write
a blog post in which again attacked Russia over the latest Navalny stunt:
I have just returned from a very complicated visit to Moscow, on which I had embarked to
discuss the fraught state of EU-Russia relations. They have been low for a number of years,
and deteriorated even further after recent developments linked to the poisoning, arrest,
and sentencing of Alexei Navalny as well as the related mass arrests of thousands of
demonstrators. The purpose of this mission was to express directly the EU's strong
condemnation of these events and to address, through principled diplomacy, the process of a
rapid worsening of our relationship with Russia, and to help prepare the forthcoming
European Council discussions on EU-Russia relations.
Borrell is delusional. Hardly anyone in Russia believes the nonsensical poisoning story
for which the 'west' could provide exactly zero evidence:
Only 15% in Russia believe the Navalny poisoning was the Govt trying to eliminate an
opponent, and the 15% based this opinion from Telegram and the Internet and were mostly
18-24. The rest think it was staged, a Western false flag, personal or opposition:
https://levada.ru/2020/12/24/...
The whole Navalny poisoning was obviously some secret service operation to bash Russia.
His lavish living in in a 5 bed
room luxurious apartment in Germany after he was released from hospital was paid
by the libertarian oligarch Evgeny Chichvarkin . Chichvarkin, who
lives in London, is probably an MI6 cutout. It is still not known who paid the multimillion
production costs for the
fake 'Putin palace' video. The studio renting for the video was requested by a company in
Los Angeles. Some U.S. involvement is thereby assured.
Poland and other NATO countries are now openly pressing Navalny and other traitors like
him to continue their regime change attempts:
This confrontation was predictable. There is a limit to what Russia can accept. Even after
the russophobic UK departure from the EU, the mood is the same.
Therefore a frank confrontation may either be a wake-up call for Europe that they may lose
totally Russia as a partner or in the contrary bring them more apart.
What the EU fails to realize is that without Russia , it may end up become the puppet of the
USA and the UK
Time will tell
thanks b.... you're correct borrell is delusional and a perfect representative for a
delusional europe.... i am glad lavrov said what he did.. i just wish russia would throw the
shit back at them by making a parallel with the wests treatment of assange... it really
highlights the outrageous-ness of the west at this point...
and someone on the open thread posted about mh17 and trying to access more info contained
in boxes on the rear part of the plain that might lead to a different conclusion... as i see
it mh17, skripal, navalny and etc. etc - are all frame ups to take down russia... it has
reached a level of insanity and borrell is the perfect delusional character to represent it
all here..
throw the shit back at them russia... call the west out on their endless bullshit... the
time for diplomacy is long gone and this appears to be the conclusion that russia is indeed
coming to, however slowly....
Borrell - "The strategic choices we make now will determine international power dynamics in
the 21st century, and notably whether we will advance towards more cooperative or more
polarised models, based on closed or on freer societies."
He answers his own question - the EU (and "partners") will advance towards a more
polarized international model, based on their own self-serving definitions of "closed" or
"freer" societies. This self-generated dichotomy will be used to mask the true nature of this
perceived crossroad: "they" can live with us, but "we" can't live with them.
In a video posted earlier today, 12/02/2021 Alexander Mercuoris of The Duran analysed the
reaction of Germany's politicians to Lavrov's comments.
Basically even Heiko Maas the anti-Russian foreign minister shit his pants at the though of
Russia abandoning Europe and therefore jeapordizing Germany a significant percentage of it's
energy supply.
When all is said and done, the E.U. will suffer far worse than Russia if Moscow abandons
Europe.
The technocrats know this. However the level of maturity required to overcome their hubris is
patently lacking and to re-orientate themselves idealogically will be viery difficult as can
be seen by the reaction of 70 mental retards who pose as M.E.P.s in a letter they signed
calling for Borrell's resignation and a tougher stance on Russia.
Until a few years ago, Russia did not have an alternative for purchases of many items
other than from the West. It now has China to supply most needs. When China finally solves
the problems caused by the US sanctions to semiconductor factories (it will take roughly a
decade to develop its own photolithography and design, the most critical tools of advanced
semiconductor processing), China will be able to provide everything that Russia needs except
for warm climate fruits and vegetables (maybe Turkey?). This new paradigm seems to be behind
Russia's new assertiveness. Europe should make peace with Russia before it fully tilts
towards the East.
In 1990 at the what I then thought end of Cold War there seemed an opening to the
coalescing of a northern hemisphere zone of peace - but that vision has come to nothing. What
an idiot I was! How could I ever have thought that the best of the inheritance of Western
civilization would lead in the West. The plowing, plundering, grasping, murdering and
scheming for profit psychos in the West stabbed that vision in the heart. I am sure now
another opening will not come in my lifetime - the West will make sure of that.
If I was younger I would leave the US but now can only hunker down and stay out of the way
of the juggernaut of rampaging psychos lurching from one failure to another. The only relief
from the deepest moments of despair is looking to the East and others that are building and
working together to build a new world. Obviously Russia and China, along with Iran, Cuba,
Venezuela, Syria and others. It is a strange world for me turned upside down when I even
include North Korean resistance to the US Empire of Mendacity as contributing to the building
of that new world.
the Reality is NOT quite right the way b has present it. EU together with US, Canada CAN
and WILL hurt Russia deeply if they slap severe economic sanctions on Russia's energy sector.
And Russia knows that and EU knows that Russia knows it.
The West's game is very simple: cut Russia from the Western world, by denying it access to
any type of new tech, economic loans and any type of ties with the West. (this worked quite
well with the Soviet Union, so it WILL work again) And this WILL hurt Russia deeply
economically, no question about it. And before you tell me about China and the supposed
Russia-China's ties, let me inform you that the ties are merely economic and both still don't
trust each other. The Russians are well aware of CHina's claims over Siberia. They don't
really work together, most of those ties are imaginary and dont really exist.
Putin has made several mistakes, and he is too dependent on the Rich Russian millionaires.
The threat of sanctions made him freeze when the West went after Ukraine and Putin didn't act
to save it. Russia will cry bloody tears over this in the very near future. This is only the
overture of things to come. There will be another fake false flag even in the Azov sea after
which USA will demand Russia be boycotted. Ys that will hurt EU also, but the Eu are
masochists who love getting their asses fucked by US.
Russia better get prepared and get their supply ass grease ready, they will be getting
serious ass fucking very very soon. And they wont be able to do anything about it. Good
going, Putin!
I commiserate as we're in the same boat. I watch like a hawk because forewarned is
forearmed!
/////
Published at the right moment given events is this
Strategic-Culture Editorial : "NATO's Road To Perdition With Ukraine." It omits
the Borrell incident to focus on the recent meeting between NATO secretary general Jens
Stoltenberg hosted Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shymhal at the organization's headquarters
in Brussels:
"At a joint press conference, both men were upbeat about Ukraine joining NATO. Stoltenberg
admitted that the former Soviet Republic has been eyed for membership of the alliance since
2008, a timescale which puts more recent conflict over the past nearly seven years in
perspective. He also confirmed that NATO forces have been building up their presence in the
Black Sea in coordination with Ukrainian counterparts. In recent weeks, three US warships
have been training with Ukrainian naval vessels in order to counter what Stoltenberg says is
'Russian aggression'."
So, there's much more in the stew than it appears:
"It is interesting to speculate why Stoltenberg – a former Norwegian premier and
nominal civilian head of NATO – this week appeared to give new impetus to Ukraine's
ambitions. Could it be related to the change of administration in the United States? Senior
members of the Biden administration have publicly stated during Senate hearings a willingness
to increase military support for the Kiev government in its conflict with pro-Russian
separatists in Eastern Ukraine. American and European envoys at the UN Security Council
this week reiterated strident accusations against Russia claiming that Moscow was responsible
for prolonging the conflict in Ukraine . Russia's envoy Vassily Nebenzia countered that
it was the Kiev regime and its Western allies who have not implemented the previously agreed
Minsk peace accord signed in 2015." [My Emphasis]
Bald-faced lies in public forums that began with Clinton/Gore have steadily escalated and
clearly aren't a product of any one administration but a continuity of the War Party's
attempt at Full Spectrum Domination that keeps slipping further away from any possibility of
occurring, thus its desperation. Yesterday, I provided this link to The Saker's latest
analysis and called it a Must Read. Within he links to several reports from Russian media
and military sources that those watching closely need to read. Yesterday, Putin met with his Security
Council ostensibly about arms control but I think the conversation went well beyond that,
although I have no confirmation.
The Solovyov-Lavrov transcript isn't complete yet, but what's there is incredible! As
Lavrov said, "Well, this is some kind of a kingdom of crooked mirrors." If what Lavrov said
of Borrell's position, we should have some pity for him being put into such an impossible
position--but then, he's well paid to do his duty.
Patrick Armstrong wrote yesterday about the consequences of the Navalny brothers' scam in
2012 against Yves Rocher:
NAVALNIY. The story continues. The theory that he's being fitted up for a treason charge
was given a boost when Zakharova said he should be called an "agent of influence" rather than
a politician. His suspended sentence for fraud was lifted and he's off to prison. Read Yves
Rocher's statement; sounds to me as if the company believes he did swindle them. The fact
that there's now a campaign against the company suggests my deduction is correct. https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2021/02/11/russian-federation-sitrep-11-february-2021/
That contains a couple of links giving more details of the case.
Armstrong also links to this tweet by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs of a video
showing many examples of police brutality in the West and also violence by protesters against
police in Russian (the opposite of what is shown in Western media). https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1356674233464729609
Several days ago on the 10th, I posted
this link and commented about what I deemed the notable words spoken by Lavrov on
Diplomats' Day. IMO, it's a martial pep-talk given his peroration followed by this
paragraph:
"Russia's attempts to become an independent state, to uphold its right to an independent
foreign policy and to protect international law are coming against increasingly harsh
resistance of our Western colleagues, who would like to teach 'obedience' to us. They would
like us to accept the highly questionable interpretation of common human values, an
interpretation that contradicts Russia's cultural and civilisational traditions. They would
like Russia to become a 'convenient' territory for promoting their own security, economic,
social and political interests. We can see that these are becoming ever more aggressive with
every passing day. We must actively apply our efforts, knowledge and experience, based on the
wisdom of our predecessors, to consistently promote the foreign policy course formulated by
President Vladimir Putin."
How else do you prepare your diplomatic corp for war?
If you've followed Lavrov closely for many months as I have, the change in his demeanor is
quite marked; yet as Paco notes, he still maintains his professionalism. Lavrov's perplexity
about how consensus is supposed to function was well put--we know several nations disagree
with the policy yet go along with it--WHY?--the united front undercuts your own interests. In
Putin's latest conversation with his Energy Minister, there was no mention of Nord Stream 2's
situation. Given all the sanctions and lack of pushback by the EU nations most dependent on
it, IMO Russia is willing to sacrifice it as it didn't bear all the costs and has plenty of
potential customers for its hydrocarbons. So, I wouldn't at all be surprised if Russia
stopped short of finishing, said it would fulfill its existing contracts, but no more would
be negotiated until conditions drastically change. Hardball is just that--Hardball.
Levada is
considered a [pro-]Western sociological service (there are links with Soros) in Russia
and the results of its polls, let's say, cause a certain skepticism. 15% of those who believe
in "poisoning"... I would say figures of 5-8 (maximum 10) percent look much more realistic.
It is still not known who paid the multimillion production costs for the fake 'Putin
palace' video.
Well, I would look for sources in names like
Khodorkovsky or/and Browder .
Both scammers are longtime haters of Russia.
The Kremlin later said that some media misrepresented Lavrov's remarks but essentially
confirmed his stand
According to Russian legislation, the country's foreign policy is determined directly by the
president. The Foreign Ministry is essentially just a repeater, although of course it
introduces its own peculiarities. Therefore, there is no doubt that Lavrov's words were
coordinated with (and approved by) Putin. Peskov, as usual, in his own manner, tried to
somewhat "smooth out"/"embellish" Lavrov's directness and rigidity, which, however, does not
negate the essence of the statements themselves.
Today Navalny was back in court for publicly insulting a World War II veteran. The EU will
certainly make remarks about that. But only a few days ago police in Scotland arrested
someone because he typed a mean tweet about a British veteran of that war.
Here I can only support the British, who massively stood up for the offended veteran Sir
Thomas Moore.
Citizens wrote mass appeals, statements to the police demanding to bring to justice the
degenerate who insulted the memory of the war hero.
Unfortunately, Russian society often lacks such civic initiative. Yes, the authorities
will do their job, and a piece of shit named Navalny, who slandered the war veteran, will be
punished. But besides the actions of the authorities, it would be nice to see also the
"demand of the people", you know.
And I have been following you, following Lavrov.....
The Nordstream II is a question mark. It is being finished by the Russians, with their own
ships. The Germans have also realised that their own interests are tied up there. The
"Threatening situation" (from the west) does not come from either one.
My conclusion is that EU policy is being dictated from outside , the secondary
question is "by whom". Unfortunately I suspect that the main driving force is the same one
that "enabled" Biden, Enabled the ousting of socialist candidates in many countries. (Corbyn,
and in S. America generally), and generally assume they are the top of the top.
Is this force based on "nationality" or on "interests", call them Religious nuts, Extreme
militarists OR Financial Fascists? Alternatively are they a mixture of all three***.
One explanation for Lavrov's coldness is that IF the EU was an independent representative
body (which it isn't) then certain actions to improve the lot of the populace would have been
taken. That they are not means that they lack the ability to deviate from what they have been
ordered. By way of an explanation, the Media will lie, because they cannot do otherwise
having been "bought" in some way. Lavrov has certainly changed. Because he probably knows
what is "supposed" to happen, and the EU miasma do not understand that they too will be in
the forefront of any battleground. (Since that includes me, I am not too happy about the
situation either).
Aside; *** They could be mixture of all three tendencies. ie. 9/11 had operatives from the
Saudis, Israel, and the Pentagon, with three different motivations. Religious (Saudis),
Suprematist (Israel) and monetary (Pentagon and it's "lost" trillions, and profitability by
insiders).
As the head of the Soviet intelligence service, Leonid Shebarshin, an extremely
well-informed man, once said: "The west wants only one thing from Russia -- that it does
not exist".
"One explanation for Lavrov's coldness is that IF the EU was an independent representative
body (which it isn't) then certain actions to improve the lot of the populace would have
been taken ." [My Emphasis]
Now what current ideology supports such a policy--that the lot of the masses
isn't supposed to be improved; rather, they are to have their wealth wrung out,
then be tossed aside and used as manure. Hint: It was famously announced as Trickle-down
Economics, which was lambasted as Voodoo Economics.
If you read Hudson, then you know where the power center lies within the Outlaw US Empire
and its network of vassals--The privately held Central Banks and those that control them and
many other key corporations thanks to interlocking boards of directors--the same basic cabal
that failed to assassinate FDR and oust him via a coup but succeeded with JFK, RFK, MLK, and
so many others: millions when adding in their terrorists and their Death Squads.
To rid Europe of its Central Bank, the EU would need to be disbanded. But to gain complete
sovereignty, NATO would need to die also. Currently, Europe is essentially occupied by a
force every bit as immoral as the Nazis. It's not by accident that Lavrov, Putin and others
invoke the Great Patriotic War and the events that led to it as recurring.
I would not be surprised to see Russia actually perform the deeds it's accused of, like
actually invade and subdue Ukraine. It it did so, realistically what would change? Nuland
famously gave the answer Russia would now echo--Fuck the EU. As with the Republic's Trade
Federation secretly aligning with the Sith, the EU will come to regret playing dummy to the
Outlaw US Empire as it gets barred from gaining any benefits from being in the Eurasian Bloc
and China's BRI Combo.
I don't really follow the Navalny situation anymore because as soon as I see Russia
mentioned in any Western media I assume it's an "intelligence community" psyop or just plain
old propaganda. But something piqued my curiosity regarding this alleged mansion of
Putin's.
Strategic culture provided two links to YouTube videos in their articles, one of which to
my knowledge isn't subtitled so I don't know what was being said in Russian. In this video a
group of guys made the trip to the site of this mansion compound and showed the place in
disrepair, looking like exterior had aged quite a bit.
The other is to Navalny's own video which alleges to explain that the reason for the
current state of the project is that the original design/construction were faulty and that a
serious mold problem, as well as leaking roofs, had caused them to strip out the entire
interior ostensibly to rebuild from scratch (and allegedly tossing "billions" of rubles worth
of marble and other fancy construction materials). He also says that the original photos and
video which show the place in pristine condition, were from 6 years ago before the
teardown.
Leaving aside the obvious fake photos (like the one in Moscow times which was a
photoshopped Putin swimming in his new mansion, lol) and the situation in general (i.e.,
whether Putin has anything to do with this structure at all), can anyone square this circle
for me? Is it disproven that the place was indeed built a while back and later stripped down
due to the leaking roofs and mold? If so is there a source in the English language that
explains the situation?
There is a strong whiff of desperation of the EuroCrapsters and their US masters to grab
what Russia has (resources) and thus delay own economic collapse. All these crapsters are
freezing their asses off right now whilst dreaming of profits from pillaged Russian energy.
The most precarious is the Western pension system, which with ZIRP and NIRP interest rates
has stopped existing. There is no source of funding in this World that could feed that hungry
monster with ageing population. The Western printing presses are overheating and this is only
a delaying solution for the deeply debalanced system. Absolutely the only way out for the
West is to bring down Russian government and pillage. If Russia did not have nuclear weapons
this would have happened a while ago. The Russians understand this perfectly.
Will the sick West run into a desperate confrontation against a bee with a big sting? It
must be unusually frustrating for the AngloAmerican crapsters not to be able to just take
what they want and need from the World as they have been doing over the past couple if
centuries. They have the big sting but their mark has an even bigger (hypersonic) sting. What
a profound change in world affairs - pillaging from now on to come at the huge cost. And
Putin appears prepared to prevent pillaging of not only Russia.
The calculation is fairly clear - either they will feed, cloth and keep warm the Western
elderly and others using Russian resources or there will be no pensioners after a nuclear
Holocaust. Either way problem solved.
would like to know, in concrete terms, what is the benefit from constant denigration and
provocation of Russia, and who benefits, in precisely what ways. I do know, however, who does
not benefit. The vast majority of Europeans, the Russians and generally the majority of
humanity.
-Pushing Russia around and away is counter productive for the EU and Europe as whole. It is a
big, peaceful, neighbouring country willing to cooperate on the basis of mutual respect and
interest. Russia has put foreward many constructive proposals, all of which have been
rejected
- There is no rational basis for the long-lasting and escalating pressure on Russia. If that
is correct, the goals and actions of the West, and the the EU in particular, are irrational
from the perspective of the real life interests of the majority of European citizens and
welfare and wellbeing of the majority of people in the world.
- I hope that Russia does not abandon its orientation towards Europe, because it is a
European state. It should be part of European integration projects, albeit not on the present
model of the EU. That does not clash, but accords, with its Asian relations and projects.
- The EU should radically change its policies towards Russia, and welcome it as an important
partner in all fields.
- The qeustion is - who is going to stop the race into the abys that the European leaders are
accelarating? I don't see anyone or anything on the European scene considering, capable of
and willing to put an end to this utter madness. I do see who is paying the price and who
will pay even more dearly in the future. The majority of European citizens.Deeply depressing
and very scary.
The Bulletin article doesn't really delve into the issues around the US' new low-yield
'tactical' nukes, it concentrates on a new big 'strategic' ICBM system, the Ground Based
Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). It seems to be basically an attempt to resurrect the capabilities
of the Reagan era MX 'Peacekeeper' that was scrapped under the START treaties as it was
optimised to carry a large number of warheads and the US preferred to keep a larger number of
Minuteman III missiles with single warheads.
Although it probably won't be quite as large as the MX, it will be better suited than the
Minuteman for carrying multiple hypersonic glide vehicles like the Russian 'Avangard' system.
The Russians have an initial operating capability on their SS-19/UR-100N ICBM (similar in
payload to the Minuteman) but will soon deploy their much larger RS-28 Sarmat which will
allow multiple hypersonic gliders to be carried.
The article describes a typically corrupt US procurement process, with the big three arms
companies (Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman) fighting it out for the mountain of
$. Northrop Grumman managed to win out by buying up the only manufacturer of the large solid
rocket motors that the contract required the contractors to use. Solid rocket motors were one
of the only aspects of space technologies where the US was unequivocally in the lead, with 4
or 5 companies producing them. By the time of the GBSD contract only one company remained
after the orgy of mergers and buyouts, Orbital ATK. ATK was the successor to Thiokol Corp,
whose product doomed the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger (being basically a big 'light
it and stand the f*** back' firework solid motors are not a great option for crewed
spaceflight, but well suited to ICBMs).
By buying up ATK, Northrop Grumman threatened to massively cut into the profits of any
other company bidding, ensuring a clear run to the contract for itself. Many analysts had
suspected that Boeing would be given the GBSD contract to compensate for their losses on the
737Max, but Northrop's maneuvers and Boeing's terrible recent track record in space made that
impossible. Boeings SLS moon rocket failed its crucial static-fire test in Jan 2021 and is 5
years behind schedule despite it being basically a Space Shuttle tank with Shuttle engines
bolted to the bottom (early 70s tech). Its Starliner Space Station ferry also failed its
uncrewed flight test last year due to a plethora of software errors, one of which was
discovered with minutes to spare and would have killed a crew by crashing the service module
into the crew module moments after the modules seperated for reentry into the atmosphere.
With all that in mind I don't think the Russians are too troubled by the US's prowess in
space or financial technology. Whatever Frankenstein's Rocket emerges from the GBSD program
will be most unlikely to rival the RS-28 (known to NATO as 'Son of Satan'), and by that time
the 'Grandson of Satan' will probably be flying.
The problem with armchair strategists is of course they don't know all the facts, those at
hand to the actual players. Some leaks into the real world but far too much is hidden.
All we know is that Russia appears to have stopped its subservient position and have
started with the EU, not the US. Is that because they believe they are now finally powerful
enough for a military conflict? Or perhaps as they believe one is coming anyway? Or are there
other hidden factors in play?
One thing of interest is that it hasn't taken long for the NATO/Russian situation to
escalate quickly since Trumps removal, anyone still doubt he was removed? Also of note the US
general now stating nuclear war is possible, more fear to add or just introducing the idea to
us as something that may "have" to be done to save the world for democracy?
How much does one believe in coincidence? Karmically there is no such thing. Many big
issues going on in the world now from covid with its fascist responses to Big Resets, massive
world debt, and now increasing military tension with Russia and perhaps China as well soon.
All interlinked?
Putin created a document about lessons from WW2. Even if you disagree with him or just
hate him, ask yourself if Trump, Biden, Pelosi or any other elderly US leaders could reason
at this level or offer this depth of thought. That's my take away...
The problem with Navalny is not that he is a 'traitor' to Russia but that he is an agent
of the Empire, on the payrolls of the Five Eyes security complex. Which makes him a traitor
to humanity.
The vast majority of the military never actually fight. When was the last serving member
of the US Navy killed while on active service aboard ship? The army is useless against any
but third world opposition.
The Marines and Special forces such as the SEALs and Rangers do the actual fighting and I
suspect that the junior officer and NCO positions there will be relatively free of diversity
in order to keep them at least semi-useful.
Meanwhile, at officer level in the Navy, regular army and Air Force it will be an orgy of
rent seeking from the pet minorities
The U.S. is inept, disorganized, and dishonest. The possibility of a nuclear detonation,
or nuclear war, occurring through incompetence, miscalculation, or systems error, is now
significant. Probably the Russian and Chinese policymakers give the U.S. a lot of latitude
for that very reason, the way a parent might placate a two-year-old to prevent a tantrum.
Putin was saying there's no single democratic model. That was eventually conceptualized
as "sovereign democracy". Democracy cannot exist without sovereignty
This is one of the key concepts here and to me the most interesting one. "Sovereign
democracy". There are actually now very few countries in the world with true sovereignty,
never mind democracy.
The ones that try to exercise sovereignty, or even that don't show sufficient servility,
are severely punished. If they aren't large or strong enough, like Syria and Lebanon, they
suffer tremendously under "sanctions", which in reality is economic warfare. If they are,
like Russia and Iran, they still suffer sanctions, but will probably ride them out.
I remember a speech by King Hussein of Jordan in 1990, in a moment of rare candor,
remarking something like, and I paraphrase: "We live in a world dictatorship". The context
was the run up to the US/Saudi/Zionist-led attack on Iraq the first time around, when George
Bush I, urged by Margaret Thatcher, assembled a huge coalition against that country. I've
never been able to locate that speech since (I would be grateful to anyone who can).
For a background on that conflict, which set up the post-Cold War order:
@War for
Blair Mountain There are many other examples of GloboSorosistas desperately trying to get
Russia to get into a bloody mess and drain itself so that the SorosaVultures can swoop in an
steal her immense natural resources.
Russia cannot afford to get involved in a dawn out conventional fight with NATO's
prostitutes.
That is exactly what US & UK want, both of which – safely away from continental
Europe – want exactly that. They could not care less if all of Europe get smoked.
Russia wants an intact (Western) Europe, particularly Germany and France, for mutual
future benefit. Expecting US & UK to become impotent sometime in the future., and leave
Europe alone.
The collapse of neoliberal ideology in 2008 was the major contributor to this shift. Now we
have "the king is naked" situation for neoliberal and neoliberal globalization and does not help
the US centered global neoliberal empire.
BTW Russia is still remains a neoliberal country although "Putinism" deviates from
neoliberalism in both domestic and foreign policy. But Putin days in power are not indefinite and
a new yeltson can emege and sell Russia to the West again...
America/Israel and NATO are apparently not going to change their approach despite the
shift in both hard & soft power between the neoliberal/NWO and the pro-sovereignty blocs
in the last two decades. And Europe is going to suffer worst from this...
Germany is key to Europe. The American empire ordered Germany to double its low military
spending, they said no. Trump threatened to close American military bases in Germany, polls
showed most Germans didn't care. They ordered Germany to cancel a new NatGas pipeline to
Russia, they said no. Once they oust that Neocon puppet Merkel, the empire will be in
trouble.
What is the status of the relationship between Russia and Israel ?
If it as simple as you say – and Saker himself seems to refer consistently to the
US-NATO-EU 'Anglozionist empire', then surely Russia would recognise Israel as the key
ideological opponent to its vision of a multipolar world order ?
Yet this is not what I read. Russia has deep and cordial and increasingly close ties to
Israel, even as Israeli jets illegally bomb Syria on a regular basis. This is never
explained.
For example, Lavrov bluntly said " We are proceeding from the assumption that the EU
is not a reliable partner, at least at the current stage. I hope that in future strategic
attention will be given to the EU's fundamental interest in its closest neighbours and that
the talks we have held today will promote movement to a more constructive trajectory. We
are ready for this".
Lavrov is following Putin's line (Davos speech), ergo that Russia is ready to
interact with Europe as a mutually respectful equal partner – but not with Europe as
puppet of the US NWO, NeoCon , ZioGlob/CIA crowd. Hopefully the Germans are listening and can
reassess their true interests.
Also the Poles, who urgently need to wake up to the fact that that they have more in
common with Putin's Russia than they do with ZioGlob NWO USA.
Russia of late indeed is becoming more assertive, most likely because it is confidant
their militairy capabilities have become superior to that of their adversaries. NATO and US
know that very well, but will never let on. Their provocations are nothing more than
grandstanding. However what would Russia do in Syria if confronted with increased American
aggression in that country? That's what I like to know. Russia is deeply involved in Syria
supporting that country in defeating ISIS. Russia has a strategically important navy base
there too. Biden so it seems wants to rekindle the war in Syria supported by Israel and will
find a pretext to do so.
@cranc
hat the media or the Israeli state (the same entity in actuality) claims.
Most Israeli strikes are agreed before hand with Russia. The Israelis need to save face
for their cowardly fascist habit of killing civilian Palestinians. These useless strikes
against Syria are purely symbolic and are used to deceive the Israeli and US populations.
Besides, more than 60% of Israeli citizens are not Jews, let alone practicing Jews.
Israeli is changing due to massive immigration of non-Jews from Russia, and in a generation
will change from the rulers of the US to a Russian outpost and there is nothing the Zionists
can do about it.
@MayRay
have a consistently higher fertility rate than other Jews in Israel and (2) Arabs have a
slightly higher fertility rate than secular Jews, then we may expect that the under-18
population of Israel is less than 70% Jewish, though more of those Jewish kids will be
Haredim. Looking for a source on this.
If these fertility and immigration trends continue, we could see an Israel in 2050 that is
severely polarized between a Haredim zealot contingent approaching 15% of the population,
Arabs around 22% of the population, and "neither Jew nor Arab" growing to as much as 15%.
Non-ultra Jews would start passing below 50%. But that is not certain and is likely a few
decades off.
The United States is muscle-bound. Despite its huge military budget it can't field an army.
It has a foreign legion. ISIS, for instance, is part of its foreign legion. The European NATO
is part of its foreign legion. But there's no way American can ever have a land war again, so
you can never invade and conquer a country with a military army. All America has is the Atom
bomb, and that's muscle bound. It cannot go to wage any kind of war except atomic war. There's
nothing in between.
I think Russia and China know that, and Russia at least has taken steps to protect itself
and said, "If the United States wants atomic war, we'll be wiped out but it'll be wiped out
too, and Europe will be wiped out." I think probably the first exchange would be to wipe out
England and Europe, to say "We don't want to go to war with you and really blow up the world,
America. Let's just show you what we can do. Let's blow up England and Europe so at least you
won't have your colonies there." If America persisted, it would be the end of the world. Will
America really do that?
There was worry that Donald Trump would do that so he could go down in history as the man
who destroyed civilization, but I don't think other people are going to do that.
This is a great piece, but I'm not sure its nuclear war-fighting take is accurate. If the
US and Russia engage in nuclear war, there is no way it can be limited to Europe and the UK.
France and England have hundreds of nukes of their own. The atomic destruction of Europe
would result in a nuclear winter of indeterminate length and disastrous consequences.
Orange Man Bad actually asked an interesting question re. US nuclear policy: does the US
really want to start an atomic war in order to 'defend' Lithuania or Japan? Would it not make
more sense for them to acquire their own nukes, or [fill in saner alternative]?
I think that what Prof Hudson points out is true: The US has not won any land war since
(at the least) 1948, they have not the smarts to win an economic war (as have the Chinese),
and the only arrow in their quiver is E=mc2. Talk about bringing a nuke to a knife fight!
"Oh say, can you see! By Dawn's early light; a pro-dollar trade; that puts the bears to
flight?" Bloomberg Daybreak this morning boldly states "American exceptionalism is back"
(baby). Apparently better-than-expected data and corporate earnings and the prospects of fiscal
stimulus show the USA is still the global standout after all. As a result, bearish USD trades
touted for the first month of the year need to suddenly be unwound: EUR is now back below 1.20,
AUD is clinging to 0.76, and JPY is past 105.50, while as an EM proxy, MXN is back to 20.38 at
time of writing vs. 19.55 on January 21.
... ... ...
President Biden has called on the military in Myanmar to relinquish power after their recent
coup. What happens when they refuse? A signature criticism of the Obama foreign policy team was
its refusal to match US rhetoric (e.g., "pivot to Asia") with any substantive action (e.g., in
the South China Sea or Syria). The new team gave interviews before assuming office saying they
had learned these lessons. So what options with teeth does the US have for the generals in
Naypidaw to back their demand? Sanctions are meaningless for a group who rarely travel abroad
and whom can look to China for support if needed, despite their coolness towards Beijing to
date.
This underlines the need for any top dog (or cat) to build up a pack (or clowder). Here
again we see problems. Many articles have been written about the new US administration's call
for the EU to stand alongside it to create new global frameworks favourable to the West (and by
extension for USD) and not China (and CNY); and about how the EU is not willing to step up to
that plate because of French exceptionalism and German Merkel-cantilism. Macron now says
the EU should not gang up on China with the US : " This kind of common front against China
risks pushing Beijing to lower its cooperation on issues like combatting climate change, and
exacerbating its aggressive behaviour in Asia, including in the South China Sea, " he says. So
will the US response then have to be Trumpian and EUR negative, like last time? If not, then
what exactly?
Of course, the previous administration had been building bridges to India, which has its own
issues with China. However, this relationship is still in its early stages, and India has
traditionally looked to Russia for muscle, a role Moscow would be happy to play again. In that
regard, the White House backing large anti-government protests in New Delhi against an
agricultural reform programme ostensibly to the US's liking, and criticizing the government for
cutting off the internet to try to disrupt them, is unlikely to help build bridges: indeed,
India has already drawn comparisons to the events of 6 January in the US Capitol, showing the
US is not as exceptional as it likes to project it is. These kind of shifts can matter, even if
this is just one small step on a much longer journey (and USD trend channel).
Meanwhile, the Aussie government (which has also never and will never target house prices,
"just land, bricks, mortar, etc.") might be wondering what the US will help do about a report
that
a Chinese company is planning to build a new city on a Papua New Guinea island near Australia's
northern border . 'New Daru City' allegedly includes an industrial zone, seaport, business
and commercial zone, along with a resort and residential area. Will Canberra regard this as a
market-driven response to the well-known Chinese demand for lifestyle residences in the vibrant
cultural hub that is the PNG hinterland, or as a Bond-villain project to develop a port just
200km from their Northern Territory? The PNG Prime Minister himself says he is "unaware" of
this proposal(!) Yes, this may well not come to pass; but one can again see the paving stones
being prepared for alternative paths for currencies like AUD, USD, and CNY (to say nothing of
PNG's Kina) to travel over the course of the 2020s.
Meanwhile, the US can at least rely on the UK, as usual, where yesterday saw regulators ban
China's CGTN TV news service, and the Telegraph also reports that three Chinese spies posing as
journalists have just been expelled from the country. Somehow, along with the whole BNO
passports issue, this is not likely to help ensure the "golden era" of Sino-British relations
promised under previous UK leadership.
But will it ensure a golden era of Bido-BoJo relations? That is another path as yet
untrod.
Happy Friday! "We love it so much, I think you do too."
By Daria Litvinova and Vladimir Isachenkov Associated Press
Moscow court on Tuesday ordered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to prison for
more than 2 1/2 years, finding that he violated the terms of his probation while recuperating
in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning. The ruling ignited protests in Moscow and St.
Petersburg.
Mr. Navalny, who is the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, had denounced
the proceedings as a vain attempt by the Kremlin to scare millions of Russians into
submission.
After the verdict that was announced around 8 p.m., protesters converged on areas of
central Moscow and gathered on St. Petersburg's main avenue, Nevsky Prospekt.
Helmeted riot police grabbed demonstrators without obvious provocation and put them in
police vehicles. The Meduza website showed video of police roughly pulling a passenger and
driver out of a taxi.
The ruling came despite massive protests across Russia over the past two weekends and
Western calls to free the anti-corruption campaigner.
"We reiterate our call for the Russian government to immediately and unconditionally
release Mr. Navalny, as well as the hundreds of other Russian citizens wrongfully detained in
recent weeks for exercising their rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and
of peaceful assembly," United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after the
ruling.
The protests lasted until about 1 a.m. Around 650 people were arrested, according to
OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests.
The prison sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Mr. Navalny has
rejected as fabricated and politically motivated.
Mr. Navalny was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from his five-month convalescence in
Germany from the attack, which he has blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny any
involvement. Despite tests by several European labs, Russian authorities said they have no
proof he was poisoned.
As the order was read, Mr. Navalny smiled and pointed to his wife Yulia in the courtroom
and traced the outline of a heart on the glass cage where he was being held. "Everything will
be fine," he told her as guards led him away.
Earlier in the proceedings, Mr. Navalny attributed his arrest to Mr. Putin's "fear and
hatred," saying the Russian leader will go down in history as a "poisoner."
"I have deeply offended him simply by surviving the assassination attempt that he
ordered," he said.
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"The aim of this hearing is to scare a great number of people," Mr. Navalny added. "You
can't jail the entire country."
Russia's penitentiary service said Mr. Navalny violated the probation conditions of his
suspended sentence from the 2014 conviction. It asked the court to turn his 3 1/2-year
suspended sentence into one that he must serve in prison, although about a year he spent
under house arrest will be counted as time served.
Mr. Navalny emphasized that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that his 2014
conviction was unlawful and Russia paid him compensation in line with the ruling.
Mr. Navalny and his lawyers have argued that while he was recovering in Germany from the
poisoning, he couldn't register with Russian authorities in person as required by his
probation. He also insisted that his due process rights were crudely violated during his
arrest and described his jailing as a travesty of justice.
"I came back to Moscow after I completed the course of treatment," Mr. Navalny said during
Tuesday's hearing. "What else could I have done?"
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets the past two weekends to demand Mr.
Navalny's release and chant slogans against Mr. Putin.
On Sunday , police detained more than 5,750 people nationwide, which was the biggest
one-day total in Russia since Soviet times. Most were released after being handed a court
summons, and they face fines or jail terms of seven to 15 days, although several face
criminal charges of violence against police.
"I am fighting and will keep doing it even though I am now in the hands of people who love
to put chemical weapons everywhere and no one would give three kopecks for my life," Mr.
Navalny said.
Mr. Navalny's team called for a demonstration Tuesday outside the Moscow courthouse, but
police were out in force, cordoning off nearby streets and making random arrests. More than
320 people were detained, according to OVD-Info.
Some Navalny supporters still managed to approach the building. A young woman climbed a
pile of snow across the street and held up a poster saying "Freedom to Navalny." Less than a
minute later, a police officer took her away.
Before the ruling, authorities also cordoned off Red Square and other parts of central
Moscow, as well as Palace Square in St. Petersburg, anticipating protests. Police flooded the
centers of both cities.
In court, Mr. Navalny thanked protesters for their courage and urged other Russians not to
fear repression.
"Millions can't be jailed," he said. "You have stolen people's future and you are now
trying to scare them. I'm urging all not to be afraid."
Observers noted that authorities want Mr. Navalny in prison, fearing he could run an
efficient campaign against the main Kremlin party, United Russia, in September's
parliamentary election. "If Navalny remains free, he is absolutely capable of burying the
Kremlin's plans regarding the outcome of the Duma election," said political analyst Abbas
Gallyamov.
After his arrest, Mr. Navalny's team released a two-hour YouTube video about an opulent
Black Sea residence allegedly built for Putin. It has been viewed over 100 million times,
fueling discontent as ordinary Russians struggle with an economic downturn, the coronavirus,
and widespread corruption during Mr. Putin's years in office.
Mr. Putin insisted that neither he nor his relatives own any of the properties mentioned
in the video, and his longtime confidant, construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, claimed that
he owns it.
As part of efforts to squelch the protests, authorities have targeted Mr. Navalny's
associates and activists across the country. His brother Oleg, top ally Lyubov Sobol, and
several others were put under house arrest for two months and face criminal charges of
violating coronavirus restrictions.
The jailing of Mr. Navalny and the crackdown on protests have stoked international
outrage.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the "perverse ruling, targeting the victim of
a poisoning rather than those responsible, shows Russia is failing to meet the most basic
commitments expected of any responsible member of the international community."
Russia has dismissed the criticism as meddling in its domestic affairs and said Mr.
Navalny's current situation is a procedural matter for the court, not an issue for the
government.
"A Russian citizen sentenced by Russian court in accordance with Russian laws. Who gave US
the right to judge if it was wrongful or not? Wouldn't you mind your own business, gentlemen?
Recent events show that there are a lot of things for you to mend!," Russia's deputy U.N.
ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, said on Twitter.
More than a dozen Western diplomats attended the hearing. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova said their presence was part of efforts by the West to contain Russia, adding
that it could be an attempt to exert "psychological pressure" on the judge.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia is ready for dialogue about Mr. Navalny, but
sternly warned it wouldn't take Western criticism into account.
"... As further evidence of this foreign support and pressure, at least 20 diplomats from various countries, including the US, made an appearance when Navalny's case came up in the Moscow Court hoping to pressure the court in his favour thereby meddling in Russian internal affairs. The massive media propaganda campaign was also plain to see. ..."
"... Following the court decision, Western leaders and diplomats further publicly meddled in internal Russian affairs by calling for violence to demand the release of the self-proclaimed anti-corruption activist. ..."
The flag-bearer of Western influence and globalists in Russia, Alexey Navalny, has been
sentenced to 2 years and 8 months in prison for grossly disregarding the terms of his suspended
sentence.
The initial sentence was for 3.5 years, but he has already served a part of that term under
house arrest. The absurdity of the situation is that his initial sentence was related to
corruption – something he allegedly fights against.
Despite claims by MSM and Western diplomats that Navalny is subject to political
persecution, his proven and known ties to Western Intelligence were not part of the case.
Just recently, on February 1st, videos were released online showing the joyful cooperation
between Navalny's team and foreign intelligence services. To put it plainly – Navalny's
team requested information from British Intelligence. It planned to employ that "dirt" to
hinder Russia's interests, both internal and external. His Anti-Corruption Foundation,
furthermore, promised to work against Russian business, and to promote British companies. For
that, these would be paid hefty sums when he, ultimately, somehow managed to come to power. To
achieve that, Navalny's people vowed to stage mass protests, spread propaganda and strike
behind the scenes deals with the elites. It can't be corruption, if it's for a "good cause",
right?
As further evidence of this foreign support and pressure, at least 20 diplomats from various
countries, including the US, made an appearance when Navalny's case came up in the Moscow Court
hoping to pressure the court in his favour thereby meddling in Russian internal affairs. The
massive media propaganda campaign was also plain to see.
For proven in court criminal offenses involving embezzlement of funds on a massive scale,
dozens of violations of the terms of his suspended sentence, contempt of court, his active and
public work in the interests of foreign states against the Russian nation Navalny faced
slightly more than 2.5 years in jail. For any neutral observer, this was an expected outcome
and the only concern would be the soft punishment that he received. This can be partly
explained by Russia once again showing itself to be a stronghold of tolerance and democracy and
also by the fact that the decision of the court is related to the violations of the suspended
sentence only and it did not review other 'achievements' of the anti-Russian clique operating
under the Navalny brand.
Following the court decision, Western leaders and diplomats further publicly meddled in
internal Russian affairs by calling for violence to demand the release of the self-proclaimed
anti-corruption activist. This will also likely be used as a pretext for increasing pressure on
Russia, including new sanctions. The remaining Western-funded network inside the country
already tried to stage violent protests in Moscow and other big cities. Nonetheless, their
attempts failed largely due to a low turnout and to the successful actions of the authorities.
There are no doubts that foreign efforts in this field will continue as opponents of Russia
need violence on the streets and casualties to push forward their destabilization campaign. At
the same time, recent events demonstrated that the hardcore pro-Western opposition has close to
no real support among the general Russian population. Therefore, help from Western special
services will likely focus on creating pinpoint provocations to escalate the violence and to
create some sacred sacrifice. If the government acts successfully to contain these provocations
and avoid the escalation of violence, anti-Russian forces will likely focus on keeping up the
pressure and some level of instability in the larger cities for the next month. A new round of
major provocations can be expected in the runup to the Russian general election in September
2021.
Actions of the global establishment show that hopes for a 'reconciliation with the West'
demonstrated by the 'liberal part' of the Russian elites are largely baseless. Therefore,
Russia should be ready for the further confrontation with the so-called 'Democratic world',
which has for a long time forgotten what the words 'democracy' and the 'rule of law' really
mean.
Savvy 1 hour ago
All that's left is for the US to declare Navalny President of Russia.
Five_Black_Eyes_Intel_Agency 1 hour ago (Edited)
They declared Guaido prez of Venezuela. How did that work out? Even the EU are distancing
themselves from him. The US is the global pariah, along with zionist entity.
Savvy 1 hour ago
At least Guaido has the distinction of being one of the Chicago Five. Look it up,
interesting read. : )
Five_Black_Eyes_Intel_Agency 1 hour ago
U mean the Chicago boys? Milton Friedman and the Washington Consensus
Savvy 1 hour ago
No, the CIA had a group of trainees that did boot camp in Eastern Europe, heavily involved
in Georgia and Ukraine. They were called the Chicago Five. Guaido was one.
2 play_arrow
jonesbeach 1 hour ago
America has zero credibility to dictate to any other country about how they should treat
their dissidents. The corporate media and Washington establishment have waged war on half the
country for decades. And now they are arresting people for posting memes, labeling peaceful
protestors as terrorists and purging people for wrongthink.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN 1 hour ago
Novichok had to be the easiest fraud for the Russians to refute, but was used because the
general public was conditioned to believe it after the Skriptal hoax.
Novichok is stored in 2 separate vials which have to be mixed shortly before use. It is
not something you whip up in a restaurant kitchen or hotel bathroom. The risk is too great to
the handlers.
Navalny's day-to-day MI-6 handlers (Maria Pevchikh) then concocted a series of
increasingly unbelievable scenarios about how he came in contact.
The final blow came when the initial Berlin hospital tests contradicted what the mititary
tests claimed they found.
This should have ended with the Russian side mentioning they had blood samples taken at
their hospital before Navalny left for Berlin.
Max21c 30 minutes ago
Despite claims by MSM and Western diplomats that Navalny is subject to political
persecution
Washington elites conveniently & consistently ignore real political persecution in
their own homeland by their security services and only use the phony claim of "political
persecution" as a political tool when it benefits them against countries & governments
they are at odds with or where they may someday gain a financial windfall by overthrowing
another government and installing their own hand picked puppets...
Max21c 27 minutes ago (Edited) remove link
Navalny may be a crook and embezzler in Russia but in the eyes of Washingtonians he's
their kind of crook. In the Washingtonians skewed & distorted way of viewing the world
Navalny is a GOOD CROOK rather than a BAD CROOK .
BaNNeD oN THe RuN 1 hour ago
How about this source:
"Navalny received a scholarship to the Yale World Fellows program at Yale University in
2010."
I wonder what "Bonesman" drew the short straw to be his State Dept handler.
On January 19th, the US Senate held confirmation hearings for Joe Biden's Secretary of State
nominee Antony Blinken. Blinken has a reputation on both sides of the aisle for being
exceptionally qualified for the job of America's top diplomat, which is surprising considering
he was on the wrong side of every major foreign policy blunder of the last 20 years ;
Iraq, Libya, and Syria .
When Senator Rand Paul
asked Antony Blinken what lessons he has learned from his disastrous foreign policy record
in Libya and Syria, Blinken replied that after "some hard thinking" he's proud that he has done
"everything we possibly can to make sure that diplomacy is the first answer, not the last
answer, and that war and conflict is our last resort."
Of course war is the last resort. Even the most hawkish war criminals would agree that war
is the last resort. But the question is, war is the last resort to accomplish what? If war is
the last resort to get a country to fully capitulate to Washington's demands then eventually
the US will be at war with everyone. To Blinken, war as the last resort can only be understood
in the same way a mugger considers shooting his victim as a last resort to stealing their
wallet.
Blinken displayed his hubris a few minutes later when he said, "The door should remain open"
for Georgia to join NATO under the justification of curbing Russian aggression .
Rand Paul informed Blinken, "This would be adding Georgia, that's occupied [by Russia], to
NATO. Under Article 5, then we would go to war ."
Senator Paul is right. According to Washington, Russia has been
occupying 20 percent of Georgia since 2008. Under the principle of collective defense in
Article 5 of NATO, the US would be obligated to treat Russia's occupation of the country of
Georgia the same way the US would treat a Russian occupation of the US state of Georgia. That
sounds like a recipe for war. But don't worry, peaceniks, Antony Blinken has assured us that
war is the last resort!
Blinken's framing of the issue exposes his disingenuous approach. Russian aggression is a
term used by Washington insiders to describe a Russian reaction to western aggression. Blinken
knows that the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia was not Russian aggression, he calls it that
because it suits his agenda and the American press is dependably ignorant enough to not ask
questions.
In the 2008 war, Georgia
was the aggressor against the South Ossetians, a people who are ethnically distinct from Georgians, and
who have never --
not even for one day -- considered themselves a part of Georgia. The Ossetians have a
history of Russian
partiality ; they were among the first ethnic groups in the region to join the Russian
Empire in the 19th century and the USSR in the 1920s. Today, ethnic Ossetians straddle both
sides of the current Russian border, and they are more aligned with the Russian government than with the
Georgian government.
When Georgia gained sovereignty from the former Soviet Union in 1991, South Ossetia declared
its independence. In response, Georgian forces invaded South Ossetia, initiating an armed
conflict that killed more than
2,000 people . In 1992, a ceasefire agreement was signed in Sochi between Georgia, Russia
and South Ossetia, which created a
tripartite peacekeeping force led by Russia. Although the international community never
acknowledged South Ossetia's independence, they have enjoyed political autonomy since the 1992
Sochi agreement.
The Sochi agreement held up until Georgia's ultra-nationalist President Mikheil Saakashvili
came to power in the 2003 western-backed
bloodless " Rose
Revolution " coup-d'etat. The pro-western President Saakashvili advocated joining the EU
and NATO, and insisted on asserting Georgian rule over South
Ossetia. U.S. President George Bush
supported the new Georgian president's effort to bring Georgia into NATO, which for Russia
would mean bringing a hostile military up to its border. In 2006, President Saakashvili offered
South Ossetia autonomy in exchange for a political settlement with Georgia. A
referendum was held, and the South Ossetian people overwhelmingly reaffirmed their desire for
independence from Georgia.
In August, 2008, After exchanging artillery fire with South Ossetia,
Georgia invaded South Ossetia's capital city of Tskhinvali, killing
1,400 civilians and
18 Russian peacekeepers . Georgia's attack triggered a Russian invasion into South Ossetia
and Abkhazia (another breakaway region) to restore stability and protect peacekeeping
forces.
Russia is by no means innocent -- they used
disproportionate force attacking targets inside Georgia -- but only a Russophobic shill
would conclude that this war was somehow caused by Russian aggression. The idea that Russia had
no business intervening is laughable. Under the
1992 Sochi agreement , Russia took charge of a peacekeeping coalition to help prevent
exactly the scenario that happened in the summer of 2008.
If George Bush had succeeded in bringing Georgia into NATO, the United States may have been
dragged into war with Russia in 2008. Antony Blinken claims that NATO membership deters Russian
aggression, but does he really believe that Russia would have been deterred from intervening to
protect its own peacekeeping force? Does Blinken believe that Georgia -- backed by the U.S.
military -- would have acted more cautiously in South Ossetia, or is it more likely they would
have been bolder?
It's undeniable that it is in Russia's best interest to have pro-Russian countries on its
borders. But pretending as if Russia is going to march into Tbilisi and reabsorb the entire
country of Georgia into Russia is a level of paranoia that should disqualify anyone from having
an opinion on the subject. The military conflict in Georgia is about the two breakaway regions
and their right to self determination. Russia's self interest happens to align with the wishes
of the people in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
By supporting Georgia, America -- the champion of democracy and self determination -- has
adopted the position that South Ossetians didn't really mean to repeatedly choose independence
when given the option. This is a situation where America's professed values are diametrically
opposed to its policy of countering Russian influence everywhere on the map.
Antony Blinken should pause to consider if America's policy objectives are worth fighting a
war for. Is it worth confronting Russia in South Ossetia? Was it worth confronting Russia over
Crimea and the Donbas in
Ukraine ? Is it a good idea to withdraw from the INF
Nuclear Treaty and the
Open Skies Treaty ? Should we have spent the last 30 years marching NATO -- a military
alliance hostile to Russia -- right up to the doorsteps of
Russia ? Is any of this really making us safer?
Blinken has bought into his own propaganda. To Blinken, regardless of the stubborn details
of history, every conflict on Russia's border is simply Russian aggression. Washington's
solution is the expansion of NATO, which Russia describes as "
NATO encirclement. " This is an unacceptable military threat to Russia, who has
a deep distrust of western intentions due to a long history of western invasions into Russia.
Antony Blinken still lives in a bipolar world in which the United States and Russia are
existential threats to each other's existence. Every conflict and every alliance is only viewed
through the lens of the New Cold War crusade against Russia. This maniacal crusade could thrust
America in the unthinkable abyss of nuclear war.
Rand Paul got his answer, Antony Blinken learned nothing from all his mistakes! The danger
isn't merely resorting to war too early, the danger is in sticking our noses in conflicts that
we have no business being in. War should be the last resort to defending America's people and
it's homeland from foreign invasion; it should not be the last resort to enforcing America's
utopian vision on the world, and it certainly shouldn't be the last resort to prevent an ethnic
group in the South Caucasus -- that almost no American has ever heard of -- from the right to
self-determination.
Kenny MacDonald is a former Navy SEAL and Afghanistan War veteran. He is currently pursuing
a bachelor's degree in history. Youtube Channel . Medium . Facebook .
"... Not sure the world is really ready for the total collapse of the pushy de facto American Empire where everything has been our business ..."
"... i would rather see American self-sufficiency and reversion to global isolationism. Let someone else manage or neglect the rest of the globe - one advantage of being a quasi-island nation. Always felt global "domination" was thrust upon us; not something actively sought. ..."
PUTIN-BIDEN. They had their first phonecall. Interesting to compare the
Kremlin's record with the
White House's: but Biden has to talk tough, Putin doesn't. But "interference in the 2020 United States election"? Really? Wasn't
it the most secure ever? Does Biden really
want to raise that subject?
NEW NWO. European poll.
Everything has changed: "Most Europeans rejoiced at Joe Biden’s victory in the November US presidential election, but they do not
think he can help America make a comeback as the pre-eminent global leader... Majorities in key member states now think the US political
system is broken, and that Europe cannot just rely on the US to defend it... look to Berlin rather than Washington as the most important
partner... A majority believe that China will be more powerful than the US within a decade and would want their country to stay neutral
in a conflict between the two superpowers. Two-thirds of respondents thought the EU should develop its defence capacities... Washington
cannot take European alignment against China for granted. Public opinion will have a bigger effect on the relationship than it once
did, and needs to be taken into account." Another time when Trump exposed the emptiness behind the curtain.
Note the reference to having to pay attention to "public opinion" – the dreaded populism appears.
How will China's future control of the high seas affect US trade and economy, when China becomes the "global policeman"? Will
this in fact lead to a net US savings, being relieved of this current role.
@Deap I don't think China has the slightest interest in being the "global policeman". Don't forget it has two awful examples
of the fate of countries who thought that everything, everywhere was always their business.
If the US does not provide global maritime security, how will China protect transit of their fishery exploitation, their African
mineral exploitation and cheap product transits into global markets, once the US stops acting as the "global policeman". Will
the UN step in and take over this role?
Or is everyone now on their own good behavior - do unto others sort of self-governance? Not sure the world is really ready
for the total collapse of the pushy de facto American Empire where everything has been our business - for the benefit of
everyone else too.
I would rather we pay the price and continue running the high seas than defaulting any other close contender. Which would be
as you claim China, who shall decline the honor and suck off of us?
Or will the Russian polar route become the new grand global highway for all maritime trade in the near future. Just read polar
ice cap melting is a 60 year cyclical phenomenon, and not a new global warming trade route, only a temporary one.
But if had my druthers, i would rather see American self-sufficiency and reversion to global isolationism. Let someone
else manage or neglect the rest of the globe - one advantage of being a quasi-island nation. Always felt global "domination" was
thrust upon us; not something actively sought. This being the voice of a WWII War Baby, who still remembers simpler times
in the neophyte global hegemonist US of A.
6 Warning Signs from Biden's First Week in Office The "progressive" candidate praised as
a "woke bloke" seems to be carrying on where all his authoritarian Imperialist predecessors
left off Kit Knightly
What do these orders, or any of his other moves, tell us about the future plans of the
recently "elected" administration? Nothing good, unfortunately.
1. VACCINATION
PASSPORTS
I still remember people claiming the introduction of vaccination passports (or immunity
passes or the like) was just a "conspiracy theory", the paranoid fantasy of fringe "covidiots".
All the way back in December, when they were
getting fact-checked by tabloid journalists who can't do basic maths .
International Certificates of Vaccination or Prophylaxis. Consistent with applicable law,
the Secretary of State, the Secretary of HHS, and the Secretary of Homeland Security
(including through the Administrator of the TSA), in coordination with any relevant
international organizations, shall assess the feasibility of linking COVID-19 vaccination to
International Certificates of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) and producing electronic
versions of ICVPs.
2. CABINET APPOINTMENTS
Biden's cabinet is praised as the "most diverse" in history, but will hiring a few non-white
people really change the decades-old policies of US Imperialism? It certainly doesn't look like
it.
His pick for Under Secretary of State is Victoria Nuland , a neocon warmonger and
one of the masterminds of the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014. She is married to Robert Kagan , another neocon
warmonger, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century and senior fellow at the
Brookings Institute and one of the masterminds behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The incoming Secretary of State, Antony Blinken , is also an inveterate US
Imperialist, arguing for every US military intervention since the 1990s, and criticised Trump's
decision to withdraw from Syria.
Biden's pick for Defence Secretary is the first African-American ever appointed to this
role, but former General Lloyd Austin is hardly going be some kind of "progressive" voice int
his cabinet. He's a career soldier who retired from the military in 2016 to join the
board of Raytheon Technologies , an arms manufacturer and military contractor.
As "diverse" as this cabinet may be in skin colour or gender there is most certainly no
"diversity" of opinion or policy. There are very few new faces and no new thoughts.
So, it looks like we can expect more of the same in terms of foreign policy. A fact that's
already been displayed in
3. IRAQ
Despite heavy resistance from the military and Deep State, Donald Trump wanted to end the
war in Iraq and pledged to pull American troops out of the country. This was one of Trump's
more popular policies, and during the campaign Biden made no mention of intending to reverse
that decision.
The Iraqi parliament has made it clear it wants the US to
take its military off their soil , so any American forces on Iraqi land are technically
there illegally in contravention of international law. But that never bothered them
before.
4. AFGHANISTAN
Turns out the US can't withdraw from Afghanistan either. Last February Trump signed a deal
with the Taliban that all US personnel would leave Afghanistan by May 2021.
Joe Biden has already committed to "reviewing"
this deal . Sec. Blinken was quoted as saying that Biden's admin wanted:
to end this so-called forever war [but also] retain some capacity to deal with any
resurgence of terrorism, which is what brought us there in the first place".
As a great man once
said , nothing someone says before the word "but" really counts. The US will not be
withdrawing from Afghanistan, and if there is any public pressure to do so, the government will
simply claim the Taliban broke their side of the deal first, or stage a few terrorist
attacks.
5. AND SYRIA
Far from simply continuing the on-going wars, there are already signs Biden's "diverse" team
will look to escalate, or even start, other conflicts.
Syria was another theatre of war from which Donald Trump wanted to extricate the United
States,
unilaterally ordering all US troops from the country in late 2019.
We now know the Pentagon ignored those orders. They lied to the
President , telling Trump they had followed his orders but not withdrawing a single man.
This organized mutiny against the Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces was played for a
joke in the media when it was finally revealed.
There will be no need for any such duplicity now Biden is in the Oval Office, he was a
vocal critic of the decision to withdraw , claiming it gave ISIS a "new lease of life".
Indeed, within two days of his being sworn in a column of American military vehicles was
seen entering Syria from Iraq
.
6. DOMESTIC TERRORISM
We called this before the
inauguration . They made it just too obvious. Before the dirty footprints had been cleaned
from Nancy Pelosi's desk it was clear where it was all going.
Direct the Justice Department, FBI and National Security Council to execute a top-down
approach prioritizing domestic terrorism; pass new domestic terrorism legislation; or do a
bit of both as Democrats propose a crack down on social media giants like Facebook for
algorithms that promote conspiracy laden posts.
That last part is key. The "crack down on social media" part, because the anti-Domestic
Terrorism legislation will likely be very focused on communication and so-called
"misinformation".
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has publicly called for a congressional panel to
"rein in" the media :
We're going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so you can't just
spew disinformation and misinformation,"
And who will be the target of these crack downs and new legislations? Well, according John
Brennan (ex-head of the CIA and accomplished war criminal), practically anybody:
They're casting a wide net. Expect "extremist", "bigot" and "racist" to be just a few of the
words which have their meanings totally revised in the next few months. "Conspiracy theorist"
will be used a lot, too.
Further, they are moving closer and closer toward the "anyone who disagrees with us is
literally insane" model. With many articles actually talking about "de-programming" Trump
voters. The Atlantic suggests "mental
hygiene" would cure the MAGA problem.
Again AOC is on point here, clearly auditioning for the role of High Inquisitor, claiming
that the new Biden government needs to fund programs that "de-radicalise" "conspiracy
theorists" who are on the "spectrum
of radicalisation" .
*
As I said at the beginning, it's been a busy week for Joe Biden, but you can sum up his
biggest policy plans in one short sentence: More violence overseas, less tolerance of dissent
and strict clampdowns on "misinformation".
Blinken does not seem to have repented from his fundamentalist belief in American
imperial goodness, notwithstanding his appeal for "humility".
Barring an earthquake in Washington, Antony Blinken is set to become the new U.S. Secretary
of State and America's top diplomat. The youthful and telegenic Blinken (58) takes over from
Mike Pompeo who was America's representative to the world under the last Trump
administration.
The contrast could not be more stark. In place of Pompeo's thuggish, rough-edged style,
Blinken has the appearance of consummate diplomat. He's fluent in French owing to a European
education, he's urbane and sophisticated and comes from a family which has diplomacy in its
genes. His father was an ambassador to Hungary and an advisor to President John F Kennedy. An
uncle was ambassador to Belgium.
Blinken has Hungarian and Russian Jewish ancestry. His mother remarried a Polish-American
Jewish survivor of the Nazi holocaust. During his confirmation hearing in the Senate this week,
Blinken
told the story of how his stepfather escaped from a Nazi death march in Bavaria and was
eventually rescued by an American tank driven by an African-American officer.
That story has shaped Blinken's worldview of America's prestige and international role. He's
a proponent of U.S. military interventionism with a presumption of moral duty. He's an advocate
of America working with European allies and upholding the transatlantic alliance – in
contrast to Trump's boorish America First sloganeering. Understandably, Blinken is imbued with
an unshakable belief in "American exceptionalism" and "manifest destiny" as a world leader.
The Senators at his confirmation hearing this week
swooned as Blinken spoke. He's certain to be confirmed as the new Secretary of State in the
coming days. That's because he is seen to be perfect for the task of restoring America's
international image which has been so badly tarnished under Trump and his grumpy gofer Pompeo.
The Europeans will lap up Blinken and his transatlantic romanticism.
Blinken has said that America's foreign policy must be conducted with "humility and
confidence", which may sound refreshingly modest. But it's not. Underlying this "quiet
American" is the same old arrogance about U.S. imperial might-is-right and Washington's
presumed privilege of appointing itself as the "world's policeman".
If Blinken's record is anything to go on, his future role as America's top diplomat is
foreboding.
Previously, he was a senior member in the Obama administrations serving as national security
advisor to both the president and Joe Biden who was then vice-president. Blinken rose to become
deputy Secretary of State in the final years of the second Obama administration. In those roles
he was a key player in a series of foreign interventions which turned out to be utterly
disastrous.
He was a big proponent of U.S. military intervention in Libya in 2011 which led to the
toppling and murder of Muammar Gaddafi. That intervention along with other NATO powers has left
a ruinous legacy not only for Libya but for North Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe.
Blinken was also a point-man in Obama's intervention in Syria where the U.S. (and other NATO
powers) supplied weapons to anti-government militants. The so-called "rebels" were in fact
myriad terrorist groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and other extremist Islamists. Up to half a
million people have been killed in the decade-long Syrian war and much of that blood is on
America's hands from its de facto support for terror gangs. Maybe Blinken genuinely thought he
was supporting "pro-democracy rebels". But even if we give him the benefit of doubt, the upshot
is still a disaster of American interventionism.
Another catastrophic consequence of Blinken's policymaking is Yemen. Under his direction,
the Obama administration backed the Saudi war on its southern neighbor beginning in March 2015
and continuing to this day. Yemen has become the worst humanitarian crisis in the world with
millions facing starvation amid Saudi aerial bombardment carried out with U.S. warplanes and
logistics.
The new Biden administration has indicated it will withdraw military support for Saudi
Arabia in its war on Yemen. But that doesn't absolve the U.S., and Blinken in particular, for
having created the horrendous quagmire from which it is belatedly trying to extricate itself
from.
What's rather perplexing, however, is that Blinken does not seem to have repented from his
fundamentalist belief in American imperial goodness, notwithstanding his appeal for "humility".
During his Senate hearings, he
showed little regret about America's illegal bombing of Libya and its arming of jihadists
in Syria.
He described the world with the conventional brainwashed American ideology as being a place
where China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are enemies that must be confronted. He also
told Senators he was in favor of increasing supplies of lethal weaponry to the Ukraine and
its rabidly anti-Russian regime in Kiev. Recall that it was the Obama administration which
instigated a coup d'état in Kiev against an elected president in February 2014. The new
regime was and is dominated by far-right nationalists who laud past links to Nazi Germany. If
Blinken has his way the war against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine will escalate and could
ignite a bigger confrontation between Russia and the U.S.
One of the hallmarks of the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev is its espousal of Neo-Nazi
traditions and in particular antisemitic hatred.
Given Antony Blinken's own Jewish ancestry and his own intimate connection to the Nazi
holocaust, you do have to question his competence if he becomes America's foreign policy
leader. His boss President Joe Biden has fondly lionized Blinken as a "superstar" of diplomacy.
Superficially perhaps, he has finesse and intelligence. But in much the same basic way of
adhering to American imperialism, Blinken is as crude and thuggish as his predecessor Pompeo.
He just projects a more plausible look and sound, which is most desirable as a moral cover for
America's criminal imperialism.
Blinken is
known to self-deprecate his "insatiable habit" for making up bad puns. For example, on one
occasion when he was addressing an audience on policy regarding the Arctic, he began by joking
he would be "breaking the ice". Given his ability to pursue destructive dead-end policies, he
might therefore appreciate the moniker "Secretary of State Tony Blinkered".
Speaking about rich families who own the world. There is one unique feature of german
oligarchy, they don't change. More than half of the hundred richest families now have already
been rich before ww1. They made the crazy history of last century possible. Please just go
for a second in the perspective they have.
Raising Hell: QandA: Who The Hell Is Alexei Navalny?"If Yeltsin suspends an
anti-democratic Parliament, it is not necessarily an anti-democratic act." - Anonymous Clinton
Administration official quoted in the New York Times, 13 March 1993Royce Kurmelovs
Jan 27
Compressed into a two-minute soundbite, the story of Alexei Navalny and the recent
protests that have erupted across Russia seems simple enough. The Russian opposition figure who
recently survived an attempt on his life -- an alleged poisoning delivered via Novichok-laced
pants -- was arrested and convicted of breaching his bail conditions in a process that can
be fairly described as unjust. In response, his supporters took to the streets across the
country in protest.
Ask a Russian, like Katya
Kazbek , and they will tell you something different: things are way more complicated than
they seem. Katya is a writer, translator and the editor-in-chief of arts and culture magazine
Supamodu.com who today lives in New York by
way of Moscow and Krasnodar Krai in the North Caucuses. In an effort to give some nuance to
Navalny and what has been happening overseas, they recently put together a widely shared
Twitter
thread that served as a highlight reel of Navalny's political career -- and the picture it
painted was not pretty. Having read this, I contacted them to ask more about a man whose
treatment has been unjust, but who -- it turns out -- is no hero.
This QandA has been edited for length and style.
Royce Kurmelovs : What is happening in Russia right now?
Katya Kazbek: Nothing fundamentally new is happening right now. A part of Russian society is
unhappy with Putin and his government, but that's been a constant throughout his 20-plus year
term and, previously, throughout his predecessor Boris Yeltsin's term. The grievances include
corruption, low life quality, restricted freedoms and undemocratic elections. Additionally, in
the last decade, since the previous wave of protests in the early 2010s, there had been some
particular legislative measures, such as Putin amending the constitution to his advantage.
There has been a tightening in the protest laws, which make protesting harder, even in
single-person pickets, and the ramifications graver. But most importantly, 2019 was marked by
the beginning of a sprawling pension reform project, which looks to raise the retirement age by
five years and has caused a lot of outcry from the population.
In this light, a change in government seems an even more remote perspective for those
Russians who do not support Putin and practicing dissent becomes an even more daunting
task.
Meanwhile, a particular set of the general public is also concerned with the events
surrounding investigative journalist and opposition figure Alexei Navalny. His alleged
poisoning last year, subsequent return to Russia, and arrest upon arrival due to parole
violations have led to calls for his supporters to protest against this, alongside other
issues.
RK : Who is Alexei Navalny?
KK : Alexei Navalny should be first and foremost viewed as an investigative journalist. He
founded and leads his Anti-Corruption Foundation, which conducts thorough examinations of
corruption in the personal and business lives of members of Vladimir Putin's government. He
mostly digs up hidden assets, such as real estate, businesses and yachts that belong to them
and members of their families.
In 2010, he received a scholarship from Yale's World Fellows program, with graduates
directly linked to the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine. In 2013 he ran for mayor of Moscow, coming
second after the incumbent Sergey Sobyanin. However, it's important to point out that both then
and now, his popularity is only high in large cities, and the situation in the regions is
drastically different. He was not allowed to run for president in 2018 because of two
conditional convictions for fraud in the cases of timber company Kirovles and cosmetics company
Yves Rocher, which Navalny himself calls "frame-ups."
It was that year that he started expanding into election activism and has used various
tactics to engage in them. During the 2018 presidential election, he called for people to
boycott. In the 2019 regional elections, he launched the system called "Smart Elections," where
the goal was to take away as many votes from United Russia candidates by supporting anyone
outside the party. It was lauded as a success by Navalny and his followers, while the leaders
of Russia's other two biggest parties, Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), argue that it was their popularity that led to
evident electoral shifts.
There are plans to use the system again this year in various elections. And of course,
lately, Alexei Navalny has been in the headlines for his alleged poisoning with the nerve agent
Novichok. It's worth pointing out that according to liberal polls, the attitudes of Russians en
masse to the poisoning and its implications differ significantly from the narrative in the
western press: while to some people he remains obscure, and many stay neutral, people in
general are more distrustful and wary of him than they are distrustful and wary of the Russian
government or Putin personally. His popularity has indeed grown some in the wake of the alleged
poisoning, as well as the calls he made relatively recently for direct stimulus measures to
help citizens in the wake of COVID. However, it still tails that of Putin and even that of
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of far-right LDPR.
RK : I know you could write a whole book about this, but what are his politics?
KK : Navalny is most definitely a populist, and he likes to follow trends. For instance,
during the US democratic primary, he endorsed Bernie Sanders because American cultural markers
are appealing to him. I have been watching Navalny since he was just an aspiring politician and
had a blog on LiveJournal, the prevalent social media platform in Russia at the time.
Back then, he identified openly as a nationalist and attended nationalist rallies. He
started in the liberal, market-oriented party Yabloko but was kicked out for his nationalist
views. He then created his movement "The People" aimed against illegal immigration and recorded
blatantly xenophobic videos where he compared people from South Caucuses to dental cavities and
migrants to cockroaches: one of these videos is still on his verified YouTube
channel.
In the following years, there has been an effort to whitewash his views, and he has switched
gears on various topics; for instance, I believe he has changed his position on same sex
marriage from negative to positive. But when pressed about his earlier convictions and the
videos mentioned above, for instance, in a post-poisoning interview with Der Spiegel, he flat
out said, "I have the same views that I held when I went into politics." When he ran for
president, he wanted to introduce a visa regime with Central Asian countries -- the source of
the majority of labor migrants in Russia. When asked why he insists on that while also saying
he'd want to let German people visit Russia visa-free, he responded that those who have a rich
country should be more welcome as visitors.
As to the other spheres: his economic views favor privatisation and free markets, and he is
backed by many post-Soviet capitalists, from the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the former
head of the Central Bank of Russia, Sergei Aleksashenko. However, he also wanted to run for the
presidency on the platform of raising wages, pensions, and introducing progressive taxes -- but
never centered the working class in his agenda, only sometimes talking about poverty and always
outlining the necessity of helping small business owners. The times when I recall him talking
about the working class, it was with disdain or posturing.
Navalny's geopolitical views are a bit all over the place as well. While he has made calls
against Russian military presence in Syria and Ukraine, Navalny's stance on Crimea varies from
supportive to cautious. In general, when it concerns internal Russian politics, he tends to
support regional autonomy: one of his central policies through the years has been "Stop Feeding
Caucusus," which called, among other things, for severing republics such as Chechnya from the
Russian Federation.
In general, Russian regions are way worse off than Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the
growing resentment is a straightforward target for further balkanization of the post-Soviet
space and Russian Federation in particular. Moreover, when it comes to foreign diplomacy,
Navalny thinks Russia should align more with Europe and less with its ex-Soviet neighbors,
Asian or Latin American countries.
Basically, his politics adapt to whatever seems opportune, but that also doesn't seem to
help his cause. He is not Nazi enough for the ultra-right, too right-wing for leftists, spooks
some liberals with his pro-gun stance and uncertain position on Crimea, which are both serious
issues for them. He seems to only find full support in those who want to switch from Putin's
government by any means necessary and don't really care about views or policies.
RK : How much support does Navalny have within Russia?
KK : Despite his 15-year-old crusade against Putin, his government, and corruption, Navalny
is still mostly recognized only for his investigative work. Even though trust in him grew in
the wake of the poisoning, the number of people distrusting him has also grown along with
awareness. Overall, in the last poll about the number of people trusting significant political
figures taken in August 2020, he scored two per cent, in third place after Vladimir Putin's
comfortable 40 per cent and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's four per cent. However, some politicians who
trailed behind him belong to parties in the Russian Duma that enjoy way more support as whole
entities, including the CPRF and LDPR.
RK : Why is this happening now?
KK : His support in Russia has been greatly exaggerated by the Western press. The Navalny
supporters, who are not as numerous, have been galvanized by the attempt on his life and his
arrest. Others, who might not be supporting Navalny per se, view the case of his apprehension
as yet another in the string of cases where one's political views become a basis for detention
and imprisonment. Such cases vary greatly; some figures are more popular, some downright
ambiguous, others do not get as much coverage in the liberal media and Western media. I'll name
a few I consider most worthy of attention, even as my personal opinion on them varies.
Communist party member and diplomat Nikolai Platoshkin has been under house
arrest on charges of inciting riots and endangering public safety for the past few months.
Anarchist Azat
Miftakhov has just been sentenced to six years in prison for breaking the window and
throwing a smoke bomb into the United Russia party -- Putin's party -- office in Moscow.
Investigative journalist
Ivan Golunov had been tried on a fabricated drug charge, although released after much
public outcry and an investigation. Feminist artist Yulia Tsvetkova is still on
trial for administrative charges, including dissemination of pornography and gay propaganda,
for her online activity and art.
Meanwhile, far-right populist Sergey Furgal , ex-Khabarovsk Krai
governor, has been charged with multiple murders. Because of this, regular protests in support
of the "people's governor," as his constituents call him, and against federal involvement in
regional politics, have been going on for the past six months. Around 25 thousand protestors
took part at its peak, about four per cent of the city's population.
I would say that these protests, as well as the protests in neighboring Belarus, have been
an inspirational force for recent protests across Russia. But I believe that the Russian
protests are a mix of organic and astroturfed. I would definitely see what's happening with
Alexei Navalny in the context of the foreign politics of the European Union and the USA -- and
especially to the presidency of Joe Biden. The US Democrats have spent years talking about the
so-called "Russiagate", a narrative prevalent in the US, that blamed Russia for Hilary
Clinton's loss in 2016. The conspiracy has been debunked continuously but remains a big staple
of American politics. I believe that because of that and the proxy wars going on between the
two countries, Biden's term will be very hawkish on Russia.
RK : There have been other protest movements before. I remember images of Garry Kasparov
getting arrested. Is this different?
KK : Apart from some particularities, in general, a lot of what's happening seems to be
similar to the events in the 2010s, when I personally participated in the protests. Back then,
I believe, they were also astroturfed to a point by foreign interference but also stemmed from
various reasons of organic discontent -- quite similar reasons to what has sparked the protests
now. I will also add that the 2010s protests started right after parliamentary elections, which
were widely considered fraudulent.
That said, I believe that the protests of the early 2010s and early 2020s seem to be almost
identical. I have seen the same jokes and memes surface, very similar manifestos written,
people have been referring to unsanctioned protests as "going out for a walk" and cracking
jokes about that, and taking white flowers as a symbol of peace to the events. But most
importantly, the people most vehemently supporting these protests remain pretty much the same.
Of course, there are newer figures, and some have died or changed camps since the last ones,
but in general, it's all pretty much the same, which creates a peculiar feeling of deja vu.
As opposed to the Black Lives Matter protests here in the US, which I had also been
following since inception and which had taken on a completely different spin this past summer,
the Russian protests do not seem to have evolved. Of course, I might be mistaken because I'm
not currently in Russia, but I have not seen anything radically different about them. Of
course, twenty-somethings, who were too young to participate in the protests of the 2010s, or
people who had been apolitical before will perceive them as unprecedented, and I do believe
that there has been an increase in participation in a broader geographic and class context --
as compared to the mostly Moscow-centric, middle-class events of 2010s. But the overall tactics
had not changed, no meaningful strategy has been adopted, and most importantly, just like the
last time, no effort to address or center the working class has been made. All of it makes the
narrative all too familiar, and the protests appear detached from the everyday worries of
Russia's working class.
"Twenty-somethings, who were too young to participate in the protests of the 2010s, or
people who had been apolitical before will perceive them as unprecedented "
RK : The nineties were, to put it mildly, a hell of a time for Russia with western
governments massively interfering in Russian politics and, essentially, looting the economy.
Those events, such as Yeltsin's coup to depose a democratically elected parliament and the
creation of the oligarchs, must have been scarring for many in society. How much can we read
what is happening within Russia today as an echo of those events?
KK : Everything that has been happening in Russia over the past 30 years has been an echo of
these events. Boris Yeltsin's coup, that was backed
by Bill Clinton and the US media , is
definitely something people think back to a lot. Vladimir Putin was Yeltsin's chosen heir and a
continuation of the system that makes sure that power and capital are concentrated in the
Kremlin. The whole idea of Putin being replaced with Navalny just seems like a reshuffling of
the same old: a new pro-Western leader to replace the one who has strayed from NATO's grasp,
and a different set of oligarchs and capitalists taking the reigns. But even if people were
eager for this shuffle, Putin has something that Navalny doesn't: a factual track record as the
country's leader. And even if this record is indeed marred deeply with corruption, trespasses,
and things that many find unpalatable, life under Putin has improved as compared to the
impoverished 90s. It might not be a huge advantage, but having seen the pits, no one is eager
to forfeit the small advantage that exists for the unknown. And as someone on Twitter rightly
said: "While it's obvious whom Navalny is against, it's not quite clear whom he is for."
RK : What do those outside Russia need to know about the situation?
KK : I want everyone to realize that the overwhelming majority of western journalists are
busy communicating their own narrative, which does not have anything to do with the real
situation on the ground; however, it too often reflects the opinions of State Departments of
NATO countries. Disgruntled diaspora voices and loud English-speaking liberals in Moscow are
incredibly biased, also. The majority of Russian online presence is in Russian and
overwhelmingly on VK.com and Telegram. So judging
the country by what you hear most often about it is misleading and dangerous. Honestly, I think
the same applies to most countries that are not considered allies by the US and EU, but Russia
more than others because of this new Cold War we have at hand.
The biggest myth about Russia is that Putin is some off-the-charts dictator, Russia is an
absolute hellhole, and that his only opposition is Navalny, who is being prevented from
elections and poisoned. Careful investigation into the material circumstances of people in
Russia will show that while the country is poor, it has improved since the 90s. It isn't a
liberal paradise, for sure, but having tirelessly compared it to the US where I've been working
in the past few years, I have to say while nothing about Russia is performatively woke, the
foundations set in place by the Soviet Union remain quite firm: from the access to free,
unlimited abortions to a genuinely multiethnic society. Russia is not without its racial
problems, of course, but that's also true for Europe with its Roma and migrants, the US with
its Latinos and African-Americans and Australia with the Aboriginal and Torres-Strait Islander
people to pontificate about.
The more significant problems that Russia struggles with are Putin's weaponisation of the
orthodox church and nationalism, the domestic violence surges and decriminalisation of them,
and the economy, of course, especially in the COVID era and with the pension reform in full
swing. But I firmly believe we Russians can solve those internally and don't need any
interference from the West. Moreover, the West should get rid of the white savior syndrome and
allow Russians to choose their leader themselves. According to polls, right now, it is Putin.
I'm not a fan, but I don't feel like I have the moral high ground to tell most of my
compatriots they lack the agency to make this choice for themselves.
"As someone who has worked as an election observer during a presidential election, I can say
that even in Moscow, [Putin] wins by a margin, fair and square."
Moreover, as someone who has worked as an election observer during a presidential election,
I can say that even in Moscow, he wins by a margin, fair and square. Meanwhile, his most
significant opposition is not Navalny, as one can gather from the poll figures. The real
opposition party, CPRF, holds a sizeable presence in the Duma. And while overall it is quite
reactionary for my personal taste and tends to sometimes fall in line with Putin, it exists;
it's big. Those on the left can build towards socialism from within it, which numerous
politicians have done, as they became Duma members, mayors, governors or form their coalitions
that splinter off CPRF in less reactionary formations that have some promising members, like
the Russian United Labour Front
movement. All of this is something I can not even imagine in the United States, where the
socialist parties are small, fringe, and not present in the Congress, and self-proclaimed
socialist politicians would rate as centrists elsewhere.
So whenever you hear something about Russia, please consider what vested interests there may
be in that opinion, who is telling you these things, and why. And just in general, whenever
you're interested, try to talk to actual people within Russia, preferably its regions, and not
the pundits who get paid for pitting Navalny against Putin.
Before You Go (Go)
Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you
recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their
ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation
registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is
keeping you up at night, or you'd just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the
sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make
contact through Signal or through
encrypted message Wickr Me on
my account: rorok1990.
And if you've come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my
books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell !
"Where is the line between a successful global business, in-demand services and
consolidation of big data – and attempts to harshly and unilaterally govern society,
replace legitimate democratic institutions, restrict one's natural right to decide for
themselves how to live, what to choose, what stance to express freely?" Putin wondered.
"We've all seen this just now in the US. And everybody understands what I'm talking
about," he added.
The Russian leader was apparently referring to the crackdown by Big Tech corporations like
Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon, mostly on Donald Trump and his supporters, during
the recent presidential election in the US. The companies, which, according to some critics,
sided with Democratic candidate Joe Biden, blocked President Trump's social media accounts over
accusations of inciting violence, with the same being done to many pages of groups and
individuals who'd backed him.
However, one-sided bias claim voiced by some might be an overestimation – the accounts
of Democrats supporters were also subject to restrictions, but on a much smaller scale.
Conservative Twitter-like platform Parler was also forced offline, and now there are calls
to block the Telegram app as well.
These events have shown that Big Tech companies "in some areas have de facto become
rivals to the government," Putin said.
Billions of users spend large parts of their lives on the platforms and, from the point of
view of those companies, their monopolistic position is favorable for organizing economic and
technological processes, the Russian president explained. "But there's a question of how
such monopolism fits the interest of society," he stressed.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
shadow1369 8 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 07:51 AM
This is a great opportunity for Russia to create some Big Tech operators which actually allow
free speech. Russia certainly has the expertise and the means, and cannot be bullied by
western regimes.
Proton1963 shadow1369 1 hour ago 27 Jan, 2021 02:54 PM
Sure.. But only after the Russians can build a drivable car or a decent smart phone or a
laptop.
The West is surely giving Russia a lot of opportunities, through its own arrogance and
stupidity, does not it ? It keeps going backwards in its effort to diminish Russia. And the
same goes for China too.
JOHNCHUCKMAN 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 08:45 AM
Putin is a remarkable statesman, and he sets a very high standard for political discourse. I
can't think of any of our Western leaders who speak in these truthful and philosophic terms.
What we hear in the West are slogans or whining or complaining.
Tenakakhan JOHNCHUCKMAN 3 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 01:03 PM
The patriarch of the west has become extremely weak. It seems like our leaders lack any moral
authority to speak truth and common sense for fear of being cancelled. What we see now is the
virtue signaling dregs sponsored by extreme groups leading our nations down the toilet. If a
real war was to break out now we would be cannon fodder.
Hilarous 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 09:04 AM
I think there's a simple explanation. Big tech is afraid to lose section 230 of the
communications act, which stipulates that online platforms are not legally responsible for
user content. Trump and some Republicans have accused social media sites of muzzling
conservative voices. They said undoing Section 230 would let people who claim they have been
slighted sue the companies. So Big Tech has a strong interest to remove Trump and run down a
few bad examples to convince people and politics that Section 230 must remain.
Count_Cash 8 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 07:40 AM
In many cases they aren't rivals, but owners of government. Money controls everything in the
west and big tech have it. They have taken control of, or are blackmailing governments. The
Western Liberal Regime straddles both Big Tech and government!
RTaccount Count_Cash 7 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 08:57 AM
Correct. Let us never forget that in America we are ruled by oligarchs just like the rest of
the world, and that our oligarchs are largely hidden. They are our true government, and so it
is meaningless to make this type of distinction.
It's part & parcel here especially from DUP types who sometimes appear to be living in
a fantasy world – Shinners not so much but I imagine that SF dissidents have similar
extreme positions & all of this comes from some intelligent & professional people not
just the malleable mobs. Meanwhile there is a turf war for the gangster versions of both UVF
& UDA hitting the streets in Belfast.
I recall a few years back reading an account from a British Army general who was familiar
with both Northern Ireland & the former Yugoslavia before they blew up, who in both
instances was shocked by how people who had for the most part lived happily side by side
within a relatively short space of time became sworn enemies. All of that had a religious
background with the latter including ethnicity, but to him both sides in both cases spiraled
down through negative reactions into extremes, becoming in the end each others sworn
enemies.
Politics & Class have I believe caused the same fractures & after all the
successful & presumably intelligent PMC also have their deplorable others that are
largely a construction based on generalisations & stereotypes, while sadly peace &
reconciliation efforts as far as I can tell always appear to arrive as an epilogue to a very
bad book.
Yugoslavia definitely didn't live happily side by side. Its tensions were hidden under
Tito, but existed before (cf WW2 Croats vs Serbs, as most visible example), and blew up
after, to a great extent because they were so supressed before w/o any reasonable outlet. It
might have given a semblance of "happines", but it wasn't really there.
I was only in Yugoslavia once for about a week in 1982, and you could see what a mess it
was in the making. I'm used to Europeans drinking, but Belgrade made em' look like
teetotalers. Add in age old tensions and kaboom!
One of the biggest hyperinflationary episodes came out of their civil war, only to be
eclipsed in the numbers game by Zimbabwe after the turn of the century.
I was going through Yugoslavia by train in 1981 and the one thing that struck me looking
out the windows was flags. You had Yugoslavian flags everywhere you looked to the point that
it was almost a fetish. It was only years later that I wondered if the point of those flags
was to encourage the different groups to think of themselves as Yugoslavians first and
foremost.
> to a great extent because they were so supressed before w/o any reasonable
outlet.
But this seems to excuse the fighting? If everybody was "suppressed" then why did they
kick sideways, rather than up? As I think I said once before, my friend from Serbia would say
"I'd be on "my" side of the street and "they" would be shooting at me, and then I'd cross the
street and "my" people would be shooting at me".
He, like so many nowadays, came to the US not because this was some beacon of hope but
because where he lived, a place he loved for many reasons, was that messed up.
Reading Wikipedia I come across this tiresome sentence: "The Croat quest for independence
led to large Serb communities within Croatia rebelling and trying to secede from the Croat
republic. Serbs in Croatia would not accept a status of a national minority in a sovereign
Croatia, since they would be demoted from the status of a constituent nation of the entirety
of Yugoslavia."
Croats? Serbs? Like they are fundamentally different species? It's as bad as the
Reconstruction South, but per my example above people didn't even have different colored
skin, heck they were physically indistinguishable. They just wanted something they themselves
couldn't even describe without foaming at the mouth.
To be considered above somebody else by birth was what it really was.
Oh, and another head-banging quote: "the "Croatian Spring" protest in the 1970s was backed
by large numbers of Croats who claimed that Yugoslavia remained a Serb hegemony and demanded
that Serbia's powers be reduced .Tito, whose home republic was Croatia,"
An iron-fisted dictator runs the country, he is from Croatia, yet the country is
considered by Croatians to be "Serb hegemony". Ok whatever, hey it does make more sense than
following a normal-height dark-haired dark-eyed man because he says that tall blond-haired
blue eyed people are superior. And that was a short-by-American-standards drive away
We can give the globe a spin and find the same idiocy in Asia, where "they all look alike"
to western eyes but oh boy they slaughter each other just as regularly as we do.
Ok I'm done ranting. What a plague on the planet this species is.
Kicking sideways (or downwards) is always easier than kicking upwards, especially if
people were doing it for years.
Otherwise, you're just accentuating my point – and I agree with you. It was
incredible watching people in pub who were getting on very well until one of them asked where
the other was from, and that has changed the whole atmosphere.
My cousin from Prague came to America in the late 90's to live on a genuine ranch for a
spell and go on a long roadtrip in search of
So he gets pulled over for speeding in a red state and gives the officer his Czech drivers
license, and he told me the officer went into a harangue over all the ethnic cleansing that
was going on in his country, and how sorry he was about it, and let him off.
Cousin was torn between telling the copper, nah that's a few countries over, but went for
the victim card instead.
Hah, do you know the Western press brain-melt induced by having Slovakia and Slovenia
(which, moreover have very similar flags..) in the same World Cup (soccer) 2022 qualification
group?
Croats? Serbs? Like they are fundamentally different species?
Not different species, but different religions; Roman and Orthodox Catholicism,
respectively. Think German-speaking Europe during the Thirty Years War.
The irony of course is that, in 1992, Croats for the most part didn't go to mass, Serbs
did go to Liturgy, and Bosniak Muslims thought beer went well with their pork chops.
Think of it not as a religious war, but a re-hash of WWII.
Diana Johnstones "Fools Crusade" goes into the destabilization efforts made by various EU
and Nato entities to precipitate the break up. It's where the Clintons beta tested the nation
breaking tools Bush/Cheney began deploying around the world.
Karl Von Hapsburg and the Pope were both involved in prying the Catholic portions loose
from the Yugoslav federation and bringing them back into the Mont Pelerin orbit of the former
Habsburg empire.
The Orthodox regions have been left to the Russians with black markets to everyone's
benefit and the Bosnians given the standard settler/colonial treatment of designated
"races."
Vlade – perhaps I should not have used the word happily but basically neighbours
were not killing each other as was also mainly the case in NI, although there were tensions
gradually building up in tandem with the Civil Rights movement based on the MLK. model.
I don't know what the tipping point was in the Balkans, but in NI it was the treatment
received by the marchers & the likes of the Bogside at the hands of the B specials &
RUC in Derry which gradually spread elsewhere in mass battles between mobs from both sides
& the above armed cops. All of this capped off in 72 by the Provos most successful
recruiting campaign courtesy of the Parachute regiment on Bloody Sunday, while about that
time around 10,000 Catholic refugees crossed into the Republic.
If the General thought that people in NI lived happily side by side before the Troubles,
then he was sorely misinformed. Tensions were always very strong, although not just religious
ones. In Dublin growing up I had neighbours who were Belfast protestants but had been driving
out of Belfast because their grandfather was involved in a shipyard trade union and that was
sufficient for him to have been labeled as a communist and Taig lover.
Yes happily was the wrong word but in the North outside of the cities there was mixing
& occasionally mixed marriages.
You are very correct in relation to the troubles in the shipyards, which I read a few
books about in prep for a statue. Funny thing is that during my 2 stints at the Titanic
studios for GoT I was informed by the top man that many of the tradesmen were ex
paramilitaries from both sides who managed to work well together for a decade, but in
separate teams. That was also tjhe case during the yearly Wraps where they all took full
advantage of the free bars but besides a few scuffles, there was never any real trouble.
A lot of the work would have been carried out in the original paint hall.
You have lost me there Vlade ( If you were indeed commenting on my post ) as I don't know
the book, but you have reminded me of one very violent incident on location in Spain between
2 Catholics in a bar. It was due to one of them being a member of another group of savages
that plagued Belfast as the other 2 wound down.
They were called the Hoodies who were part of the huge crime wave that hit Belfast as a
consequence of the Troubles. It was cleaned up in Catholic areas over about 7 years under the
command of Bobby Storey.
We live in upscale Westchester, NY, just north of Manhattan. Most of our social circles
are highly educated, high income earners with advanced degrees -- MBAs, lawyers, doctors. Of
those that subscribe to these theories our general sense is that it is driven by either
--
1) Anti immigrant sentiment, despite almost all of them being descendants of Jewish
immigrants
2) Anti tax -- this is a big driver
3) Anti government -- classic neoliberalists if that is a term of art
4) They get their news from Fox and or CNBC (which has become a Fox-like spin on things)
They claim to abhor Trump, are clearly anti populist, very pro Israel (Trump scores major
points here) but support all the policies (but they are not anti abortion). Interestingly, as
they earn their incomes serving the wealthy donor class they will not risk this and cross
them.
They view Biden and Sanders as being alike, despite any actual facts you cite such as
Biden's work in bankruptcy, think the democrats are anti Israel and pro Palestinian, etc.
Much of this dates back to Obama and the claims he was going to transfer all the money to the
welfare queens -- remember the give them free cell phones.
Interestingly, they clash heavily with their children (upper teens to 20-somethings) who
more align with Sanders and progressives and are very concerned about wealth inequality and
climate change.
One last point, they are as inclined to get their news from Facebook feeds as Fox.
In a matter of hours, Biden's key national security people -- Antony Blinken as secretary of
state, Avril Haines as director of national intelligence, and Lloyd Austin as defense secretary
-- gave us a remarkably fulsome idea of what we are in for these next four years.
Haines and Austin, neither of whose records are to be admired, are at bottom functionaries
who were nominated and swiftly confirmed because they do what they are told and do not think
too much -- always a career-advancer in Washington.
It is instead Blinken, who is said to enjoy some kind of
"mind-meld" with Biden, that we must consider carefully. (Such a meld must be odd
terrain.)
Blinken's Senate
testimony last Tuesday sprawled over four hours. It is best to scrutinize his remarks while
seated in a chair with sturdy armrests, ideally to calm one's nerves with a pot of chamomile
tea.
Seen or read as a whole, those four hours gave us an extraordinary display of how empire
works and how it prolongs itself. One by one, Blinken's senatorial interlocutors told him in so
many words, "Son, this is what you need to say if you want our confirmation. We want you to
endorse our commitment to aggression, to unlawful interventions, to 'regime change' ops, to
merciless sanctions, and altogether to the empire. But you must make it look nice. Make it look
thoughtful and complicated and considered."
July 14, 2016: Vice President Joe Biden, right, and Deputy Secretary of State Antony
Blinken. (Air Force, Christopher Hubenthal)
I am convinced, having endured the entire C–Span recording, that what I watched was
sheer ritual. Blinken won the Senate's support and now succeeds the shockingly bovine Mike
Pompeo at State. He will do so, however, with the élan and faux sophistication
our nakedly bankrupt foreign policy now requires if the American pantomime is to be sustained
another four years.
Among Blinken's many rather sad-to-witness "Yes sirs," two standout: his finely chiseled
endorsement of Pompeo's reckless assassination a year ago of Qassem Soleimani, Iran's revered
military commander ("Taking him out was the right thing to do"), and his approval of the Trump
administration's decision to send lethal arms to the manically corrupt regime in Kiev
("Senator, I support providing that lethal defensive assistance to Ukraine," when the Obama
administration, from which he comes, did not.)
Late last year, Blinken
appeared on "Intelligence Matters," the podcast run by Michael Morrell, the coup-mongering
former deputy director at the Central Intelligence Agency and now -- of course -- a regular
commentator on the televisions news networks. In their exchange, the two took up the question
of our "forever wars" and Biden's well-advertised commitment to ending them. Here is a snippet
from Blinken's remarks:
"As for ending the forever wars, large-scale deployment of large, standing U.S. forces in
conflict zones with no clear strategy should and will end under his [Biden's] watch. But we
also need to distinguish between, for example, these endless wars with large-scale,
open-ended deployment of U.S. forces with [sic], for example, discreet, small-scale
sustainable operations, maybe led by special forces to support local actors. In ending the
endless wars we have to be careful not to paint with too broad a brushstroke."
This is what we are in for these coming years, the hyper-rational irrationality of the
middling technocrat. There will be adjustments at the margin, reconsiderations of method. There
will be no consideration whatsoever of America's hegemonic objectives -- of the imperial
project.
Blinken's testimony reflected these bitter truths start to finish.
Changes to the Iran Deal
July 14, 2015: President Barack Obama, with Vice President Joe Biden, announcing the signing
of the Iran-nuclear agreement. (White House)
Of the various questions the new secretary of state took up during his confirmation
hearings, Iran is the most pressing. Senator Bob Menendez, Blinken's interlocutor in this case,
insisted that yes, the U.S. wants to rejoin the 2015 accord governing Iran's nuclear programs,
but only if this includes prohibitions against Tehran's "destabilizing activities" and a
missile program that Iran justly considers essential to its security.
An honest, clear-eyed diplomat who wanted to get somewhere with Tehran would have rejected
the very frame of Menendez's line of inquiry, with its references to "support for terrorism"
and "funding and feeding its proxies." But Blinken read his cues and tucked right in:
"The president-elect believes that if Iran comes back into compliance we would, too, but
we would use that as a platform to seek a longer, stronger agreement and also, as you have
pointed out, to capture these other issues, particularly with regard to missiles and Iran's
destabilizing activities. This would be the objective."
This is sheer charade. Blinken knows as well as anyone else that the added conditions the
Biden regime will require before rejoining the agreement -- an end to Iran's ballistic missile
programs and its support for the Syrian government against Islamists and the illegal U.S.
incursion -- effectively cancel all chances that the U.S. will rejoin the accord.
I
predicted in this space shortly after Biden was elected that he and his foreign policy
people only pretended to be serious about reviving the nuclear agreement with Iran. Blinken's
testimony confirms this.
Over the weekend The Times of Israel , citing Channel 12 television,
reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is sending Yossi Cohen, chief of Mossad and
a close confidant, to Washington to "set out terms" for any revival of the nuclear deal. Israel
purports to "set out terms," and Biden will receive this spook? This is getting completely
unserious. Completely.
On China, Russia, and Venezuela: Blinken was putty in the hands of the Foreign Relations
Committee's across-the-board hawks. A two-fronted new Cold War across both oceans -- Sinophobia
and Russophobia all at once -- is to be our reality these next four years.
Over the weekend, to be noted, the American Embassy in Moscow had the gall to broadcast
routes protesters could take to demonstrations in various Russian cities to dispute Alexei
Navlany's arrest . A good start.
Marco Rubio, the coup-loving senator from Florida, wanted to know if Blinken thought the
U.S. should continue backing Juan Guaidó, the buffoon Rubio and Pompeo puffed up as
Venezuela's "interim leader" as part of a failed coup operation a couple of years ago.
Blinken:
"I very much agree with you, senator, first of all with regard to a number of the steps
that were taken toward Venezuela in recent years, including recognizing Mr. Guaidó and
seeking to increase pressure on the regime . We need an effective policy that can restore
Venezuela to democracy, and how can we best advance that ball? Maybe we need to look at how
we more effectively target the sanctions that we have ."
Grim, grim times lie ahead if Blinken runs State as he promised the Senate he would.
There are those among us who look for shafts of light. People I greatly respect (some,
anyway) thought it was good news when Biden named William Burns, a career foreign service
officer, to head the CIA. At last diplomacy, not unlawful interventions!
Over the weekend, there were reports
that Biden will review -- not more at this point -- the designation of Yemen's Houthis as
terrorists, a label Pompeo affixed as he emptied his desk last week. Finally, we will stop
supporting the Saudis' savagery!
People believe what they need to believe these days, I find, and belief overrides cognition
in many such cases. I caution these people. At bottom Blinken demonstrated for us that no one
who purports to alter our imperial course will ever be allowed to hold high office. For people
such as Blinken, it is merely a question of wielding influence without having any.
This is where Americans live -- in a crumbled republic no longer capable of changing.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International
Herald Tribune , is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is
Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century . Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist . His web site is Patrick Lawrence . Support his work via
his Patreon site .
John Allen aka Ol' Hippy , January 26, 2021 at 12:16
I'm 66, almost 67, and will, most likely, never see any real peace from the US government.
A big portion of the economy is based on imperialist actions and the manufacture of conflicts
around the globe mainly to keeps the arms makers in business. Or simply, war. And no, there
is no nation willing to risk the wrath of the US government by trying to halt this insane
posture of aggression, it's just too big and has a momentum all its own. Biden will continue
unabated this absurd, insanely expensive machine to its eventual implosion in the near
future. All the parts of the fall of the economy are in place, all that's needed is some ill
defined tipping point to be crossed. Perhaps, a war with Iran?
"Blinken has said that America's foreign policy must be conducted with 'humility and
confidence', which may sound refreshingly modest. But it's not. Underlying this 'quiet
American' is the same old arrogance about U.S. imperial might-is-right and Washington's
presumed privilege of appointing itself as the 'world's policeman'.
"If Blinken's record is anything to go on, his future role as America's top diplomat is
foreboding.
"Previously, he was a senior member in the Obama administrations serving as national
security advisor to both the president and Joe Biden who was then vice-president. Blinken
rose to become deputy Secretary of State in the final years of the second Obama
administration. In those roles he was a key player in a series of foreign interventions which
turned out to be utterly disastrous."
The once upon a time manufactured aura of Virtue projected by the Outlaw US Empire that
was swallowed by so many naïve nations has vanished with nothing other than its stark
ugliness as a replacement. Refusal to see that reality is what Xi just referred to again as
"arrogance" which puts Blinken into the same ideological camp as Pompeo. As Global Times notes
, if the Outlaw US Empire's attitude's not going to change, than why should China's as
Pompeo's constant lying is replaced by Psaki's:
"When White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question Monday about US-China
relations, she said that 'China is growing more authoritarian at home and more assertive
abroad,' adding that China 'is engaged in conduct that hurts American workers, blunts [US]
technological edge, and threatens [US] alliances and [US] influence in international
organizations.' She also noted that Washington is 'starting from an approach of patience as
it relates to [its] relationship with China.'"
The editor's response to such inanity:
"Psaki's statement shows that the Biden administration's view and characterization of
China is virtually identical to those of the Trump administration. Psaki stressed that 'We're
in a serious competition with China. Strategic competition with China is a defining feature
of the 21st century,' reflecting that the Biden administration only cares about a "new
approach" to holding China accountable."
And Psaki's words are the same as Blinken's, which were the same as Pompeo's and Trump's.
In other words, the hole digging by the Outlaw US Empire in its relations with the rest of
the world will continue, which will cause further deterioration of its domestic Great
Depression 2.0. Yesterday I posted a comment that highlighted Putin's expounding on the
further enhancement of the educational component of Russia's Social Contract that is
impossible for Navalny's backers to match. On the previous thread, a good comparison was made
between the Yeltsin years and the ongoing drowning of the Outlaw US Empire. The Reset that's
in the works isn't the one envisioned by Global Neoliberals like Klaus Schwab of the
WEF/Davos crew. It's what Xi spoke of yesterday that I commented upon and Escobar reported on
today. The Winds of Change are blowing again, but there's a gaping hole in the USA's wind
sock so it can't see in which direction it's blowing.
blinken is bad news.. i think that is very obvious from a superficial read on him.. the usa
can't get out of the ditch it has made for itself.. nothing is gonna change...
'liberal interventionism' has always been the hallmark of the US Liberal Class and its
foreign policy Establishment, especially since at least Wilson's jumping into WWI.
Has the US ever not intervened in Latin America whenever it felt like it or thought its
"interests" were at stake?
I think Caitlan J. has a good grasp on what to expect from the Biden war mongering crowd
that has recently moved into DC once again:
"....Trump's base has been forcefully pushing the narrative that the previous president
didn't start any new wars, which while technically true ignores his murderous actions like
vetoing the bill to save Yemen from U.S.-backed genocide and actively blocking aid to its
people, murdering untold tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, rolling
out many world-threatening Cold War escalations against Russia, engaging in insane
brinkmanship with Iran, greatly increasing the number of bombs dropped per day from the
previous administration, killing record numbers of civilians, and reducing military
accountability for those airstrikes....
....Rather than a throwback to "new wars" and the old-school ground invasions of the Bush
era, the warmongering we'll be seeing from the Biden administration is more likely to look
like this. More starvation sanctions. More proxy conflicts. More cold war. More coups. More
special ops. More drone strikes. More slow motion strangulation, less ham-fisted overt
warfare...."
---
Simply put, more small scale wars/ops mostly by proxy, more support for local wankers
(like Guaido in Venezuela, who has incredibly little popular support), and more of these
killing sanctions, which are especially pernicious to the civilian populations in vulnerable
countries like Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Nicaragua and Venezuela, etc.
There is no singular "opposition" for Washington to support -- no unified alternative
ideology, least of all one palatable to the West, to replace the current Russian state and
institutions.
Jailed Kremlin foe Navalny being used by West to destabilise Russia: Putin ally
By
Reuters
Staff
3 MIN READ
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being used by the West to try to destabilise Russia, a
prominent hardliner and ally of President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, saying he must be held to account for
repeatedly breaking the law.
Slideshow
(
2 images )
Navalny was remanded in custody for 30 days last week after returning from Germany where he had been recovering from a
nerve agent poisoning. He could face years in jail for parole violations and other legal cases he calls trumped up.
Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council, called for Navalny to face the full force of the law in comments
that offered a glimpse into the mood inside Russia's security establishment after tens of thousands of Navalny's
supporters protested against his jailing on Saturday.
"He (Navalny), this figure, has repeatedly (and) grossly broken Russian legislation, engaging in fraud concerning large
amounts (of money). And as a citizen of Russia he must bear responsibility for his illegal activity in line with the
law," Patrushev told the Argumenty i Fakty media outlet.
"The West needs this figure to destabilise the situation in Russia, for social upheaval, strikes and new Maidans,"
Patrushev said, in a reference to the 2014 revolution in Ukraine that ousted a Moscow-backed president.
When asked about Patrushev's comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was up to a court to make further
decisions in the opposition politician's case and that it was not a matter for the Kremlin.
Police detained more than 3,700 people on Saturday as protesters called on the Kremlin to release Navalny. The Kremlin
said the protests were illegal.
Peskov on Tuesday said there could be no dialogue with illegal protesters, accusing them of behaving aggressively and of
using what he called unprecedented violence against the police.
He said incidences of police violence against protesters, some of which were captured on video, were far fewer and being
investigated.
In a sign that Russian authorities may crack down hard after the protests, the Kommersant newspaper on Tuesday cited
unnamed security sources as saying they may open a criminal investigation that would treat the demonstrations as "mass
unrest".
The West has called for Navalny's release, but the European Union has said it will refrain from fresh sanctions on
Russian individuals if Moscow releases Navalny after 30 days.
News outlets and campaign groups that get cash from overseas could be prevented from
spending money in Russia under proposals put forward by an influential Moscow think tank.
RT obtained a copy of the proposal, addressed to Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev on
Wednesday. Developed by Anton Orlov, director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary
Politics, the draft regulations would effectively ban groups that are registered as "foreign
agents" from making financial payments to individuals.
Orlov claims in his statement that one such organization has been demonstrated to have
"organized unauthorized street political actions in Russian cities." He added: "At
the same time, representatives of the organization disseminated information on social networks
and in the media that they were ready to pay the fines of citizens received as a result of
committing offenses at these events."
It is unclear how this would affect the ability of these groups to pay their staff in
Russia.
A number of organizations have been labeled as foreign agents under government rules,
because they receive significant proportions of their funding from abroad, predominately from
Western governments. Among them are US state-run media outlets Voice of America and RFE/RL, as
well as the opposition-leaning Moscow-based Levada Center.
In March last year, President Vladimir Putin defended the law, comparing it to equivalent
measures in the US and arguing that it "exists simply to protect Russia from external
meddling in its politics."
"Nobody's rights are being infringed on here whatsoever. There is nothing that runs
counter to international practice," he added.
One of the country's most senior parliamentarians, Senator Andrey Klimov, told Rossiya-1
news channel on Sunday that the street protests organized in support of jailed opposition
figure Alexey Navalny last weekend had been orchestrated from outside the country. "The
Senatorial Commission has reason to believe that all these activities are clearly traced to the
actions of foreign states, and it is all happening with the assistance of foreign
specialists," he told the broadcaster.
A number of organizations have been labeled as foreign agents under government rules,
because they receive significant proportions of their funding from abroad, predominately from
Western governments. Among them are US state-run media outlets Voice of America and RFE/RL, as
well as the opposition-leaning Moscow-based Levada Center.
In March last year, President Vladimir Putin defended the law, comparing it to equivalent
measures in the US and arguing that it "exists simply to protect Russia from external
meddling in its politics."
"Nobody's rights are being infringed on here whatsoever. There is nothing that runs
counter to international practice," he added.
One of the country's most senior parliamentarians, Senator Andrey Klimov, told Rossiya-1
news channel on Sunday that the street protests organized in support of jailed opposition
figure Alexey Navalny last weekend had been orchestrated from outside the country. "The
Senatorial Commission has reason to believe that all these activities are clearly traced to the
actions of foreign states, and it is all happening with the assistance of foreign
specialists," he told the broadcaster.
Dachaguy 3 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 09:57 AM
America used their weaponized dollar to fund mercenaries in Syria and we all saw the result
of that. Russia has a duty to prevent that type of attack against Russia. America's Achilles'
Heel is the US dollar, so cutting off its use by foreign agents to fund nefarious activities
is a good place to start.
Count_Cash 3 hours ago 27 Jan, 2021 10:44 AM
Not enough - its time to send the diplomatic note to western countries that Russia considers
itself under attack by Western powers through an info war. Then it should close all foreign
media and campaign groups over night. It cannot be the case that enemy spying posts and
combatants are allowed on Russian soil during conflict!
Incisive and grim. As Mr. Putin observed, Presidents come and go but the policy stays the
same. But wait! I think there's more
WRT Iran. Iran recently announced that their sales of oil had increased substantially,
without, of course identifying how much or with whom. If they are doing these transactions in
national currencies, there's nothing other than piracy that the US can do, making the US more
dependent on our vassals to carry our water here. But
In other news, the EU has decided to stop supporting Guido. If some of the OAS vassals get
the idea that they, too, can stand on at least their two knees, maybe Mr. Maduro can get a
bit more of a break. The US is sure to be wroth.
PACE decided to pass a non-binding resolution of more sanctions against Russia for the
Navalny fiasco while Frau Merkel (and her likely successor) remains clear that Nord Stream II
must be finished. The German FM pointed out that they could face serious court battles since
the Pipeline consortium which includes other EU countries has all the permits they
require.
The results are in aaaaannnnnddd – thanx to Covid, for the first time in history
China had more Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) than the US. The US better hope that doesn't
keep up ..
oe Biden enters the White House with an entourage of faces very familiar to OffGuardian, and
many of those readers who have been with us since the beginning.
Glassy-eyed Jen Psaki is once again taking the White House press briefings. Victoria
"Fuck the EU" Nuland
is going to be secretary of state, and Samantha Power is hoisted back onto a platform from
which she can berate the rest of the world for not following America's "moral example" by
bombing Syria back to the stone age.
It was the machinations of these people – along with Biden as VP, John Kerry as
Secretary of State and of course Barack Obama leading the charge – that lead to the coup
in Ukraine, the war in Donbass and – indirectly – the creation of this website. For
it was our comments on the Guardian telling this truth that got everyone here banned, multiple
times.
So, for us, pointing out cold-war style propaganda is like slipping back into a comfy pair
of shoes.
A good thing too, because with this coterie of neocon-style warmongers comes another
familiar friend: the propaganda war on Putin's Russia. Throughout the media and on every front,
all within hours of Biden's inauguration.
Now, anti-Russia nonsense didn't go away while Trump was President – if anything it
became deranged to the point of literal insanity in many quarters – but it definitely
quietened down in the last 12 months, with the outbreak of the "pandemic".
Of course underneath the standard pot-stirring propaganda to keep the "new cold war" on the
boil, there is the Navalny narrative. An incredibly contrived piece of political theatre that
may even evolve into a full-on attempt at regime change in Moscow.
He knew he would be arrested if he returned to Russia, so his doing so was pure theatre.
That fact is only underlined by the media's reaction to his 30 day jail sentence.
Yes, that's thirty DAYS, not years. He'll be out before spring. Even if he's convicted of
the numerous charges of embezzlement and fraud, he faces only 3 years in prison.
On the same day as Biden's inauguration, the European Parliament announced that Russia
should be punished for arresting Navalny, by having the Nordstream 2 pipeline project
closed down . (Closing this pipeline down would open up the European market to buy US gas,
instead of Russia. This is a complete coincidence).
And then, the day after Biden's inauguration, the European Court of Human Rights announced
they had found Russia guilty of war crimes during the
5-day war in South Ossetia in 2008. The report was subject to a gleeful (and terrible)
write-up by (who else?) Luke Harding. (Why they waited 13 years to make this announcement
remains a mystery)
It doesn't stop there, already Western pundits and
Russian "celebrities" are trying to encourage street protests in support of Alexei Navalny.
An anonymous Guardian editorial states Navalny's
"bravery needs backing" , whatever that means.
But are there bigger aims behind this as well? Do they hope they can create another Maidan
but this time in Moscow? That would be insane, but you can't rule it out.
One thing is for sure, though; they work fast. Less than two days in office, and we've
already got a new colour revolution kicking off. Speedy work.
Reply
captain spam , Jan 25, 2021 7:33 PM
As McFaul said recently, we must combat Putin! His support for traditional Christian
family values is an absolutely intolerable threat to the liberal international order!! What
we desperately need is non stop gay anal sex for everybody, especially children, non stop
free abortions for sluts, and as many child trannies as possible!!! We must force through
this progressive enlightened agenda everywhere!!!!
Bob , Jan 25, 2021 4:15 PM
The overthrow crew is back in business. They will continue chipping away at the old USSR.
Belarus seems pretty ripe, though under Trump CIA failed at the overthrow earlier this year.
But with Victoria Nuland and gang in there we will see a real push to dismantle Russia and
China. Also watch for Islamic terror in Xinjiang in Western China with CIA sponsored Uygher
militants. Jan 24, 2021 6:18 AM
For people who prefer information to propaganda, a little ethnographic insight into the
reality of life in Russia, courtesy of Dr Jeremy Morris:
If it's a CIA only operation, Russians are obviously incredibly gullible and
impressionable, and in surprisingly huge numbers (and this is only one brief snapshot of what
apparently is happening across 11 time zones):
Yup, I'd say there's at least a couple of dozens of people who came together in that show
of discontent toward a government that, if not exactly among the ranks of this particular
riff-raff, is hugely popular.
And then there are these CIA trained Russian provocateurs caught on video:
Navalny has heroically returned to Russia after the dastardly Putins hapless goons
Novichoked his tea/ water bottle/ underpants* delete as appropriate. But at least we are now
seeing the truth emerge from completely impartial and wholly credible CIA funded sources like
the Victims Of Communism Foundation. Now we know the horrific facts about 300 million Weegers
and 500 million Georgians being turned into soap and lamp shades. We must nuke Putins dacha
immediately. Show him we mean business. Its a typical underhand trick of the evil Vlad,
genociding millions of people without leaving any evidence. Further proof of his guilt, if
any were needed.
Charlie , Jan 23, 2021 8:08 PM
Just running a theory by you all, was the Ukraine colour revolution a response to Russian
push-back on the WMD narrative in Syria and Obama's red line that failed the sniff test
(that's bleach, not chloride gas)? Mess in our back yard and we'll mess in yours. If so Putin
handled it very well, all things considered, ended up more secure than before, in spite of
everything.
America,s aim after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990 was to split Russia apart gut
it and subdue it! Playing silly buggers on Russia's border would have happened no matter
what! The globalists want complete control! Georgia Chechnya are other examples of globalist
interference. China is getting the same treatment.
niko , Jan 23, 2021 8:01 PM
Duck and cover the Russians are coming! Prelude to false flag cyberterrorism and the dark
winter? Whatever comes next, we need to start fighting the real enemy.
"Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our
great adversary remains the apparatus -- the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the
one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our
brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No
matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to
this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in
others." -Simone Weil
Charlie , Jan 23, 2021 7:51 PM
Did anyone catch that interview Aaron Mate did with Luke Harding? Think it was while Aaron
was still with the real news. Poor old Luke thought he was talking to a confirmed Democrat
and Aaron took his piece of shit book on Russia 2016 to pieces, well worth a look if it's
still up.
Guy , Jan 23, 2021 7:44 PM
"But are there bigger aims behind this as well? Do they hope they can create another
Maidan but this time in Moscow? That would be insane, but you can't rule it out."
The Western media propaganda machine IS insane . Jealousy in big bold letters because
Russia , Russia seems to be doing quite well economically ,regardless of Western media
machinations.
Mercuns would love to rerun Maidan. I don't think they have the numbers in Rooskia though.
Division, internal conflict, confusion that will have to do for the short term.
dr death , Jan 24, 2021 3:42 PM Reply to
Victor G.
indeed but burger-on-a- bagel land has got plenty of its own now
the thrashing bankrupt golem is about to have its own yeltsin 'moment'..
just lining up the ducks
now where did I put that novichok, I mean icing sugar, I mean mrs mays concealer.
Sometimes it seems a struggle within to assess who I detest more – Karlin or
Navalny. Both are dishonest parasites living off Western sources of funds.
I think I will call it a draw and be done with it.
Correct. I am enough familiar with the Russian language and culture to agree with you, JL.
Not that I know what is true about Mr Putin, but I find it ugly, calling him Vlad, as
ignorant people associate it with an evil creature in Romania.
There are some similarities between Navalny and Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin became known for
attacking the privileges of the nomenclature (as the Communist Party boss of Moscow, no less)
like their access to special shops, luxury cars (by Soviet standards), special healthcare
facilities, nice apartments etc. He was for a time a "star" in Soviet media with this, but
finally Gorbachev got him fired for attacking him and his cronies too.
Mais c'est excellent! Il vient tout d'un coup de monter d'un cran sur mon échelle
de gens potentiellement respectables. Et il a tout à fait raison : un peuple
armé est un peuple libre. Imaginez les Gilets jaunes armés d'AK-47, ça
aurait été une toute autre histoire, n'est-ce pas ?
"But on the off chance I am wrong, Russians will only prove themselves morons."
You would be absolutely right if it turned out that way and there would be no help for the
Russians, just as the American simpletons who balk at the notion of compensating the three
branches of the United States government adequately leading to the pernicious influence from
the likes of the late Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban among others.
We should pay our representatives one million dollars a piece and two million for senators
but the chief executive must be paid at least fifteen million dollars per anum if not more to
keep out interlopers and the whole shebang would amount to little more than one billion
dollars which would be a drop in the bucket to save the nation from the predators.
Erdogan trying to, quote, ' ..preserve human nature, ' ?
As far as I know neither Orban nor Hungary have been involved in mass murder and invasions of
sovereign countries lately.
Sutan Erdogan is an IslamoFascist dictator, who was instrumental ( .together with US, KSA,
Israel, UK, France, ..) in training, arming, and sending cannibalistic head-chopper
terrorists into Syria, resulting in the deaths of several hundred thousand innocent
Syrians.
Orban is a Hungarian Christian nationalist, trying to defend Hungary from
GloboSorosization.
Sultan Erdogan is an IslamoFascist head of a genocidal, criminal state.
The presentation of Navalni's "investigation" on YouTube has collected millions of
comments in no time. A native speaker has noticed that there were the same identical comments
that appeared thousands of times under different names. Looks like a computer-generated wave
of responses.
I'm sure many others have realized what I have; although it is rarely put into words. It
seems like the columnists here who write about Russia are falling into the idiot binary view
that can be expressed as follows: "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Sometimes this is
true. Often times, the enemy of my enemy is an even worse enemy. Just because Russia is
clearly not under the thumb of the creeps in Washington dos NOT mean that Russia is the
beacon of justice, truth, and freedom. Do not lose sight of the fact that the current
(((elites))) are GLOBAL and their original source of influence and power is international
finance (greatly expanded by fiat systems). The covid response and vaccine push as carried
out by Russia should be an eye opener to anyone who doubts the fact that they are heavily
compromised. Remember, Abortion (murdering a baby) has been legal in Russia for most of a
century and they had/have some of the highest rates of abortion in the world. It is estimated
that well over 100 million babies have been murdered, LEGALLY. The utter evil of this cannot
be put into words. I detest the post-christian, perverted west. IS Russia any better? in some
ways, perhaps. But at the end of the day, we must not allow ourselves to fall into the idiot
binary view that because one group is bad, its (alleged) adversaries are good.
@Ray
Caruso d that the US Embassy ought to explain why they had posted a series of 'protest
routes' marking the locations where demonstrators planned to mee t. "One can only imagine
what would have happened if the Russian Embassy in Washington published a map of protest
routes indicating the end point, for example, in the Capitol," Maria Zakharova said. "Giving
directions to those on the ground would have led to global hysteria among American
politicians, Russophobic slogans, threats of sanctions and the expulsion of Russian
diplomats."
It is time to remind the US Embassy staff about what was done to Maria Butina for nothing by
the lawless US. The Russian Federation should boot out the American subversives.
He must know this. He must also know that his electoral prospects are nil – even if he
was allowed to compete and given access. Short of a revolution he is done, and
revolution is not coming, too soon. That is not a good place to be. He is in theory protected
by his sponsors, but that may not amount to much if things get hot. At best he would get
exchanged. Or he can quietly slip away after a few years if he is lucky.
Mulatto did his job, now mulatto can go. A single-use politician who is endlessly promoted,
celebrated, and then discarded and forgotten, only to be listed on a sad list of names to
demonise the enemy. That enemy is his own country, is that really heroism?
McFaul cautions against what he refers to as "Putin's ideological project" as a
threat to the neoliberal international order. Yet he is reluctant to recognize that the
neoliberal international order is an American ideological project for the post-Cold War
era.
After the Cold War, neoliberal ideologues advanced what was seemingly a benign proposition
– suggesting that neoliberal democracy should be at the center of security strategies.
However, by linking neoliberal norms to US leadership, neoliberalism became both a
constitutional principle and an international hegemonic norm.
NATO is presented as a community of neoliberal values – without mentioning that its
second largest member, Turkey, is more conservative and authoritarian than Russia – and
Moscow does not, therefore, have any legitimate reasons to oppose expansionism unless it fears
democracy. If Russia reacts negatively to military encirclement, it is condemned as an enemy of
democracy, and NATO has a moral responsibility to revert to its original mission as a military
bloc containing Russia.
Case in point: there was nobody in Moscow advocating for the reunification with Crimea until
the West supported the coup in Ukraine. Yet, as Western "fact checkers" and McFaul
inform us, there was a "democratic revolution" and not a coup. Committed to his
ideological prism, McFaul suggests that Russia acted out of a fear of having a democracy on its
borders, as it would give hope to Russians and thus threaten the Kremlin. McFaul's ideological
lens masks conflicting national security interests, and it fails to explain why Russia does not
mind democratic neighbors in the east, such as South Korea and Japan, with whom it enjoys good
relations.
Defending the peoples
States aspiring for global hegemony have systemic incentives to embrace ideologies that
endow them with the right to defend other peoples. The French National Convention declared in
1792 that France would "come to the aid of all peoples who are seeking to recover their
liberty," and the Bolsheviks proclaimed in 1917 "the duty to render assistance, armed,
if necessary, to the fighting proletariat of the other countries."
The American neoliberal international order similarly aims to liberate the people of the
world with "democracy promotion" and "humanitarian interventionism" when it
conveniently advances US primacy. The American ideological project infers that democracy is
advanced by US interference in the domestic affairs of Russia, while democracy is under attack
if Russia interferes in the domestic affairs of US. The neoliberal international system is one
of sovereign inequality to advance global primacy.
McFaul does not consider himself a Russophobe, as believes his attacks against Russia are
merely motivated by the objective of liberating Russians from their government, which is why he
advocates that Biden "distinguish between Russia and Russians – between Putin and the
Russian people." This has been the modus operandi for regime change since the end of the
Cold War – the US supposedly does not attack countries to advance its interests, it only
altruistically assists foreign peoples in rival states against their leaders such as Slobodan
Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin etc.
McFaul and other neoliberal ideologues still refer to NATO as a "defensive alliance,"
which does not make much sense after the attacks on Yugoslavia in 1999 or Libya in 2011.
However, under the auspices of neoliberal internationalism, NATO is defensive, as it defends
the people of the world. Russia, therefore, doesn't have rational reasons for opposing the
neoliberal international order.
McFaul condemns alleged efforts by Russia to interfere in the domestic affairs of the US,
before outlining his strategies for interfering in the domestic affairs of Russia. McFaul
blames Russian paranoia for shutting down American "non-governmental organizations" that
are funded by the US government and staffed by people linked to the US security apparatus. He
goes on to explain that the US government must counter this by establishing new
"non-government organizations" to educate the Russian public about the evils of their
government.
The dangerous appeal of ideologues
Ideologues have always been dangerous to international security. Ideologies of human freedom
tend to promise perpetual peace. Yet, instead of transcending power politics, the ideals of
human freedom are linked directly to hegemonic power by the self-proclaimed defender of the
ideology. When ideologues firmly believe that the difference between the current volatile world
and utopia can be bridged by defeating its opponents, it legitimizes radical power
politics.
Consequently, there is no sense of irony among the McFauls of the world as US security
strategy is committed to global dominance, while berating Russia for "revisionism."
Raymond Aaron once wrote: "Idealistic diplomacy slips too often into fanaticism; it divides
states into good and evil, into peace-loving and bellicose. It envisions a permanent peace by
the punishment of the latter and the triumph of the former. The idealist, believing he has
broken with power politics, exaggerates its crimes."
If you like this story, share it with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Ghanima223 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:36 AM
In short, the tables have turned since the end of the Cold War. It is no longer communist
ideologues that try to export revolution and chaos while the western world would promote
stability and free markets. Now it's western ideologues that are trying to export revolutions
and chaos while clamping down on free markets with Russia, as ironically as it sounds, being
a force for stability and a strong proponent for the free exchange of goods and services
around the world. The west will lose just as the USSR has lost.
US_did_911 Ghanima223 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 01:01 AM
The Dollar is the only fake reason that still keeps US afloat. The moment that goes, it loss
will be a lot worse then of USSR.
US_did_911 Ghanima223 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 12:58 AM
That happened not exactly after the end of the cold war. It was about even for a decade after
that. The real u-turn happened after the 9/11 false flag disaster.
Amvet 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 10:00 AM
Foreign dangers are necessary to keep the attention of the American people away from the 20
ton elephant in the room--the fact that 9/11 was not a foreign attack. Should any of the main
stream media suddenly turn honest and report this in detail, things will get interesting.
King_Penda 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:11 AM
I wouldn't worry too much. At the same time Biden will be purging the US military of any men
of capability and replacing them trans and political appointments. The traditional areas
where the military recruited it's grunts are falling as they are waking up to the hostility
of the state to their culture and way of life. The US military will end up a rump of queerss,
off work due to stress or perceived persecution and fat doughballs sat in warehouses
performing drone strikes on goats.
Fjack1415 King_Penda 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 01:20 PM
Yes, you point to a paradox. While the globalists are using the US as their military arm for
global domination, they are at the same time destroying the country that supports that
military. Perhaps the US military will be maintained by dint of its being the only employer
for millions of unemployed young men in the American heartland, doughballs or not.
Ghanima223 King_Penda 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:39 AM
Ideologues will always be more concerned with having political reliable military leadership
as opposed to actually qualified leaders. It took the Russians 2 decades to purge their own
military of this filth of incompetent 'yes' men within their military.
UKCitizen 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:09 AM
'The Liberal International Order' - yes, that seems a fair description. Led by what might be
termed 'liberal fundamentalists'.
far_cough 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 07:01 AM
the military industrial complex and the various deep state agencies along with the major
corporations need russia as an adversary so that they can milk the american people and the
people of the western world of their money, rights, freedoms, etc etc...
roby007 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:54 AM
I'm sure Biden will pursue "peaceful, productive coexistence" just as his friend Obama did,
with drones and bombs.
Paul Citro 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:16 AM
I hope that Russian leaders fully realize that they are dealing with a country that is the
equivalent of psychotic.
Fjack1415 Paul Citro 1 day ago 23 Jan, 2021 01:26 PM
True, the ruling party and MSM mouthpieces and their readers and followers are now truly
INSANE. Beyond redemption. Staggering in the depth and power of the subversion of so many
people, including many with high IQs (like my ex girlfriend and housemate in the US).
Anastasia Deko 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 10:57 AM
US security strategy is committed to global dominance
Absolutely. Biden has filled up his admin with "progressive realists," which
when it comes to foreign policy, is just a euphuism for neocons and their lust for world
empire. So expect an unleashing of forces in the coming two years that will finally humble
America's war machine.
tyke2939 Anastasia Deko 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 01:07 PM
They are desperate for a war with someone but it must be someone they can beat convincingly.
It certainly will not be Russia or China and I suspect Iran will be a huge battle even with
Israel s backing. More than likely they will invade some country like Venezuela as Syria has
Russia covering its back. What a dilemma who to fight.
9/11 Truther Anastasia Deko 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 11:24 AM
The "American war machine" has been humbled from Saigon, Vietnam 1975 to Kabul, Afghanistan.
Salmigoni 2 days ago 22 Jan, 2021 09:25 AM
They are not really liberals. They are blood thirsty parasitic neoconservative fascist war
mongers working for the Pentagon contractors. General Eisenhower warned us about these evil
people. A lot of Americans still do not get it.
@annamaria
or wish it well – and everyone knows that.
He must know this. He must also know that his electoral prospects are nil – even if
he was allowed to compete and given access. Short of a revolution he is done, and
revolution is not coming, too soon. That is not a good place to be. He is in theory protected
by his sponsors, but that may not amount to much if things get hot. At best he would get
exchanged. Or he can quietly slip away after a few years if he is lucky.
Mulatto did his job, now mulatto can go. A single-use politician who is endlessly
promoted, celebrated, and then discarded and forgotten, only to be listed on a sad list of
names to demonise the enemy. That enemy is his own country, is that really heroism?
He is a nationalist like the Maiden. Maiden in power promoted with violence anti-Russian
hysteria. This action created a civil war since a large part of Ukraine are Russian
speakers.
Navalny, if in power, would do something similar as in Ukraine. Act as a Nationalist of
only the Russians in the Russian Federation. Get all the other peoples of the Russian
Federation to break away or stir up a civil war.
Within a few years, put in place Zion/USA puppets like Poroshenko and Zelensky. Look at
the recent Ukrainegate Impeachment trial, almost everyone supporting Ukrainegate trial was
Jewish, even the Ukrainians in this sham trial. .
This is not about bringing down Putin but about dismembering Russia and ending its
sovereignty
The easiest proxy here is the 1990s campaign against Milosevic (the campaign) as a tool to
dismember Yugoslavia
Russia is too rich, too week and is refusing to surrender, hence it will be divided
between and
Absorbed on one side by China and on the other side/s by USA and EUSA
The initial planning for disintegration of Russia was drafted in the NSC directive in
1948
West of Russia to Urals will be absorbed by EU/(Germany)
East of Russia to Yenisei will be controlled by US/(Japan)
China will take over hte greatest price – everything between Urals and Yenisei
Putin with his United Russia/One Russia Party is a major obstacle to the master plan
and
will therefore
be eliminated
whether one likes it or not
@annamaria
from his sponsors are of little use in his current situation.
I find the Western coverage of this affair absurdly propagandistic. A few things are never
mentioned:
– what was Navalny convicted off – fraud
– that he is not by any stretch of imagination the "opposition" leader – his
party has not reached even 5% required to be represented in the parliament
There is also an omission of why Russia claims "interference" – because US Embassy
published the routes for the demos. And many of the demonstrators are paid one way on
another by the West – if the situation was reversed, liberals would call for a war
(as they basically did with Trump's allegations).
"... Not surprisingly, Blinken is a favorite of the AIPAC-bankrolled Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which, as Phil Giraldi reported , Tweeted that Blinken would be part of a " superb national security team. The country will be very fortunate to have them in public service." ..."
"... We have Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to thank for at least bringing up the fact that Blinken has blundered from foreign policy disaster to foreign policy disaster – which only gets you promoted in Washington DC. In Blinken's confirmation hearing, Paul reminded Blinken of his addiction to intervention in the Middle East and how that has worked out for everyone. ..."
"... Yes, Senator Paul is right. "Regime change" doesn't work. It kills or destroys the lives of the most vulnerable. The poor and the innocent. The US enemies may occasionally find themselves on the wrong end of a noose or a knife rape , but it is the civilians who always suffer when they are "liberated" by Washington. ..."
"... Buckle up, as incoming Senate Majority Leader Schumer advised, there's a whole lot of interventionism in the queue. There's a whole lot of death and destruction to be unleashed by Biden, Blinken, and their gang of " humanitarians ." ..."
While the saccharine continues to ooze from the mainstream media for the incoming Biden
Administration, the real iron fist of what will be the Biden foreign policy is starting to
materialize. As if on cue, major bombings in Baghdad – by ISIS remember them? –
have
opened the door for the Biden Administration to not only cancel President Trump's troop
drawdown from Iraq but to actually begin sending troops back into Iraq.
Is this to be Iraq War 4.0? 3.7? 5.0? Anybody's guess.
If Biden uses this sudden – and convenient – unrest in Iraq as a trigger to
return US troops (and bombs), it should not surprise anyone. As Professor Barbara Ransby points
out in this video , Biden did much
more to make the disastrous 2003 attack on Iraq happen than just vote "yes" on the
authorization to use force. As Professor Ransby reminds us, Biden used the full power of his
position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ensure the Senate approved
George W. Bush's lie-based war on Iraq. Biden prevented any experts who challenged the "Saddam
has WMDs and he's about to use them" narrative from being heard by Members of Congress,
guaranteeing that only the pro-war narrative was heard.
As much as Bush or Cheney, Biden owns the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which killed a million
Iraqi civilians. And he may well be taking us back.
One figure in the Biden Administration who will play a pivotal role in returning the US to
its hyper-interventionism in the Middle East is Secretary of State nominee Anthony Blinken . As
a Biden Senate staffer in 2003, he helped the then-Foreign Relations Committee Chairman put
together a pro-war coalition in the Democratic Party to support President Bush's Republican
push for invasion.
Later on Blinken was Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor, where he successfully made
the case that destroying both Libya and Syria were fantastic ideas. Both countries drowned in
the Obama Administration's "liberation" bloodbath and neither country has recovered from the
"democracy" brought by Washington, but being a neocon foreign policy ideologue means never
having to say you're sorry.
And Blinken isn't.
Not surprisingly, Blinken is a favorite of the AIPAC-bankrolled Foundation for the Defense
of Democracies, which, as Phil Giraldi reported ,
Tweeted that Blinken would be part of a " superb national security team. The country will be
very fortunate to have them in public service."
We have Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to thank for at least bringing up the fact that Blinken has
blundered from foreign policy disaster to foreign policy disaster – which only gets you
promoted in Washington DC. In Blinken's confirmation hearing, Paul reminded Blinken of his
addiction to intervention in the Middle East and how that has worked out for everyone.
Paul reminded the Secretary of State nominee that his only criticism of the Syria "regime
change" plan was that the US did not successfully overthrow Assad. But the US was using
jihadist proxies to overthrow the
secular Assad , so what does this say about Blinken's judgement?
"The lesson of these wars," said
Paul , is that 'regime change' doesn't work!"
Paul added:
Even after Libya you guys went on to Syria wanting to do the same thing again it's a
disaster.
You got rid of one 'bad guy' and another 'bad guy' got stronger.
Yes, Senator Paul is right. "Regime change" doesn't work. It kills or destroys the lives of
the most vulnerable. The poor and the innocent. The US enemies may occasionally find themselves
on the wrong end of a
noose or a
knife rape , but it is the civilians who always suffer when they are "liberated" by
Washington.
Buckle up, as incoming Senate Majority Leader Schumer advised, there's a whole lot of
interventionism in the queue. There's a whole lot of death and destruction to be unleashed by
Biden, Blinken, and their gang of " humanitarians ."
*
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After the Coup in Ukraine in 2014 for several years I listened weekly to the John
Batchelor show when he interviewed Russia scholar the late Stephen Cohen.
From those conversations I learned that Ukraine is politically divided EAST (pro European
Union) / WEST (pro Russian) (a bit like the United States is divided RED / BLUE).
Politically by vote Ukraine was close to 50% pro E.U., 50% pro Russia.
After the Coup Crimea voted to return to Russia thus making the political breakdown of
Ukraine more pro E.U.
Forbes Magazine in 2008 republished an interview with Soviet critic Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn, among other things, noted 1) in 1919 Lenin in bringing Ukraine into the
Soviet Union gave Ukraine "several Russian provinces to assuage her feelings," 2) that when
in 1954 Khrushchev gave Crimea to Ukraine Sevastopol was not transferred to Ukraine as
Sevastopol was a military city subject to the Central Government of the U.S.S.R.
I would note that Khrushchev's transfer of Crimea to Ukraine violated Soviet Law /
Constitution as the people of Crimea were not asked if they wanted to be transferred.
At the time I did some searching about the history of Crimea and Ukraine and it turns out
that shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union Crimea wanted to separate from Ukraine and
the Central Government of Ukraine threatened to invade Crimea.
The Central Government of Ukraine in its Constitution gave Crimea a special status not
given other provinces.
I would note that in October 1962 Joe Biden was 19 years 11 months old and likely a
college student. In October 1962 the world came close to ending (at least a good deal of the
so called civilized world) with the Cuban Missile Crisis.
However, in 2014, ignoring the warning of Robert F. Kennedy of the need to put yourself in
the other Country's shoes, Biden supported the violent Coup which essentially included a
violent takeover of the Ukrainian Parliament (Rada) by violent protesters, much akin to the
Trump Taliban taking over the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
It seems that Biden thought that NATO could just move into Sevastopol and take over not
just the port of the Russian navy, but the Russian Navy itself.
An academic study carried out by researchers in the US and Germany has concluded that
big-tech elites are completely different to all other people on the planet, and can be placed
in their own class.
"Our research contributes to closing a research gap in societies with rising inequalities,"
note the authors of the study from two German universities and the Ralph Bunche Institute
for International Studies in New York.
The research
centres around analysing language used in close to 50,000 tweets and other online statements by
100 of the richest tech-elites as listed by Forbes.
The researchers conclude that big-tech elites such as Mark
Zuckerberg and
Bill Gates display a 'meritocratic' worldview, meaning they do not see wealth as a source
of their influence or success, but rather believe their innate abilities and more altruistic
beliefs have enabled them to achieve power.
"We find that the 100 richest members of the tech world reveal distinctive attitudes that
set them apart both from the general population and from other wealthy elites," the study
states.
The findings reveal that big-tech elites consistently talk about believing in democracy,
being philanthropic, and helping make the world a better place for other people.
"Yet their position in a democratic system is contradictory – as a result of their
enormous wealth, they have disproportionate influence over how discretionary income is
spent," the researchers note.
The researchers found that language used by the tech-elites regularly includes words such as
'merit', 'distinct', 'excellent', 'value', 'virtue', 'advantage', 'superiority', 'worth',
'perfect', 'important' and 'significant'.
"The tech elite may be thought of as a 'class for itself' in Marx's sense – a social
group that shares particular views of the world, which in this case means meritocratic,
missionary, and inconsistent democratic ideology."
The researchers noted that the study had limitations, ironically owing to the fact that they
were not able to access language used by all the top 100 tech-elites because Twitter is banned
in China.
The Twitter accounts they were able to access could also be managed by PR professionals and
are obviously public projections of how the tech elites want to be thought of by the public at
large, therefore the language used may be 'strategic'.
Nevertheless, the findings go some way to explaining why big-tech elites are so inclined to
censor and
de-platform those who hold world views at odds with their own.
ay_arrow
josie0802 12 hours ago remove link
Big Tech feeds on narcissist tendencies in people. As long as you engage you are part of
the problem. Once you leave you might be part of the solution.
LetThemEatRand 18 hours ago remove link
Ironically, most of history's psychopaths were nerds before they gained power. If you want
a basic psychology lesson, they have an axe to grind.
BluCapitalist PREMIUM 18 hours ago remove link
Also grandiosity. Their wealth is self fulfilling. Hitler thought the same of himself
in4mayshun 17 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Agreed. Deep down they know how pathetic they are. Even more sad is that they aren't even
smart enough to make their own billions; These technologies were entrusted to them in
exchange for selling out humanity.
"... Consequently, there is no sense of irony among the McFauls of the world as US security strategy is committed to global dominance, while berating Russia for "revisionism." ..."
ByGlenn Diesen, Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, and an editor at the Russia in Global
Affairs journal. Follow him on Twitter @glenndiesen
Donald Trump's efforts to reduce the ideologically driven base of US foreign policy fuelled great resentment among those who believed
it betrayed Washington's leadership position in the so-called "liberal international order."
Now that power has changed, will the pendulum swing in the opposite direction, with Joe Biden's administration applying a radical
ideological foreign policy?
A recent article by Michael McFaul, once Barack Obama's ambassador to Russia and a noted 'Russiagate' conspiracy theorist, indicates
what such an ideological foreign policy would look like. McFaul's article, 'How to Contain Putin's Russia', makes a case for a containment
policy.
Containment: learning from the past or living in the past?
To advance his argument, McFaul quotes George Kennan, the author of the Long Telegram and architect of erstwhile US containment
policy against the Soviet Union. McFaul suggests that Kennan's advocacy for a "patient but firm and vigilant containment"
against the revolutionary Bolshevik regime 75 years ago remains as valid as ever.
It would have made more sense to
quote Kennan when
he condemned NATO expansionism and predicted it would trigger another Cold War. As Kennan noted: "there was no reason for this
whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their
graves."
Kennan continued to express disbelief over the rhetoric by the misinformed US leadership, presenting "Russia as a country dying
to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now
we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime."
Kennan then went on to correctly predict that, when Russia would eventually react to US provocations, the NATO expanders would wrongfully
blame Russia.
Ideologues often have nostalgia for the Cold War, when the bipolar power distribution was supported by a clear and comfortable
ideological divide. The Western bloc represented capitalism, Christianity, and democracy, while the Eastern bloc represented communism,
atheism, and authoritarianism. This ideological divide supported internal cohesion within the Western bloc and drew clear borders
with the adversary.
The liberal international order has attempted to recast the former capitalist-communist divide with a liberal-authoritarian divide.
However, the ideological incompatibility between American liberalism and Russian conservatism is less convincing. For example, McFaul
cautions against Putin's nefarious conservative ideology committed to "Christian, traditional family values" that threatens
the liberal international order.
The new ideological divide nonetheless advances neo-McCarthyism in the West. McFaul presents a list of European conservatives
and populists that should be treated as American conservatives, purged from political life as enemies of the liberal international
order and thus possible agents of Russia. Hillary Clinton even suggested that the Capitol Hill riots were possibly coordinated by
Trump and Putin – yes, Russiagate is here to stay. The solution, for McFaul, is for American tech oligarchs to manipulate algorithms
to protect populations from Russian-friendly media.
An American ideological project
McFaul cautions against what he refers to as "Putin's ideological project" as a threat to the liberal international order.
Yet he is reluctant to recognize that the liberal international order is an American ideological project for the post-Cold War era.
After the Cold War, liberal ideologues advanced what was seemingly a benign proposition – suggesting that liberal democracy should
be at the center of security strategies. However, by linking liberal norms to US leadership, liberalism became both a constitutional
principle and an international hegemonic norm.
NATO is presented as a community of liberal values – without mentioning that its second largest member, Turkey, is more conservative
and authoritarian than Russia – and Moscow does not, therefore, have any legitimate reasons to oppose expansionism unless it fears
democracy. If Russia reacts negatively to military encirclement, it is condemned as an enemy of democracy, and NATO has a moral responsibility
to revert to its original mission as a military bloc containing Russia.
Case in point: there was nobody in Moscow advocating for the reunification with Crimea until the West supported the coup in Ukraine.
Yet, as Western "fact checkers" and McFaul inform us, there was a "democratic revolution" and not a coup. Committed
to his ideological prism, McFaul suggests that Russia acted out of a fear of having a democracy on its borders, as it would give
hope to Russians and thus threaten the Kremlin. McFaul's ideological lens masks conflicting national security interests, and it fails
to explain why Russia does not mind democratic neighbors in the east, such as South Korea and Japan, with whom it enjoys good relations.
Defending the peoples
States aspiring for global hegemony have systemic incentives to embrace ideologies that endow them with the right to defend other
peoples. The French National Convention declared in 1792 that France would "come to the aid of all peoples who are seeking to
recover their liberty," and the Bolsheviks proclaimed in 1917 "the duty to render assistance, armed, if necessary, to the
fighting proletariat of the other countries."
The American liberal international order similarly aims to liberate the people of the world with "democracy promotion"
and "humanitarian interventionism" when it conveniently advances US primacy. The American ideological project infers that
democracy is advanced by US interference in the domestic affairs of Russia, while democracy is under attack if Russia interferes
in the domestic affairs of US. The liberal international system is one of sovereign inequality to advance global primacy.
McFaul does not consider himself a Russophobe, as believes his attacks against Russia are merely motivated by the objective of
liberating Russians from their government, which is why he advocates that Biden "distinguish between Russia and Russians – between
Putin and the Russian people." This has been the modus operandi for regime change since the end of the Cold War – the US supposedly
does not attack countries to advance its interests, it only altruistically assists foreign peoples in rival states against their
leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin etc.
McFaul and other liberal ideologues still refer to NATO as a "defensive alliance," which does not make much sense after
the attacks on Yugoslavia in 1999 or Libya in 2011. However, under the auspices of liberal internationalism, NATO is defensive, as
it defends the people of the world. Russia, therefore, doesn't have rational reasons for opposing the liberal international order.
McFaul condemns alleged efforts by Russia to interfere in the domestic affairs of the US, before outlining his strategies for
interfering in the domestic affairs of Russia. McFaul blames Russian paranoia for shutting down American "non-governmental organizations"
that are funded by the US government and staffed by people linked to the US security apparatus. He goes on to explain that the US
government must counter this by establishing new "non-government organizations" to educate the Russian public about the evils
of their government.
The dangerous appeal of ideologues
Ideologues have always been dangerous to international security. Ideologies of human freedom tend to promise perpetual peace.
Yet, instead of transcending power politics, the ideals of human freedom are linked directly to hegemonic power by the self-proclaimed
defender of the ideology. When ideologues firmly believe that the difference between the current volatile world and utopia can be
bridged by defeating its opponents, it legitimizes radical power politics.
Consequently, there is no sense of irony among the McFauls of the world as US security strategy is committed to global dominance,
while berating Russia for "revisionism."
Raymond Aaron once wrote: "Idealistic diplomacy slips too often into fanaticism; it divides states into good and evil, into
peace-loving and bellicose. It envisions a permanent peace by the punishment of the latter and the triumph of the former. The idealist,
believing he has broken with power politics, exaggerates its crimes."
If you like this story, share it with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent
those of RT.
"... "Blinken acknowledged that the US must set an example at home on what it preaches abroad. He also stressed the need for "humility". But he insisted nonetheless that the US' global leadership "still matters" since the world is incapable of organising itself "when we're not leading," as some other country may usurp America's lead role impacting "our interests and values", or, simply, chaos may follow! ..."
"... At any rate, Blinken has pledged to "revitalise American diplomacy" and address the challenges of "rising nationalism, reseeding democracy, growing rivalry from China, and Russia and other authoritarian states, mounting threats to a stable and open international system and a technological revolution that is reshaping every aspect of our lives, especially in cyberspace." ..."
I would not set too much store by Plato's political philosophy. For Plato, the political
ideal was a society of three layers: philosopher kings who rule, guardians (the military),
producers / workers.
Ideally philosopher kings would be trained from childhood, adolescence or young adulthood
onwards to be rational and to think in terms of what is best for society as a whole. They
would be trained to be selfless and to shun the pursuit of material wealth.
There are many criticisms that can be made of Plato's ideal society. One such criticism
among others is that philosopher kings / rulers may have a very narrow idea of what is best
for society as a whole and may lead their people into trouble with, erm, "noble lies" (in
whatever form the propaganda and the cultural conditioning take - and when does a "noble" lie
cease to be "noble" and become just plain outright manipulation and falsehood?) if they
confuse their own interests with the interests of society, when the reality is that their
interests as philosopher kings and the interests of the rest of society are far apart.
The irony I've just uncovered is that the present system of government that exists in the
US looks a little too much like Plato's ideal.
@ Jen | Jan 21 2021 0:50 utc | 114... thanks jen... i was waiting to find out from
juliania, but i appreciate your take on this which seems fairly informed... i know nothing
about all of it, but it was an interesting idea cross purposing bidens inaugurations speech
with platos idea of a or the noble lie... the problem with ideals, is they are hard to live
in reality, thus they remain ideals only.. it sems philosopher kings and political leaders
rely heavily on ideals to make a pitch to the public.. not everyone is receptive to them
though... thanks for your input!
"Blinken acknowledged that the US must set an example at home on what it preaches abroad.
He also stressed the need for "humility". But he insisted nonetheless that the US' global
leadership "still matters" since the world is incapable of organising itself "when we're not
leading," as some other country may usurp America's lead role impacting "our interests and
values", or, simply, chaos may follow!
Now, that's an extraordinary boast so soon after the Capitol Riots whose leitmotif was
Chaos in capital "C". Blinken made a laughable claim. But it also betrays delusional
thinking.
At any rate, Blinken has pledged to "revitalise American diplomacy" and address the
challenges of "rising nationalism, reseeding democracy, growing rivalry from China, and
Russia and other authoritarian states, mounting threats to a stable and open international
system and a technological revolution that is reshaping every aspect of our lives, especially
in cyberspace."
@follyofwar
hat Trump did not, and for which Trump deserves credit: NOT attacking Iran; NOT starting a
war in the Donbass region of Ukraine; and NOT escalating the attack on Syria to the point
where Syria collapses and Al-Nusra and ISIS terrorists take over (which is what Israel has
openly said they would prefer to Assad!) And I am NOT a 'Trumper', think he was a disgusting
zionist boot-licker, and that he didn't do diddly squat of what he promised to do for the
average American, but sure kissed Wall Street's bottom. The problem is, Bidet may be worse,
if his past is any indication.
Regardless, the next four years are gonna be ugly, really ugly, foreign policy-wise, I'm
afraid ..
I would not set too much store by Plato's political philosophy. For Plato, the political
ideal was a society of three layers: philosopher kings who rule, guardians (the military),
producers / workers.
Ideally philosopher kings would be trained from childhood, adolescence or young adulthood
onwards to be rational and to think in terms of what is best for society as a whole. They
would be trained to be selfless and to shun the pursuit of material wealth.
There are many criticisms that can be made of Plato's ideal society. One such criticism
among others is that philosopher kings / rulers may have a very narrow idea of what is best
for society as a whole and may lead their people into trouble with, erm, "noble lies" (in
whatever form the propaganda and the cultural conditioning take - and when does a "noble" lie
cease to be "noble" and become just plain outright manipulation and falsehood?) if they
confuse their own interests with the interests of society, when the reality is that their
interests as philosopher kings and the interests of the rest of society are far apart.
The irony I've just uncovered is that the present system of government that exists in the
US looks a little too much like Plato's ideal.
@ Jen | Jan 21 2021 0:50 utc | 114... thanks jen... i was waiting to find out from
juliania, but i appreciate your take on this which seems fairly informed... i know nothing
about all of it, but it was an interesting idea cross purposing bidens inaugurations speech
with platos idea of a or the noble lie... the problem with ideals, is they are hard to live
in reality, thus they remain ideals only.. it sems philosopher kings and political leaders
rely heavily on ideals to make a pitch to the public.. not everyone is receptive to them
though... thanks for your input!
"Blinken acknowledged that the US must set an example at home on what it preaches abroad.
He also stressed the need for "humility". But he insisted nonetheless that the US' global
leadership "still matters" since the world is incapable of organising itself "when we're not
leading," as some other country may usurp America's lead role impacting "our interests and
values", or, simply, chaos may follow!
Now, that's an extraordinary boast so soon after the Capitol Riots whose leitmotif was
Chaos in capital "C". Blinken made a laughable claim. But it also betrays delusional
thinking. At any rate, Blinken has pledged to "revitalise American diplomacy" and address the
challenges of "rising nationalism, reseeding democracy, growing rivalry from China, and
Russia and other authoritarian states, mounting threats to a stable and open international
system and a technological revolution that is reshaping every aspect of our lives, especially
in cyberspace."
Senator Rand Paul recently challenged the new Secretary of State nominee Anthony Blinken on
his history of pushing regime change in the Middle East and North Africa:
"Regime change in the Middle East has led to chaos, instability and more terrorism," Sen.
Paul argued.
"Like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton you've been a supporter of military intervention in
the Middle East from the Iraq war to the Libyan war to the Syrian civil war..." he introduced
in his Tuesday questoning of Blinken.
Sen. Paul began his argument by questioning Blinken's role in the NATO intervention of Libya
in 2001 and his support for the US military invasion of Iraq in 2003, which the Kentucky
congressman said was a major disaster that paved the way for a stronger Iran.
The congressman argued that Blinken continued to push regime change in Syria, which he said
was a significant blunder, especially with the amount of money spent training "moderate rebel
forces" .
Sen. Paul said the administration of former President Barack Obama spent $250 million (USD)
on training 60 rebels [as part of the DoD side; the CIA program was much more expansive], which
he said was a waste of money.
He would go on to question why Blinken would support the Syrian opposition groups on the
ground, as he pointed out the most powerful fighters are those from the jihadist groups like
the Al-Nusra Front .
"Even after Libya you guys went on to Syria wanting to do the same thing again... it's a
disaster. The lesson of these wars is that regime change doesn't work!" Paul said.
"You got rid of one 'bad guy' and another 'bad guy' got stronger," Paul added while
lambasting the US strategy of going after Iran while Iraq is still weakened by Bush's regime
change war there.
"Maybe we shouldn't be 'choosing' governments in the Middle East," Paul continued.
Blinken claimed in response that he wasn't supportive of a full-scale 'Iraq-style' regime
change war in Syria while vaguely claiming that he's done "deep thinking" and reflection on the
issue . Blinken never repudiated the policy of regime change in the Middle East, however.
Sen. Paul then shifted his attention to NATO, which he said Blinken was trying to strengthen
for the purpose of combatting Russia. The senator said Blinken's policy on NATO would lead to
war with Russia, which the latter responded would have the opposite effect.
Paul concluded by saying that regime change needs to end because it is involving the US in
long wars that are costly to the military.
The Luftwaffe 8 hours ago
We will see a new major war started by this administration within two years
Cloud9.5 7 hours ago
We have to do something to reduce the population.
Leather-Dog 7 hours ago
You mean in addition to the 103.5% effective covid vaccine?
RiverRoad 7 hours ago
On duckduckgo.com search > "Med
Cram".
On You Tube: Dr. Seheult's med school video lecture "Vitamin D and Covid 19: The Evidence for
Prevention and " (5.3m views)
Vitamin D3 is sold over the counter.
Karma is coming for Covid.
eatapeach 7 hours ago
Hopefully it's also coming for the thieving liars who pushed this cheap PsyOp (Pompeo is
one, Fauci is another).
bigjim 3 hours ago
I guess Bibi mis-spelled Rand's email address on the memo.
boattrash 2 hours ago
103.5%... that sounds like the voter turnout in all the blue cities.
rastanarchocapitalist 7 hours ago
If one could take all the people in the world and cram them into a city as dense as Tokyo,
it would cover the area of Rhode Island.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN 5 hours ago
BS
Tokyo pop density=16121.8 /sq.mi.
Rhode Island = 1045 sq.mi.
At that density RI would hold 16.8 million people.
At the average annual population growth rate of the last century there will be 1 sq.m. of
land per person in only 750 years. That includes all mountains, frozen tundra, jungles and
deserts... now "get off my lawn".
bearwinkle 6 hours ago
Sure, that's why Xiden is allowing millions of immigrants to invade our borders.
aloha_snakbar 7 hours ago
I thought it might be like today...
Hatterasjohn 7 hours ago
Anyone crazy enough to join ,or be in the military , is out of his friggin mind.
BarnacleBill 7 hours ago
Or likes killing civilians. Don't overlook the psychopaths.
headslapper 7 hours ago
and that will be the end of the US.
RiverRoad 7 hours ago
How about the Regime Change just effected right HERE in the good old USA?
Im1ru12 4 hours ago
Exactly - "Maybe we shouldn't be 'choosing' governments in the Middle East," Paul
continued
That's what they do - they just did it here
starman99 7 hours ago
(((Anthony Blinken)))
USAllDay 7 hours ago
I'd take Assad over Biden.
9.1ontherichterscale 7 hours ago (Edited)
Assad has more integrity in his shoe than Biden has accumulated in the past 50 years.
Armed Resistance 7 hours ago
If the deep state hates Assad, then I know he must be legitimately a good guy deep down.
9.1ontherichterscale 7 hours ago
BINGO!
Brutlstrudl 6 hours ago
It seems that after each election, the USA becomes more of a contrarian indicator
SERReal1 7 hours ago
I agree. At least Assad puts his country first and gives the finger to the Deep State.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN 5 hours ago
Plus a secular government that respects the rights of all religious minorites. Sets a bad
example for all the intolerant apartheid states in the region.
Hopefully the "Assad Must Go" curse gets the entire Biden Administration sooner rather than
later.
aloha_snakbar 8 hours ago
Who cares...Uncle Scam lost the tiny bit of credibility he had on 01/20/2021. RIP
America....
eatapeach 7 hours ago
I care. Here's yet another Israel-first douchenozzle getting put in a very, very high
position. And acting like it'd be any different with Trump at the helm is severe folly.
(Pompeo)
FluTangClan 6 hours ago
Sorry bro but anyone with eyes hasn't thought the US credible for more than a century.
4Celts 7 hours ago
Paul concluded by saying that regime change needs to end because it is involving the US in
long wars that are costly to the military.
Pardon , but the " cost " to the military shouldn't be the top/only argument. What happened
to morally/ ethically wrong ?
SwmngwShrks 7 hours ago
"All wars are Bankers' wars." -Smedley Butler
white horse 7 hours ago
Moral is dead long ago, replaced by new fake moral called humanitarianism.
DonGenaro 7 hours ago
You're an astute observer - few detect such "tells"
Feck Weed 5 hours ago
Consider the audience
FringeDweller 5 hours ago
Fair point.
Lord JT 5 hours ago
He mentioned that it creates more terrorism, and that the incoming regime may be even worse
than the previous.
Unknown User 8 hours ago
Biden will start a war, or two, or three...
Why-Am-I-Banned 6 hours ago
Maybe the best thing that could happen to free us all finally is an all out war with
Russia, we aren't going to see a revolution to get rid of the corruption the population is
lazy and scared of doing without.
Maybe forced into mutual assured destruction is truly the only way to get rid of the deep
state...
Russia lost approx 250 million via communism over decades, maybe we need to just swallow
the poison pill and get it over with.
Not all of us will die, and definately no one is going to listen to the deep state leaders
after the dust clears...
FluTangClan 6 hours ago
Cho Bai Den fol peace!
wick7 5 hours ago
It's amazing how Democrats flipped overnight to being pro war once Obama started new wars.
They were mad when Trump was signing peace deals. Lol.
You_Cant_Quit_Me 8 hours ago
He's right. One disaster after another. Who has Assad attacked? If small countries want the
US to back off then they must develop nuclear weapons. When was the last time the US attacked a
country with nuclear capabilities?
JRobby 7 hours ago
Bust Blinken's balls until he quits like a little rat trying to naw through steel cables
gespiri 7 hours ago
The only way to stop these wars is to send the people (and their kids) who are pushing for
it in the first place to the front lines.
rastanarchocapitalist 7 hours ago
Or make the state obsolete by transitioning to a private law society.
RedDog1 7 hours ago
Remember how Gaddafi surrendered his nukeprogram to Bush, a few years later Obama/HRC
invaded...resulting in Gaddafi being lynched?
eatapeach 7 hours ago
Iran and NK and Syria remember, for sure. Wish we all remembered the USS Liberty when
shaping foreign policy.
LooseLee 4 hours ago
Remember Libya has no central bank?
Pandelis 3 hours ago (Edited)
you really believe that bs ... it is much more than that ... at the end is about the land
and the people ... money can be printed out of thin air and there is nothing libya (or iraq,
iran etc.) central bank can do about it ...
bring on dr. fraucistein to explain it all to us ... maga!!
roach clipper 6 hours ago
Assad placed his country too close to Is ra hell
manofthenorth 8 hours ago
Sorry guys but we have been played like a second hand fiddle.
I assume Paul has figured out by now that being a murderous psychopath is a job requirement
in DC. It's the first question in the job interview. "Do you enjoy death and destruction for
profit and personal power?"
littlewing 7 hours ago
Remember when Trump bombed Syria and all of a sudden everyone in DC loved him for 15
minutes.
Talk about the big reveal.
aloha_snakbar 7 hours ago
The same Rand Paul who was criticizing Trump in the eleventh hour? That one?? They are all
swamp creatures and seriously make me want to vomit...
pro·le·tar·i·at 7 hours ago
The apple rolled away from the tree.
Leather-Dog 7 hours ago
Paul, I like you, you seem to care a little bit. However, if they haven't cared in the last
forever, they are definitely not going to start now. They just regime changed ourselves with
almost no substantial resistance, you think they will care about Syria?
StanleyTheManly 5 hours ago
He puts on a show to care once in a while.
He didn't stand for the truth when it counted.
Goat of Steverino 7 hours ago
GREAT RAND, BUT WHERE WERE YOU ON BIG TECH CENSORSHIP AND ELECTION FRAUD?
Bank_sters 7 hours ago
He's cucked.
Ted Baker 6 hours ago
What is this obsession with Russia? Russia is a peaceful country who defends its people. How
difficult is that to understand?
ReadyForHillary 6 hours ago
Russia isn't down with the NWO.
Dinaric 7 hours ago
(((Blinkin))) is all you need to know.
9.1ontherichterscale 7 hours ago
Does anyone honestly believe that if Biden was honest and had any degree if integrity that
he would be president at this moment in U.S. history? That boy is a 50 year swamp critter A
thoroughly reliable member of the compromised fraternity. Same for Nancy.
freakscene 7 hours ago
Remember the video of younger Biden telling some voter that he graduated top of his class,
with honors????
None of which were true.
littlewing 7 hours ago
His degree is from University of Phoenix.
Now all colleges are that. haha
Invert This, Media Matters Monkeys 7 hours ago
Ironically, he wants to set up a comity for Integrity In Government.
freakscene 7 hours ago
Yeah. Thats hysterical!!
Saturday Night Live material - if they had any spine.
BarnacleBill 7 hours ago
Which they don't. Come on, man!
StanleyTheManly 5 hours ago
Yep. They needed someone with zero integrity.
yeketerina velikaya 7 hours ago
You know who's been right all along?
Tulsi Gabbard.
Right on big tech
Right on Kamala
Right on pardoning Assange and Snowden
Right on the uniparty and false flags in Syria
Right on Queen of Warmongers Hillary and DNC
Right on the MSM
Right on securing the elections/ballot harvesting
She's the real deal and would have delivered on these things but never had a shot.
Armed Resistance 7 hours ago
She was wrong on gun control. Very wrong! And that's a non-negotiable.
Why-Am-I-Banned 6 hours ago
Don't worry real gun control is coming and so much more you didn't ask for...
rastanarchocapitalist 7 hours ago
She should have been Trump's vp choice.
StanleyTheManly 5 hours ago
You know....I think you're right. I hadn't thought of that.
StanleyTheManly 5 hours ago
I like Tulsi. She seems like a genuine person with integrity that really cares about the
country. BUT I disagree with her on quite a few issues. Maybe she'll come around.
littlewing 7 hours ago
The steal was sealed when the Supreme Court refused to hear the Texas case.
Greasy John Roberts wrecked America.
Max21c 7 hours ago
The steal was sealed when the Supreme Court refused to hear the Texas case.
True.
Vichy John Roberts went full Quisling and brought back Jim Crow laws. The Supreme Court
endorsed election fraud, supported the coup d'etat, forced Trump from power, helped usher in a
new era for the banana republic of Jim Crow laws...
phillyla 7 hours ago
John Roberts is compromised 8 ways to Sunday. Trump should have had him impeached and
removed from the bench
El Chapo Read 7 hours ago
If you thought Trump was surrounded by Red Sea Pedestrians with an agenda, research the
ethno-religious background of Biden's cabinet picks.
Shalom!
SassyPants 7 hours ago
Every administration is. Trumps son in law and advisor is as well. Please see the entire
picture for a change.
snatchpounder PREMIUM 7 hours ago
How about closing all military bases overseas and dismantling the MIC and oh **** it an old
demented neocon is playing president for a few months, scratch that.
rastanarchocapitalist 7 hours ago
The crack up boom of the FRNs may force that one day
snatchpounder PREMIUM 7 hours ago
I think it'll happen sooner rather than later, the chances are good based on the demented
old pedophile being selected president and his retards at the fed.
rastanarchocapitalist 4 hours ago
In the long run, that might be a good thing if we return to honest money but you can be sure
they'll try to kick the can for another 50 years with some form of new fiat or erasing a couple
of zeroes of our current notes.
Hopefully the masses will just say know but I wouldn't put much faith in that.
RedNemesis 6 hours ago
Parents, do not let your smart, winning kids into the armed services. The MIC will grind
them out with PTSD, brain injuries, and lost limbs. There is no 'patriotism' or allegience to
the Deep State.
Why-Am-I-Banned 6 hours ago
Maybe the best thing that could happen to free us all finally is an all out war with Russia,
we aren't going to see a revolution to get rid of the corruption the population is lazy and
scared of doing without.
Maybe forced into mutual assured destruction is truly the only way to get rid of the deep
state...
Russia lost approx 250 million via communism over decades, maybe we need to just swallow the
poison pill and get it over with.
Not all of us will die, and definately no one is going to listen to the deep state leaders
after the dust clears...
Max21c 6 hours ago (Edited)
Maybe the best thing that could happen to free us all finally is an all out war with
Russia..
Maybe we should instead just launch a sneak attack on Alpha Centauri instead. Skip the small
fry like Russia and China. In a few generations we shall know whether our Earthling space
torpedoes hit Alpha Centauri. This of course should be debated by the people and approved by a
plebiscite per ballot referendums. Then the space war bill sent to the Earthlings Politburo for
their approval. It'll take around a decade or more to design and build the space torpedoes...
then 100 years plus for travel time and the same to get the data back from the
mothership...
Plus we can have both a Cold War and a Hot War with Alpha Centauri... under the leadership
of an Earthling appointed or elected by the Earthlings Council and elevated to the rank of Don
Quixote with the accompany title of Primal inter Pares
We just need more right thinking smart people to join the cult and become enlightened to the
prospects of a new 100 years war with other planets...and maybe some small wars with
planetoids...asteroids and comets...
We can establish of house of OverLords composed of only the best Astrologers to help pick
out which planets to attack & destroy...based upon whether they have offended our star
charts or the zodiac calls for war... In addition we can establish a lower house of UnderLords
composed of mad scientists and Generalissimos and crazy Spy Chiefs... and maybe some nutty
press types from the official media and puppet press to lead us in the Two Minutes Hate against
the Alpha Centauri folks, the space peoples, and the flying saucer people...
Maghreb2 5 hours ago
CIA already had plans for all this under the Stargate Program. After Ike's treaty with
various alien species the MIC began its descent into madness and universal conquest.
surroundedbyijits 6 hours ago
A war like that might "free" you, because the Russians will kick your ***.
balz 7 hours ago
Each time I see this "Office of the President Elect" picture thing, I get nauseous.
Fake office for a fake president who wasn't elected in the first place.
BLOTTO 8 hours ago
Like nothing happened back here at home.
Max21c 6 hours ago
Blinken may prove out to be more slick and savy than Dumbo Pompeo the flying cartoon
elephant but he's still a fawking neanderthal and a ******. Maybe an elite ****** but he's
still a ******. Blind, deaf, and dumb is still blind, deaf, and dumb even with all the powers
of the secret police at their disposal.
Ms No PREMIUM 7 hours ago
Rand is sick too. He goes on about how these things are bad specifically because they
strengthened Iran? How about liberty crushing mass murder?
"Sen. Paul said the administration of former President Barack Obama spent $250 million (USD)
on training 60 rebels [as part of the DoD side; the CIA program was much more expansive], which
he said was a waste of money."
So your mad they steal money while creating terrorists? Or are you mad that they don't tell
you what they do with the rest? They abduct children from war zones to make them. Maybe the
indoctrination and rape children's homes are expensive. They have screwed the entire
planet.
There is something wrong with him too. He is another limited hangout
silverlinings00 7 hours ago
He's all bark no bite like Elizabeth Warren. Trotted out to show a feigning resistance.
Insert farm animal here 4 hours ago
Poor Rand is going to have a tough and lonely battle over the next few years. Let's wish him
well, he'll be going it alone for sure.
the_pencil 2 hours ago
It seems odd that no one has allied themselves with him in the same manner as McCain &
Graham.
Pareto 6 hours ago
Another life long bureaucrat talking about his resume. And fails to answer a simple
question. Woop there it is. That's why they hated Trump. Because somebody off the street had
better answers than 25 years of experience.
Rand Paul, one of the few good ones left. Good Luck with Biden and his war hawks!
NumbNuts 6 hours ago
These same people are attempting a regime change in the United States too. From Freedom to
Fascism.
Helg Saracen 6 hours ago
The Americans lost perspectives and actually real freedom when Woodrow Wilson sold US to
international banksters in 1913, now this scam just ends and a new scam begins. You haven't
figured it out yet. By the way, fascism is Italian National Socialism. No offense.
frank further 6 hours ago
Then what was German National Socialism, if not fascism?
/
/
BluCapitalist PREMIUM 6 hours ago (Edited)
They are not attempting. They have done it. They have perfected their craft over the last 70
years in other countries and they brought it home to keep their criminal organization
going.
urhotdogs 6 hours ago remove link
They didn't attempt, they did it! Took a little over 4 years but had to stoop to massive
election fraud and changing state laws on the fly. It was coordinated throughout all levels of
government down to states and courts and SCOTUS.
bunkers 5 hours ago
Communism
bunkers 5 hours ago
Maybe not.
WhiteHose 6 hours ago
Russia Russia Russia! They never stop! BTW, wheres scumbag Hunter?
starman99 7 hours ago
(((Anthony Blinken)))
rkb100100 7 hours ago
Yea we know the cabinet is full of heeb's.
brown_hornet 7 hours ago
Is he in the boat with Winken and Nod?
GatorMcClusky 7 hours ago
Good one.
Mount Massive 7 hours ago (Edited)
There is a reason Russia has spent the last 2 months ramping up testing of its mil hardware
including hyper-vel ICBM's and SLBM's. - Xiden
SelectedNotElectedBiden 7 hours ago
Rand will be the only Senator to give the Dems a hard time. Sad since it should be payback
for EVERY Republican Senator.
freakscene 7 hours ago
Cruz will be fun to watch too. They excel being outnumbered.
Ms No PREMIUM 7 hours ago
If they wanted Rand out of that spot he would have been gone a long time ago.
Bob Lidd 5 hours ago
Does anyone think the US policy in the middle east will change with 10 of biden's
appointees being jewish .......??
The "greater israel" will continue no matter the cost to the American tax cattle.......
((((blinken))) ..........
ReadyForHillary 7 hours ago
The neocons are back!
Max21c 7 hours ago
The neocons are back!
Does not matter. They could not win before and they shall not win now. They're ineffective,
inept, and incompetent. They won't be able to fix the messes and disasters they've created for
themselves. At best they might be able to sick the secret police on a few people at home and
drop some bombs or missiles abroad. But for the most part it's some more of the same. Evil is
as evil does. They're not going to be able to work themselves out of the fix they've got
themselves into or figure it out. They're toast. They're bad people and they're toast.
Washingtonians may have absolute power but they've had absolute power all along...and they
still can't fix the disasters they've caused.
Northern Exposure 6 hours ago (Edited)
Oh thank God!
If we're not looking for a new pointless war to start or jumping into an existing one then
this isn't the America that I know and love!
</sarc>
karzai_luver 7 hours ago
Where is the BUFFALOBILL dude storming the Senate to drag this blinken criminal scum out and
do justice for his wanton murder of thousands?
Shut down this freak show.
I would rather have BUFFALOBILL and his idiots running the place than these feckless
people's representatives.
Tony , have you learned your lesson?
Senator - screw you and your people I will think it over.
Alexander 7 hours ago
Silence republicans! Yes we stole the election using widespread mail in ballots, yes your
state governments changed the rules to allow us to count these mail in ballots more quickly,
yes there were far more votes in this election than any other ever. ANDDDD... NO we will not
look into the validity of this election becuase muh capital rioting grandma threatened sweet
little socialist AOC.
Now give us your children to fight a war in syria.
artless 7 hours ago
Barack Obama. Neocon to the core. Biden is no different. Gonna do us some "liberating"
again. And from the left there will be silence as thousands of poor, short brown people are
killed as "collateral damage".
Welcome back America to what you do the best. Destroy lives. Any over/under on how many days
it takes Biden to start killing folks and hence become a war criminal like pretty much all his
predecessors? I might like a piece of that action.
SassyPants 7 hours ago
Republicans are neocons, democrats are neoliberal. You're basically right, just left out
half the problem.
pods 7 hours ago
Can't bitch about foreign actions in our elections when we pick other governments.
Invert This, Media Matters Monkeys 7 hours ago
Pick ???? Surely you jest !
pods 7 hours ago
We choose sides right?
We picked the CIA stooge in Venezuela.
Not sure about your question.
Maybe "kinetically pick" would be better?
Invert This, Media Matters Monkeys 7 hours ago
Sorry, I didn't read your post properly. I didn't see "other" governments.
rwe2late 7 hours ago
you either forgot the sarc tag
or failed to notice such as V. Nuland hand-picking leadership in Ukraine,
or the Trump picking of Guiado for Venezuela.
Invert This, Media Matters Monkeys 7 hours ago
Poor eye sight is my best and only excuse.
SelectedNotElectedBiden 7 hours ago
Where is Hunter?
Invert This, Media Matters Monkeys 7 hours ago
The Big Guy made him the Advance Minister of Foreign Extortion.
headslapper 7 hours ago
The faces change but the song remains the same. What a waste of energy this government is.
Resources thrown down the toilet to make the Ruling class more wealthy. Why do we even pay
attention. We all need to have a look in the mirror. Myself included of course.
Armed Resistance 7 hours ago
So now that you've looked in the mirror, what are you going to do about it? Send a
strongly-worded letter? Or are you ready to actually step up. As morally wrong and demented as
the radical left is, at least you have to admire them in the sense they actually step up to the
plate to get sh!t done. It's immoral, but effective.
Canadian Dirtlump 7 hours ago
Lest we forget the same bearded butchers that Chris Stevens flew into ben gazi with (al
Quaeda inter alia aligned ) who were funded and trained by the West were the same ones who flew
from ben gazi to the incirlik nato base to try to do the same thing in syria.
The only reason it didn't work was because of the SAA, Hezbollah and of course the ultimate
backstop Russia. I'm thankful for this.
mikka 7 hours ago
Imagine Russian or Chinese parliament publicly debating regime change in USA.
Uncle_Cuddles 7 hours ago (Edited)
Debating? China has ALREADY done it here.
joew8989 7 hours ago
Rand will continue to fight the good fight, when you live a life based on principal, that's
what you do. We will always need more people like him. That's what built this country, not the
parasites at the helm now.
ItsTooHotForThis 6 hours ago
Paul voted to confirm the electors. His challenge to the new Sec. of State means
nothing.
Garciathinksso 5 hours ago
his argument was based on State's right issue, in case you care
bunkers 5 hours ago
It doesn't matter WHY, he voted with traitors, only, that he did.
SillyTheEnemy 6 hours ago (Edited)
This is literally the only guy we have in the senate who even remotely gives a ****. Yet the
amount of **** that is going to happen to us when biden heats up the war in Syria is
immeasurable. F*ck me
hardright 6 hours ago
Rand Paul is wasting his time.
If he wants to make a difference he should be lobbying Russia to send more troops into
Syria.
surroundedbyijits 6 hours ago
And arranging imports of the Russian vaccine. Less likely to kill you and more effective
than the only 45% effective Pfizer ****.
BluCapitalist PREMIUM 6 hours ago
This guys eyes look exactly like the vampires in the movie 30 days of night. Am I in a
simulation? Why do these people actually look like fictional villains? I mean Whitmer, Newsom,
this new fat, unhealthy, mentally ill assistant "health secretary"? Did I do something really
wrong? Am I in hell and don't know it? No. I am here on earth and psychopaths are real and evil
is real.
duckandcover 1 hour ago
they're just a little scared and overwhelmed. You might be too
WhiteHose 7 hours ago
Look at this Blinken twit! F you pal! And....wheres HUnter??? Diddling his brothers minor
niece? Again? Still?
First Ron and now Rand. I think the club just lets them in as the token Don Quixote. They
have been the only voices of reason for the last 25 years or so, but they are only tilting at
windmills. Nothing is going to change until something forces them to change. The war mongering
and corruption will just roll right along while the MIC and congress get richer by the
minute.
The unrelenting droning of brown people in foreign lands that are ill-equipped to fight back
will commence in 3,2,1...
SassyPants 7 hours ago
Leaving the Republican Party would be the first best step.
ejmoosa 7 hours ago (Edited)
We put too much on one man and one man alone to change things.
Faced with judges and a House and A Senate against him the task before Trump was
Herculean.
Add to that 2/5ths of the states with governors also against Trump and it's even worse.
What you need to do is get involved in your local politics and take control back of your
Cities and County Commissions, as well as your state governments.
Had Trump held control of the House and the Senate and we had sitting on Courts people who
put the Constitution first FOR the people rather than using it against them, things would be a
lot different today.
The choice is yours.
Time to play 7 hours ago
It's good to see that Rand, is starting to think more like his father!
north_hand_demon 7 hours ago
So he's controlled opposition, too?
Lyman54 7 hours ago
Pretty early to be smoking crack isn't it?
otschelnik 7 hours ago
With Cookies Nuland as Blinken's deputy, you've got the neocon family business installed at
Foggy Bottom. Robert (Victoria's huband), Fredrick, and Kim each with their own pro-war think
tank, and a list of supporters which constitute the "A-list" of the USSA's merchants of death.
Northrup-Grumman, UTX, Raytheon, Lockheed....
9.1ontherichterscale 7 hours ago
Winken, Blinken and Nod.
That's the administration we got now.
silverlinings00 8 hours ago
Careful Rand, we wouldn't want you to get another "visit" from a neighbor while you're
mowing the lawn.
Pdunne 3 hours ago (Edited)
Biden's biggest Cabinet mistake will ultimately be Blinken.
Like Obama picked H Clinton with disasterous consequences Biden picks Blinken.
JackOliver4 4 hours ago
Rand Paul says " Assad is a terrible person " !!!
Dr Assad is a HERO !!
Rand Paul is either completely misinformed or just another useless politician afraid to
speak the TRUTH !
A COWARD !
Hessler 4 hours ago
Assad may be a good person at heart but he is not qualified to run a state. He should be a
doctor or something.
JackOliver4 4 hours ago
And Joe Biden is ??
OR Boris Johnstone ??
Helg Saracen 4 hours ago
It is up to the Syrians to decide, not you. You already paid for the genocide of the Syrian
Christians in the "fight against the tyrant Assad." I've seen all kinds of idiots and
hypocrites, but you are their king.
Hessler 4 hours ago (Edited)
Why did not Assad anticipated the Zionist invasion even though the Snowden document reveled
the CIA/Mossad works in the making in 2006 ??
If he did anticipated an invasion why he did not do anything to safeguard his nation and
it's people ?
Why every men, women and child capable to lift and shoot was not given and an ordinance and
proper training ?? Israel has that. Why can't Syria ?
Syria is a part of Greater Israel. They have been marked for genocide the day Israel was
created, what haste did Mr. Assad showed to safeguard his country against their genocidal
maniacs psychopaths ??
I will never forgive those who inflicted the terrible atrocities on the children and women
and Mr. Assad has a blame to share.
mark3383 3 hours ago
Assad risked his life and continues to do so every day, trump recently bragged he thought
about "taking him out". he's a true hero more than you or I will ever be
steve2241 5 hours ago
Rand Paul doesn't understand. Blinken follows the path that Israel tells him to. Middle East
instability benefits Israel. The fomenting of Sunni-Shia conflict kills Israels' enemies, the
muslims, without Israel having to lift a finger. Syria is no longer a threat to Israel. Mission
accomplished.
Hessler 4 hours ago (Edited)
You're wrong on two accounts. First, there's no ****te/Sunni conflict. What goes in Miiddle
East is entire different than what is portrayed here. The locals know but how many of them get
interviewed on live TV or get a airtime on a prime time desk ? Those are reserved for the
chosenites who spew BS about Arabs and Muslims 24/7.
****te/Sunni fiction as broadcasts in the west is nothing but a ploy to wash the hands of
the responsibility and pin the blame on the victims.
Second, Syria is now a bigger threat to Israel than it was in Pre War era. Battle Hardened
troops, better organization, training with Russian/Iranian Military, better equipment, talented
strategists and when you fight a war like that for that long you tend to grow a bigger set of
balls.
JackOliver4 4 hours ago
Syria wants the GOLAN back - I would say they are a threat to ISRAEL !!
Sick Monkey 5 hours ago
Speaking of war didn't Rand Paul vote to accept the illegitimate electors. I like Paul he
seems to have a level head but you voted to put the commies in power. Like you said in your
speech "there are repercussions". Those who took a stand against this coup must be kept in
power as they put skin in the game. That's a rare and precious gift to us the people. In the
year 2021 it's as good as gold.
Taffer 5 hours ago
Exactly, hence my previous comment below.
mark3383 3 hours ago
trump lost the election because he allowed million of fraud votes to be counted and never
said or did anything about it in the year leading up to it. he 's the one that lost it. no one
else
Sinophile 6 hours ago
"War Pigs"----Black Sabbath
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh lord yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor
Yeah!
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait 'til their judgement day comes
Yeah!
Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees the war pig's crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
oh lord yeah!
surroundedbyijits 6 hours ago
Circuses. Theatre for the plebes. Not one bit of foreign policy is decided or affected by
debates or hearings in the Legislative branch. They're all following a script, some of them act
like they aren't in on the joke.
Cloudcrusher 6 hours ago
Psychosis the denial of reality. The military industrial complex is make believe. It's
military industrial congress, Congress is in charge they alone are to blame know one else. The
sooner everyone starts living in reality the better off will be. You want to win the war of
words better start with reality. Or your going to get a another kind of war one where only the
strong survive.
Max21c 6 hours ago (Edited)
Watch: Rand Paul Challenges New Secretary Of State Over Regime-Change In Syria
Meaningless inside the beltway for the record drool-n-dribble... Rand Paul just wants to pad
his resume, bio, and gain some street cred claims...
TahoeBilly2012 6 hours ago
When do the new wars start? Dems can't wait. Blame them on Covid or something, they will buy
it.
vspam 7 hours ago
Biden will go to war with Iran and turned thr ME into a fireball. The mainstream media will
cheer him on under the banner of peace and unity
Max21c 7 hours ago
Diablo Corona
Washingtonians are for the most part the spawn of Satan.
DC= the Devil's City... they are evil... Washingtonians are just pure rotten evil...
Washington DC ... Devil's City
Washington DC .... Devil's Crown
The evil ones cannot change their evil ways... they're too far gone... the evil ones cannot
be redeemed...
Max21c 7 hours ago
Paul concluded by saying that regime change needs to end because it is involving the US in
long wars that are costly to the military.
Too late. Washington is toast. It's just a question of when Washingtonians lose in Syria,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, et cetera. They already made a mess of things and they do not
have the brains to fix it. Same with their inabilities as regards nonproliferation, North
Korea, et cetera. They don't have what it takes to figure it out and work it out and nobody is
going to fix it for them because they're assholes regardless of which cabal of Ivy League
assholes or ******* elites are in power.
ThomasEdmonds 7 hours ago
Paul isn't supposed to question a Zionist's motives..
aloha-snackbar 7 hours ago
if the youth said no to war and moms said not my child and burned down the recruitment/death
centers then war would end...
tunEphsh 7 hours ago
Thank goodness that Paul told the idiot Blicken to lay off regime change. Obama-Biden made a
mess of the middle east and caused a refugee crises which is still with us. Instead of being
named secretary of state, me thinks Blicken should be put in jail for acts in the Middle East
which killed hundreds of thousands of people.
moneybots 7 hours ago
The EU has become a mess because of regime change.
freakscene 7 hours ago
Of course he should. But that would require sanity.
yerfej 7 hours ago (Edited)
Simple way to stop all this insane venturism and nation building it to MANDATE that every
aysshole like Blinken have a spouse or child or sibling or relative ON THE GROUND fighting in
one of these shyyytholes. These elites love this crap because THEY never pay a personal price,
no they have farmed that out to the "commoners" who supply the bodies. The filthy elites are
good at leveraging everyone else to fulfill their fantasies while paying no price.
Occams_Razor_Trader 7 hours ago
You've seen the videos of Chelsea and Malia on tour in Kabul? Yeah?
yerfej 7 hours ago
More like Eeyore pontificating from her 20 million dollar penthouse about how she is so not
into money, or Maglia dancing around stoned like a "social justice warrior".
Flynt2142ahh 7 hours ago (Edited)
The senate needs more Rand Paul types - and they dont have to be in the Republican
party...This would force actual accountability of uniparty folks and these appointees. We need
less murkowski and collins
phillyla 7 hours ago
I am going to harp on this
in 2014 Matt Bevin challenged McConnell in a Senate Primary
He was gaining momentum
Then Rand endorsed McConnell
Bevin lost McConnell got re-elected
Bevin was later elected Governor of KY so he had the votes
Rand Paul Broke my heart
Leguran@premium PREMIUM 7 hours ago
We need use the Progressive's signage: He is not my President.
LostMyGunsInABoatingAccident 7 hours ago
You can't necessarily call it an "American" policy.
America lost control of it's policy long ago.....
Mount Massive 7 hours ago
Here comes another war, and this time, it will spiral out of control. In two years or less,
I expect the US to be in a major conflict and/or hit at home. Sigh....Leftist
Invert This, Media Matters Monkeys 7 hours ago
Pelosi just took Rand aside and said, wait and see what your neighbor on the other side of
you has to say about this.
9.1ontherichterscale 7 hours ago
Rand is in the senate. nancy runs the house. That would be Schumer's job.
Invert This, Media Matters Monkeys 7 hours ago
Pelosi seems to be running the show and is the face of the party
WorkingClassMan 8 hours ago (Edited)
Rand Paul, the lone voice of sanity in a rubber-stamp corrupt government.
If you or someone you care about is either in or thinking about joining this nation's
military...please don't. Let these antiwhites fight their own wars. They hate you and don't
trust you because you're White and they hate you owning guns, but they'll put a gun in your
hand and point you at their and Isn'treal's enemies without hesitation.
fudge punch 8 hours ago
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
AVmaster 3 hours ago
"Regime change in the Middle East has led to chaos, instability and more terrorism,"
Uhhh, yea...
... Thats what they WANTED!
Duh!
Scipio Africanuz 3 hours ago
Thank you Senator Paul..
For your candor..
The challenge of US Foreign Policy, is akin to a heroin addiction. It's bad for the country,
but all attempts to cure the country of addiction to imperialism has failed, including our
energetic efforts over the years..
Too many people benefit from the ruination of the country as it engages in squandering
lives, honor, power, reputation, and treasure, in maintaining a facade of illusory power, at
the expense of the true power of the country..
Put simply Senator, at this point, we don't believe any entity on earth can cure the US of
the addiction to depravity save nature, which cure is more preferable to that of the Entity
whose decision is not subject to appeal..
Now Senator, you may not believe in God Almighty and thus, swat away the simple insight but
God does not require your belief to act..
Over His creation..
The only cure, if sense and rationality don't prevail, is exactly what we don't desire to
know and why?
Because we've seen it before, applied to different societies with similar mentality over the
course of human history and Senator, it's never palatable..
Anyhow, probation is till summer, to allow folks do intensive introspective contemplation,
enough to acquire prudent humility and if they don't, well..
Cheers...
Ckierst1 2 hours ago
I believe the Senator is a Christian.
Pdunne 4 hours ago
Blinken is a bald faced liar and is already working with Ms Nuland on more regime
changes.
Venezuela and Syria need to get ready for more robust attacks.
Dzerzhhinsky 2 hours ago
Control the oil, you control the world.
the_pencil 2 hours ago
Oil was the cause of every war for the past century.
Posa 4 hours ago
A ridiculous exchange. Sen Paul seems to take at face value the Liberal-NeoCon claim that
Regime Change is good-intentioned attempt to democratize the Middle East.
Hardly. Regime Change was always designed to a) install Israeli supremacy in the region
("Operation Clean Break"); and b) secure US Global Uni-polar dominance (the Wolfowitz Doctrine)
as part of the Brezezinski "Grand Chessboard". That's the intention... this exchange
demonstrates how out of it Rand Paul is; and what a nasty weasel Blinken is.
Ckierst1 2 hours ago
That's not what Sen. Paul said. He doesn't agree with regime change. That's what he
said.
PaulDF 5 hours ago
To which the Biden appointee replied, "You know, the thing!"
mark3383 3 hours ago
cmon man!
duckandcover 2 hours ago
do your job!
Taffer 5 hours ago
Rand Paul's opinion and $6 will get him a latte at Starbucks.
Hessler 6 hours ago (Edited)
Foreign policy is never gonna change no matter who's in change because the way system is
setup.
The lifestyle (our way of life) pertaining to the western model of civilization (our values)
needs unlimited supply of money to be supported. The money that can't be made by legal means,
hence the continues war that needs to be maintained overseas while also starting new ones as
requirement arise.
And since this is a continues state, so accompanies it continues propaganda, lies, false
flags, deception and manipulation of facts and truth. LYING IS IN VERY GENES OF THE WHITE
CHRISTIAN WEST. They have been doing it for so long that they have almost mastered the "the art
of lying" the zenith of which is to project your own flaws and crimes on to the subjects you
carried it out on. One thing you can always be sure of, they will never admit their crimes
unless there's no other way. And that they will be accusing their opponents of the same things
they would be doing.
War underpins their society, nation and civilization.
steve2241 4 hours ago
The problem is that the U.S. is abusing its position as printer-in-chief of the Reserve
Currency of the world. With that fake money, it can intervene in the affairs of nations
throughout the world - a capability that no other country enjoys. Take away its reserve
currency and watch how quickly middle eastern strife ends - and the nation of Israel, too.
apparently 6 hours ago
will the left and their mindless supporters be comforted to know that their guy promotes
these "endless wars"? will they be happy to sacrifice their sons and daughters for desert
real-estate whose oil we don't want?
Paul was being way too polite. He should simply say: "I'm not voting to confirm this war
monger" then get up and leave the room.
Hessler 6 hours ago
If you think it's about the oil, you really don't understand the world you inhabit.
apparently 6 hours ago (Edited)
I don't think it's about oil but I'm struggling to name a single US interest in sand-wars.
maybe you can? yes, yes, military/industrial complex, blah, blah, but why the middle east?
please enlighten us.
Hessler 5 hours ago (Edited)
It's to rebuild the world in the image of the west and Islam is the biggest hampering in the
way. Like other religions, it can't be altered or dominated so the only way is to completely
destroy it. This is why Israel was setup by the Anglos at a strategic location in the heart of
the Arab world to engage them into perpetual war and destroy them.
That's about it.
And whenever a war on a civilization is waged, there are always monetary benefits. Oil, MIC,
Political donations come into play here. But that's just a sideshow. And with a civilization as
big as Islamic, benefits also tend to be massive.
apparently 5 hours ago
no evidence that the arab spring was against islam. why aren't we doing regime change in
indonesia? why did joe just reverse the Muslim travel ban?
do you understand anything about the world you live in?
Hessler 5 hours ago (Edited)
A lot actually. We are concentrating on the core of the Islamic civilization for when the
core collapses, the outer layers collapses with it. It's the core that holds the entire thing
together, hence we concentrate on Middle East and not on Indonesia.
Arab spring was to sow chaos and turmoil. By the way of deception.....Jewish moto
It is not that Israel establishes America's foreign policy. It is that the basic world view
produced by WASP culture is naturally aligned with Jewish thought in most ways, especially in
terms of Empire: ruling the world.
InflammatoryResponse 5 hours ago
it was not a muslim travel ban. it was a ban on places that didn't have adequate
infrastructure to verify who was travling.
duckandcover 1 hour ago
where is the last place, core or not core, that Islam religion and Muslim culture has been
eradicated by any means? Yugoslavia? India? Not seeing it. Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Your argument does not hold.
starman99 5 hours ago
(((THEM)))
Groucho 5 hours ago
No of course not. Nothing to do with what George Kennan called "the greatest strategic
material prize in world history".
Hessler 5 hours ago
And whenever a war on a civilization is waged, there are always monetary benefits. Oil, MIC,
Political donations come into play here. But that's just a sideshow. And with a civilization as
big as Islamic, benefits also tend to be massive.
apparently 2 hours ago
by now, we should be weary (and wary) of "it's all a sideshow" arguments.
it simply asserts greater knowledge (never disclosed) and terminates the thread.
as for the grand anti-islam plan... how's that going in western europe?
Groucho 5 hours ago
No of course not. Nothing to do with what George Kennan called "the greatest strategic
material prize in world history".
JackOliver4 4 hours ago
It is ALWAYS about the OIL - thats why IRAN and VENEZUELA are being weakened by crippling
sanctions !!
THAT"S how the ZIO/US does it - SANCTIONS first - WAR 2nd !
Doesn't work anymore since RUSSIA stepped in !
nocturnal66 7 hours ago
Just ask if this 100 year plus war is to create "greater Israel" . It all documented. Enough
already with the lies. Just admit it.
Occams_Razor_Trader 7 hours ago
WWE- fake fights have begun again in earnest .....................
Paul Ryan could fake a punch as good as John Boehner ............
Max21c 7 hours ago (Edited)
"Maybe we shouldn't be 'choosing' governments in the Middle East," Paul continued.
The Washington establishment imposed their chosen ruler Joe Schmo Biden to rule over
America.
jesus_loves_you 7 hours ago
H a n g t h e m a l l
Aquamaster 7 hours ago
Should we have a contest to see who can pick the first country Biden will send troops
to?
Lyman54 7 hours ago
DC !
SERReal1 7 hours ago
You win!
WTFUD 7 hours ago
Blinken Heck , don't worry ya'll, Nuland (Nudelman's) back to steady the ship with a fab new
chocolate chip cookie recipe that the terrorists will adore.
littlewing 7 hours ago
And they aren't even trying to hide it.
fzrkid 7 hours ago
Rand can say whatever he wants and it changes NOTHING
Armed Resistance 7 hours ago
Who is still planning on filing taxes? At the very least, turn your back on the
system-right? Upvote for not filing, downvote for I just want to avoid conflict-I'm filing.
brown_hornet 7 hours ago
But, we are getting a return.
No paying next year though.
rwe2late 7 hours ago (Edited)
Doesn't matter if it is a disaster for the peoples invaded and for domestic liberty in the
USA.
It's considered "worth it" by those in power
to protect the financial supremacy of the dollar,
promote the regional military supremacy of Israel,
and continue the war profiteering of the MIC.
north_hand_demon 7 hours ago
So what? Your cushy lifestyle and mine is a direct result of hegemony. Get over it.
rwe2late 7 hours ago (Edited)
Celebration of a "cushy lifestyle" gained by plunder and murder is not for everyone.
To revel in it, one requires a special insensibility.
DonGenaro 7 hours ago (Edited)
This fence-sitter did virtually NOTHING to stop the steal.
Now he's whining about having to lie in bed his cowardice helped make.
Many MORE thousands will soon be massacred by these war-mad psychopaths.
This POS is DEAD TO ME.
littlewing 7 hours ago
Rand is smart, he knew no matter what Xiden was going to be installed.
HominyTwin 7 hours ago
He's smart. A bunch of idiots, after a good breakfast at IHOP, were herded into the capital
by govt informants to break stuff for the cameras, and then herded right back out in time for a
hearty dinner at Golden Corral. They did sacrifice their lunch for exactly nothing, though.
Congrats. He stayed away from all that nonsense.
9.1ontherichterscale 7 hours ago
That's about the size of it, in retrospect.
zulu127 7 hours ago
regime change needs to end because it is involving the US in long wars that are costly to
the military.
Wrong! "regime change needs to continue because it is involving the US in wars that are
profitable to the military.
ableman28 4 hours ago
Part of the problems is that neither the democrats or republicans are primarily in favor of
DEMOCRATIC governments in the middle east. When Egypt FREELY ELECTED the Muslin Brotherhood to
power in Egypt the US fell all over itself to help unseat them, using every technique we
can.....currency debasement, food aid manipulation, tacit encouragement to strongment
(military) that we feel are controllable, etc. etc.
The US was never in favor of one man one vote in South Africa during apartheid and explained
this convenient hypocrisy as an unfortunate necessity.
Supporting regime change is entirely, ENTIRELY, different than supporting democracy. The US
has a very very very long history of supporting the former and claiming it was the latter when
in fact it wasn't. Democracy means letting the chips fall where they may. In countries whose
ruling leadership is oppressive to its people and for which we have a long history of support
its very unlikely that any democratic election would bring us new friends. It would, in every
case, bring to power people who opposed the old government and by association US.
People playing to the stands here in the US are smart enough to know this. But maintaining
the correct political position for domestic consumption also trumps doing the right thing in
anywhere else.
International politics is a pure expression of national interest. Our national interest is
economic outside the US. That part of socialist or marxist theory is spot on.
Hessler 4 hours ago
Insightful, thanks!
LooseLee 4 hours ago
'Disaster' is the MO, Rand. Please, get real or get lost.
Musum 5 hours ago
Senator Rand Paul recently challenged the new Secretary of State nominee Anthony Blinken
on his history of pushing regime change in the Middle East and North Africa
Pointless and hopeless. The only way to end America's endless wars is to deal with the guys
in small hats.
Hessler 5 hours ago
Small hats were employed by the English speaking protestants for their ulterior motives,
world view, global ambitions which were in alignment with the chosenites.
You can't solve the Jewish problem without solving the problem of western civilization.
Fire_Hog 5 hours ago
The real problems are the 3 letter intelligence agencies, not religion.
Musum 4 hours ago
Are you naive or misdirecting? Offices are occupied by people.
train rider 6 hours ago
Deep thinking and reflection...what about our military personnel and contractors...why are
we putting them in danger with these interventionist kockamamie screw balls coming up with
these strategies...meanwhile innocent civilians keep getting maimed and killed.
We have no business over there, let the countries decide for themselves what they want etc.
we need energy idependence...greta can go fly a kite...keep reducing emissions with tech we
have.
It is very sad that paul's neighbor does not have a more lethal right hook.
TheZeitgeist 7 hours ago
Sen. Paul began his argument by questioning Blinken's role in the NATO intervention of Libya
in 2001
So...only off by a decade. I think ZeroHedge drops these snafus into the copy just to see if
anyone actually reads the stuff.
freakscene 7 hours ago (Edited)
Its skimming material at best. Reading all the way through went out the window when ZH
become a CNN sponsor.
:)
littlewing 7 hours ago
When Ron Paul was calling out Bernanke you would see they were alone in the room.
There is no debate, its all a fraud. Saw the vote on election theft and it was their aides
voting for them.
StanleyTheManly 7 hours ago
Give me a break, Rand Paul. YOU KNOWINGLY voted for this by not standing for our elected
President.
You're a traitor. Shut up and sit down.
TRON Paul 7 hours ago
PRESIDENT PAUL!
PRESIDENT PAUL!
PRESIDENT PAUL!
wmbz 7 hours ago
War is a business, and "we" are big business. Matter no how many completely innocent people
get blown away. What matters are the spoils. We were warned over and over again about the MIC
yet here we are.
Profit always wins over peace, no money in it.
totally unwise 7 hours ago
Today, wars aren't meant to be won
they're meant to bring chaos
Chaos
Calling Maxwell Smart and agent 99
Where's that shoe phone ?
freakscene 7 hours ago
I guess, good for Rand? Thats about all he can do.
Dog Will Hunting 7 hours ago
Oh, that Rand Paul. I wondered where he was hiding this whole time peels back Trump's saggy
*** cheeks to find the good doctor
in_xanadu_did_kubla_khan 8 hours ago
Achoo: Hey, Blinkin
Blinkin: Did you say Abe Lincoln?
Achoo: No! I said, HEY, BLINKIN!
createnewaccount 8 hours ago
If we can't have Giant Meteor maybe a global helter skelter of 'regime change' will be a
good consolation prize.
Lt. Frank Drebin 8 hours ago
I voted for Giant Meteor, but the Dominion voting machines switched my vote to turd
sandwich.
Holding My Breath 7 hours ago
A big upvote for sarcasm (or is it utter stupidity?)
The Military/Industrial Complex needs endless foreign wars and imaginary enemies so that the
money won't be spent at home helping Americans. Such as infrastructure projects. The goal from
within is to destroy the American middle class and turn the United States into a third world
country. Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump all served the crooks.
littlewing 7 hours ago
Uh then why didn't Trump start wars?
Bear 11 minutes ago
Like father like son ... insight and wisdom
Arizona1234 26 minutes ago
China Joe and the mentally ill Marxist that run his crap show already started a multi
Trillion dollar endless war. The War on the weather they call Climate Crisis. It's the one
where we loose and wind up praying to find the small potato to make it through the day, and
then hope to find a few dry sticks for the fire to cook it. Where you will have to make the
small fire at night so that mentally ill #AOC carbon police can't easily see the smoke.
Maltheus 1 hour ago
It's taken less than 24 hours, after Biden's inauguration, for ISIS to magically make an
appearance again. They're not even pretending anymore.
Tom Angle 2 hours ago
I think I had heard all I want to hear from Rand Paul after.
boattrash 2 hours ago
Gawdamit Rand, we like you and everything, but the Coup you should be focused on is HERE,
even if it means you should spit in your hands, hoist the black flag and start slittin
throats.
Sincerely,
The American People
Dzerzhhinsky 3 hours ago
If the US can steal Syria, it means it will be able to build a pipeline, steal Iranian gas
and sell it to Europe.
The US needs something to give its financiers and controlling energy supplies to Europe would
go a long way to paying off the debt.
learnofjesuits 4 hours ago
vatican's wars
Hessler 3 hours ago
Puritans burred the Vatican so deep underground that if even the nuke detonates there, if
won't make a shockwave on the ground
TemporarySecurity 4 hours ago
Perfectly fine for anybody in the executive to lie through their teeth.
Say one thing in the hearing and do what they always do once confirmed. Our post
Constitutional government needs to fail.
tangent 4 hours ago
Ran Paul's ability to talk as if they are not simply being outright bribed for their
positions is impressive. I suppose the new CCP SoS will take the positions of the CCP, which is
the one paying him the most money for those positions.
richnhappy 4 hours ago
Just read confessions of an economic hit man, by john perkins, all you need to know. The
playbook sounds like what china is doing in the us now, distract the masses with the middle
east ****show.
Seditious 4 hours ago
We have had just one president so far this century that has not used American blood and
treasure to destroy a nation. He was a rogue billionaire that got taken out by every other
billionaire that wanted to stay in the club. The American people are going to have to figure
out that they will have better results solving this nations problems at the Bezos, Walton,
Zuckerberg and Dorsey homes than they will going to the Capitol in Washington DC.
The Child sacrifice murders committed by these people don't occur in some hidden room at a
pizza parlor. They occur on public roads under semitrailers marked Amazon Prime and Walmart
that wouldn't be allowed on the roads of nations that we used to call the third world.
I suppose the only big question is, who's child dies tomorrow?
Maghreb2 4 hours ago
You could look it at that way. I'd say he was a hairs breadth from starting world war III
with Iran and China and was removed by a stroke of bad luck from Wuhan and the old
establishment asserting their authority through corruption.
Trump might be remembered fondly for actually lowering the number of small conflicts but the
U.S war machine is bigger than any one president and his closeness to Israel show what camp he
was in. Only God or a few insiders can really judge what his ultimate aim was but he wasn't the
man who pulled the first shot of the first world war. Damn well loaded the gun and gave it to
the Israelis in my opinion.
Seditious 4 hours ago
During Obama's time in office we had a year in which the United States dropped bombs in more
nations than they did in any single year during WW2.
Bezos, Walton's and others spill our blood domestically. Biden will spill our blood overseas
to keep some other billionaires happy.
Based on your comment, I take it you REALLY like Blinken! Yes?
Fire_Hog 5 hours ago
The same thing happened in Egypt when Obama pushed for and got quick elections when the only
organization that could field candidates was the Muslim Brotherhood. The result was very
predictable.
The Brotherhood took over and the result was so bad that the people finally rebelled against
Morsi's government. This lead to Al Sisi who was better than Morsi. I question whether the
situation improved by letting the Muslim Brotherhood take control.
Maghreb2 4 hours ago
People? Thought that was the military?
WatchnSee 5 hours ago
"regime change doesn't work" "Maybe we shouldn't be 'choosing' governments in the Middle
East,".... nor in the USA. Time will tell.
Hessler 6 hours ago (Edited)
Don't worry Mr. Paul, these white men in the suits are the leaders of the terrorists groups.
It's hardcoded in their genes, they don't know any other way of earning a living.
Mancolo 6 hours ago
Lessons? I don't need your stinking lessons. I've got friends to pay off.
Pvt Joker PREMIUM 7 hours ago
I like the US policy of Perma War and Regime change. The more troops over there , the less
troops over here.
Scornd 7 hours ago
I dont understand the complaints.
You voted for this.
MCDirtMigger 6 hours ago
By 'you', do you mean Dominion?
littlewing 7 hours ago
District of Criminals
that's all they are.
I am bailing out forever now.
Just looking at them and their actions is self harm.
Max21c 7 hours ago (Edited)
District of Criminals
Diablo Corona
Washingtonians are for the most part the spawn of Satan.
DC= the Devil's City... they are evil... Washingtonians are just pure rotten evil...
Washington DC ... Devil's City
Washington DC .... Devil's Crown
The evil ones cannot change their evil ways... they're too far gone... the evil ones cannot
be redeemed...
LorDampNuts 7 hours ago
Keep sending your donations to Stop the Steal, Trump has a plan and will be sworn in by
April when it warms up. Free Chumptard hat with every $100 donation.
Occams_Razor_Trader 7 hours ago
I'd donate a hunny for you to flush your head in a toilet ...............
foxenburg 7 hours ago
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Rammbock 7 hours ago
Republicans are great actors
Kotwica 44 7 hours ago
This guy speaks truth, but, no one gives a flying fu<k.
Ajax_USB_Port_Repair_Service_ 7 hours ago
Attention Secret Police: We've got one for you!
freedommusic 7 hours ago (Edited)
Whatever these folks say is irrelevant. They are all sitting on foreign soil. The UNITED
STATES CORPORATION is a foreign Municipal entity owned by China claimed in the recent
bankruptcy settlement. POTUS said when he was leaving. Go ahead, take it. The buildings, the
chairs, statues, it's all yours . Anyone who steps outside of that foreign jurisdiction will be
entering American soil and subject to the Laws of the United States Constitutional Republic and
prosecuted for treason and sedition.
DC is now a Chinese embassy.
I wonder how much food they have stocked up in there? I would presume the military would
uphold a blockade and prevent the exchange of trade from occurring into a surrounded hostile
territory of the enemy.
YOU WANT IT
YOU GOT IT
HAVE A NICE DAY
SERReal1 7 hours ago
Where was Rand in calling out the election fraud?
Now he is acting all tough again on the deep state creatures.
9.1ontherichterscale 7 hours ago (Edited)
He wants to stay in office. No way is going to touch the third rail. None of them will.
rkb100100 7 hours ago
This is part of a Punch and Judy show put on for retards.
leodogma1 7 hours ago
And yet not one peep of this Quislings tie's to the Chinese Communist party of Evil !
Southern Discomfort 7 hours ago
I'm sure it will be blamed on an action taken by Trump and the only cure will be
intervention. Maybe Joetard can set up a new cabinet level position to seek out opportunities
for new wars.
More-Cowbell 8 hours ago
The show must go on. As if these asz clowns ( all of them ) matter.
north_hand_demon 8 hours ago
Whatever. Your cushy lifestyle, and mine, exists because we're the dominant imperial power
on the planet. Might makes right. Paul knows it too; this is just virtue signaling.
artless 7 hours ago (Edited)
And in your statement lies the real problem with the vast majority of people in this
country.
Yeah I edited the lame ad hom line after I read a few comments. But perhaps it is long due
that rather than simply accept things as the way they are and calling any opposition to it the
thoughts of a ten year old, it might be high time to actually try to make a change in how
people think and ultimately behave.
Too many people letting their wishful thinking override their wisdom, just like when Obama
was enthroned. I will admit that I was fooled back in 2008 as well, thinking "This time
things are finally different!" , though in my defense I will say that the "Reality
Distortion Field" built around BHO by the mass media was far more believable than the one
they have scraped together for Biden.
Biden being installed will thus buy the empire a "grace period" in which other
countries (EU mostly) will happily buy into America's next war effort. As with the
post-Bushlette era decorated with the Obama figurehead, the empire will take advantage of
this "grace period" to escalate its violence.
After all, that is why they want someone like Biden in the White House in the first place.
If the imperial establishment were at all interested in global de-escalation then they would
have gone forward with it when Trump demanded troops out instead of playing shell games to
keep the empire's wars on a low boil. Trump's belligerent noise-making made it impossible
for the empire to escalate its wars. The empire needs someone who is willing to put a nice
"progressive" spin on mass murder in order to get buy-in for a renewed round of
slaughter.
The empire will not waste this opportunity. They have been waiting four years for it.
There will be more war.
Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 20 2021 21:14 utc | 77
Agree with most of this as well as your other post earlier in the thread.
Biden is an attempt to put the mask back on the monster so that the woke, "resistance"
crowd will continue to not care about the unabated slaughter abroad. I mean, when you really
look at it, they (and the corporate mainstream "liberal" media) rarely criticized Trump's
foreign policy and often cheered it, albeit without ever openly praising him, per se. We saw
the occasional article about the ethnic cleansing in Yemen that Trump greatly aided and
abetted, but everyone including the NYT was completely behind his war on Venezuela and
attempt to create war with Iran. The media got a bit up in arms when Kashoggi was murdered -
because of course he was then a journalist - but even that died down quite quickly while
Trump continued feting the Israelis and Saudis.
The coming hot wars will be fought with all of the record breaking arms that Trump sold in
the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
All of that having been said, I'll repeat a point I've made since we started talking about
the election: Trump didn't "start any new wars" because there wasn't much left to do after
Obama and Bush set the world on fire and the Iranians (and Venezuelans) showed restraint when
attacked - both physically and economically. Trump and his Zionist handlers would have loved
it if the USA had ended up in a war with either of those countries and I have no doubt that
if he was elected to a 2nd term, we'd have seen one or both transpire. With Biden, same thing
as the first thing about Trump - There isn't much left to destroy that the USA could actually
get away with and I suspect he will continue the existing wars for however long he (or
Kopmala) is in office.
It's an Empire with a revolving-door Emperor called a President or Prime Minister. The
facts are fixed around the policy. We're obviously headed back toward a more 'can't we all
get along' empire, after four years of a guy who thought he was an actual emperor, instead of
a bobble-head. The differences between the two monopoly parties in the USA are entirely
domestic and are nothing but the size of the crumbs given to the people who think they are
free.
bottom line kadath.. the usa will be an ongoing slavish servant to israel.. that much is
clear as day... which way it goes - syria or iran - none of the saber rattling will stop..
israel doesn't want it to stop! neither does the american duopoly! the people might, but
they don't get a say and generally are not interested in foreign policy..
IMO Biden will do as he is told. His white house chief of staff is a powerful and
skilled player and is quite experienced in working with Biden. Joe could well be diverted to
give solid focus on the home front while the rats he has appointed continue their global
piracy and belligerence. I figure that is why they ran the old fool.
On January 21, the president-elect will sign a number of executive actions to move
aggressively to change the course of the COVID-19 crisis and safely re-open schools and
businesses, including by taking action to mitigate spread through expanding testing,
protecting workers, and establishing clear public health standards.
On January 22, the president-elect will direct his Cabinet agencies to take immediate
action to deliver economic relief to working families bearing the brunt of this crisis.
Between January 25 and February 1, the president-elect will sign additional executive
actions, memoranda and Cabinet directives. The president-elect will fulfill his promises to
strengthen Buy American provisions so the future of America is made in America. He will
take significant early actions to advance equity and support communities of color and other
underserved communities. He will take action to begin fulfilling campaign promises related
to reforming our criminal justice system. The president-elect will sign additional
executive actions to address the climate crisis with the urgency the science demands and
ensure that science guides the administration's decision making. President-elect Biden will
take first steps to expand access to health care – including for low-income women and
women of color. He will fulfill his promises to restore dignity to our immigration system
and our border policies, and start the difficult but critical work of reuniting families
separated at the border. And, President-elect Biden will demonstrate that America is back
and take action to restore America's place in the world.
As noted above, this list is not comprehensive. More items and more details will be
forthcoming in the days ahead.
Time will tell how the other appointees in the administration align with Klain and the
extent of the savage power struggle that is soon to manifest.
The USA is now the proverbial Whale in a Swimming Pool: it is big, powerful and impressive
- but can't hide its moves anymore and has little to none margin for any maneuver.
The American Center-wing is ossifying, or, in Cold Warrior terminology (Arthur
Schlesinger Jr.), is losing its "vitality". It is entering a stage where it must "burn the
village in order to save it".
... it seems the answer is that Germany plays the role in Europe that the US plays in the
world and both are satisfied with that role even though neo-liberalism, austerity and
war-mongering are leading us to inhumanity and disaster.
Like i said before elsewhere Biden would capitalize on what Trump has put forth and take
the infamy and blame for instead of moving in the opposite directions of whatever Trump
criticized for in foreign policy. That means be it trade war with China, renege on climate
deals, strong arming NATO and EU countries, or giving everything Israel wants nothing stop
Biden from maintaining what has been put in place.
At most they'll just make excuse on why they had to maintain the policies they themselves
criticized Trump for without changing direction.
He said Joe Biden's strong conviction was that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a "bad idea"
and that the administration would use "every persuasive tool" to convince partners,
including Germany, to discard the project.
That is pretty much a declaration of war against countries in Europe. Stay
away,
America's
disarray is its own woes, not other countries' opportunity The Financial Times lives in
a world where the USA doesn't have more than 2,000 operational nukes, doesn't control the
financial system (SWIFT), doesn't issue the universal fiat currency (Dollar Standard),
doesn't have a big fucking navy, doesn't enjoy absolute ideological hegemony etc. etc.
...Tronald's foreign policy has been a disaster, even if he has supposedly not sparked a
new war. Let's not talk about all the secret operations, multiplied drone attacks, state
terrorist assassinations, etc. And the new administration is now continuing this...
They've stopped thinking, become utterly predictable.
They just go through the motions. They know that they can't win-achieve their long held
objectives-but they can't stop repeating themselves, including their past errors. They are
not allowed to. The US ruling caste-servants of the ruling class- are only allowed to
operate within very narrow boundaries. They aren't allowed to take radical measures when
faced with new crises- they are confined within ever diminishing political circles. The
duopoly has become an obvious One Party system. And its politics are those of the Gilded
Age-150 years old and still going strong.
The only solution to America's problems is defeat so complete that it cannot be denied
even by the least perceptive. Anyone with money to spare should be buying popcorn
futures.
...Biden is an elderly figurehead. Trump's mistake was being openly bullying and vulgar
instead of underhanded. Already, the EU ( as cowardly vassals ) are falling into line on
Iran and Russia.
...Paul Craig Roberts is correct. There has not been a regime change, there has been a
revolution and treating policies of this "president" as if he is more than a figurehead
being run by oligarchs is foolish in the extreme.
They've stopped thinking, become utterly predictable.
One could say this about the American people who have been herded into two camps so that
the Center can rule. Here's an example: One of Biden's first executive actions is to
include undocumented residents in the Census. This will please the Left immensely and
outrage the Right. But the Census is conducted every 10 years and it was completed in 2020.
So Biden's action is actually meaningless. How many people will actual notice this? Very
few.
It is funny/sad to see the Post Trump Stress Disorder victims are already rationalizing
and making excuses for the war that the establishment drones they voted for will be
starting, and those drones are not even sworn in to office yet. They know that they voted
for war yet their plastic, Hollywood "identities" are so intertwined with their assumed
self-evident moral superiority that they are compelled to defend the evil they are
responsible for even before it is committed. For them, doing nothing crudely is far worse
than murdering millions accompanied by lofty and emotive platitudes.
Meet the Filthy Rich War Hawks That Make up Biden's New Foreign Policy Team
"I expect the prevailing direction of U.S. foreign policy over these last decades to
continue: more lawless bombing and killing multiple countries under the cover of "limited
engagement," – Biden Biographer Branko Marcetic
by Alan Macleod November 13th, 2020
https://www.mintpressnews.com/filthy-rich-war-hawks-make-joe-biden-foreign-policy-team/273039/
Neera Tanden – Reduce US Deficits by Raiding the Economies of Countries We Have
Destroyed:
Neera Tanden, Biden's Pick for Budget Office: Now Is Not the Time To 'Worry About Raising
Deficits and Debt'
by Robby Soave https://reason.com/2020/11/30/neera-tanden-biden-omb-debt-deficit/
She once suggested that if Americans care about the deficit so much, maybe we should make
Libya pay for it.
| 11/30/2020
( Ariana Ruiz/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom )
Trump ripped the mask off US foreign policy and exposed it for what it is - ugly Zionism
and outrageous Jewish supremacy. Trump did many foreign policy changes previous incumbents
and their handlers wanted to do but were constrained by the optics and international
opinion.
I agree the Biden administration will continue the same tired old foreign policy, only
with the mask back on. Of course the media won't notice the similarities, but the public
will. No matter how fervently the managers tinker with the edges it is events that drive
changes and change people.
I just listened to President Biden's speech. It was a good one, even a great one. Thinking
about what Plato means by the 'noble lie' it was a noble speech, and there wasn't much of a
lie about it.
b finished the posting with
"
While Trump had continued the wars the U.S. waged when he came into office he did not start
any new ones. Since Joe Biden first entered the Senate 47 years ago he has cheered on every
war the U.S. has since waged. It would be astonishing to find four years from now that he
did not start any new ones.
"
Prepare to be astonished. Biden isn't going to start any new wars for the same reason
that Trump didn't......MAD
Humanity has been in the MAD phase of the civilization war we are in since the Obama era
push back in Syria.
Biden's chest beating will not be as "impressive" as Trump's but the trajectory is the
same.
The new chief says to tighten the circle of wagons, but those accused of besieging the
Outlaw US Empire's wagon train stopped attacking and moved on long ago. Meanwhile,
supplying the wagon train continues to take resources away from dealing with very real
domestic problems. The upshot is China will continue to pull away and increase its lead
geoeconomically, and together with Russia will continue to solidify and strengthen the
Eurasian Bloc. Very soon, the EU is going to be faced with a very stark choice--to join the
Eurasian Bloc and thus stave-off economic atrophy or continue to allow its brand of
Neoliberal Parasites to eat and risk rupture, perhaps not in 2021 but before 2030.
The key is that the false narrative that was initiated in 1945 and bolstered in 1979
continues to be treated as gospel despite its path to certain ruin. I noted there were no
questions asked about the international call for a Bretton Woods 2.0 that would end dollar
hegemony and Petrodollar recycling, while removing the one source of coercion behind its
illegal sanctions.
The only possible target of opportunity I see is Venezuela as the frack-patch is about
to fold-up shop and fuel prices cause domestic inflation to soar -- Here in Oregon, gas
prices have gone up 50cents/gal since the first of the year--25%. The oil being the obvious
target now the the lower-48 has definitely peaked.
@ 32 juliania... you are the eternal optimist! there is something admirable about that!..
however you have to contend with a lot of cynical people who think like it's business as
well, as b's post notes..... you might not like to hear this, but nothing is going to
change under biden... big wheels set in motion and biden is not interested in the least in
changing any of it... neither was trump as some of his fanbots are coming to see too...
political speeches are just so much b.s... juliania - as the saying goes, talk is cheap, it
is actions that count.... watch peoples actions, not their talk... biden can talk a good
line, but that has nothing to do with his actions... top of the day to you!
@34 Invading Venezuela and 'taking the oil' won't be easy though there is a possibility
Colombia will help out. Which means the total disruption of South America. More economical
to just buy the stuff.
"It is funny/sad to see the Post Trump Stress Disorder victims are already rationalizing
and making excuses for the war that the establishment drones they voted for will be
starting, and those drones are not even sworn in to office yet. They know that they voted
for war yet their plastic, Hollywood "identities" are so intertwined with their assumed
self-evident moral superiority that they are compelled to defend the evil they are
responsible for even before it is committed. For them, doing nothing crudely is far worse
than murdering millions accompanied by lofty and emotive platitudes."
Posted by: William Gruff | Jan 20 2021 16:16 utc | 26
Tnx for expressing this in a much nicer and polite way then i would have written. And
yes, yes it is sad/amusing to watch NPC`s turn into pretzels to explain away their
cognitive dissonans ,utter foolishness and stupidity.
"... If not for the "new normal" we 100% would guarantee a new war – or a restarted old war – within a year. As it stands, we're only 60% sure they'll be some kind of military intervention sometime soon (Venezuela wouldn't be a surprise). ..."
"... The real crackdowns are going to be domestic. There is a huge push to take "domestic terrorism" seriously , and that will go hand-in-hand with increased purges of social media (again with "Russian disinformation" playing a major role). ..."
"... I wonder if the military occupation was designed to disguise the total lack of support, given the evidence of election fraud. You couldn't get more emptiness and virtual absence of reality if the military conducted the installation in a bunker in the dying days of the Reich. ..."
"... Another poster said it looked like a junta in a minor banana dictatorship. Spot on. It was a military installation visually and in a political sense for there were no people. ..."
This particular inauguration is going to look a lot different from all the others –
the twin bogus narratives of coronavirus and the "attempted
coup" on January 6th have forced, FORCED, capitol city into an almost Martial Law-like
standing.
A heavy troop presence as your leader is sworn in is one of the hallmarks of legitimacy, you
understand. And not even slightly a sign of power being seized illegitimately.
That said, Biden will technically be "President", so it's time to ask ourselves –
what kind of world are we in for?
Internationally it's likely to be business as usual. If you look at his cabinet choices,
from
Victoria Nuland to
Samantha power , we have a LOT of warmongers who bleat about America's "responsibility to
protect". While politicians and pundits are already rebuking Trump & Johnson for failing in
US/UK's
"moral leadership" of the world, or praising Biden for his plans to "counter Russian
disinformation".
If not for the "new normal" we 100% would guarantee a new war – or a restarted old war
– within a year. As it stands, we're only 60% sure they'll be some kind of military
intervention sometime soon (Venezuela wouldn't be a surprise).
The real crackdowns are going to be domestic. There is a huge push to take "domestic
terrorism" seriously , and that will go hand-in-hand with increased purges of social media
(again with "Russian
disinformation" playing a major role).
The big question is whether the inauguration will go off smoothly, or they'll try another
manufactured incident to sell that agenda.
How do you think President Creepy Uncle Joe is going to shape our world? How long before,
for whatever reason, Kamala Harris replaces him? Will the pandemic be "solved"? Will we have a
new war? Discuss below.
Jan 21, 2021 2:24 AM
Washington DC was empty except for the troops. Windblown streets. Jason Goodman did his
walkabout could not even get a distant view of the Capitol. It's as if no one voted for Biden: no supporters even tried to attend the inauguration. You would have expected someone a few diehards who hadn't heard about the military
occupation.
I wonder if the military occupation was designed to disguise the total lack of support,
given the evidence of election fraud. You couldn't get more emptiness and virtual absence of
reality if the military conducted the installation in a bunker in the dying days of the
Reich.
Another poster said it looked like a junta in a minor banana dictatorship. Spot on. It was a
military installation visually and in a political sense for there were no people.
An inauguration of the leader of a nation cannot be legitimate if the people play no part
.
Celebrities cheered with exaggerated leering grins and lockjaw, tongues lolling in a vain
caricature of support from the class of paid actors.
The term 'State Actor' has a new meaning today. The Corporatist Media could not recognise
its own banality. This was like the USSR Actors' Union huddling and fawning around Secretary
General Brezhnev as the Soviet Union teetered to collapse.
Social cretinism is the best one can say about this sorry debacle but I fear it is something
much, much worse.
Disillusioned Peasant , Jan 21, 2021 2:38 AM Reply to theobalt
Agreed, Trump was used as a puppet to shame anybody who questions the narrative or resists
the deep state. He was asked to be a cartoon, a ridiculous exaggeration of a "traditionalist"
or "nationalist" to forever tarnish that stance. He was basically the Alex Jones president
.the ultimate controlled opposition. A clown.
I'm so embarrassed I fell for it in 2016. Of COURSE he was phony. Jan 21, 2021 1:39 AM
The snake as a new head. It's still the same snake. It still crawls on it's belly and it
still spits the same lies on behalf of the masters who stand behind the curtain. We could
still hear Bush Sr when Clinton spoke ; We could still hear Bush Jr when Obama spoke. Red and
Blue are the same colour.
It was refreshing in parts to have an American president who didn't try to contrive a
narrative that would justify invading another country or contrive yet another cell of
'radicalised' terrorists. No explosions on home soil intended to be taken as an attack from
foreign soil. Nothing in four years.
It was all the more surprising as many believed that Trump was and is a great real estate
dealer and TV celebrity who has manufactured his charisma from arrogance and ignorance. He
has never been celebrated for much beyond his business acumen in the real estate area and TV.
This wasn't exactly an erudite man. Former presidents of different ages were and were capable
of putting it on paper in their memoirs. Trump was the sign of the times ; a Twitter
president. His reign was punctuated by the occasional flexing of Uncle Sam's muscles with
threats and a go -ahead-punk-make-our-day approach to public speaking. Yet still no
threats of war. This was an odd four years. That odd = peace says more about the US than
Trump though. So, what was his role ?
In 2001 we had the Twin Towers. The most dramatic mass murder and the destruction of the
laws of Physics and Logic all in one day. Soon after we had the destruction of personal
freedom and the creation of domestic terror. It had been suggested by Philip Zelikow three
years earlier that a 'searing event such as a terror attack' would be a useful and
effective tool in transforming the future by breaking away from the past in no uncertain
terms. It would be the event that nobody dare question, and that would be perfect for
creating a real fear within the people of the west that such a disaster could occur any time
without warning. All they needed was the right salesman to address us.
And so the Patriot Act was born. The surveillance of everyone in their streets, in other
towns and their homes was pushed through as a public health measure and a matter of
national security. If you protested you were a ' 9 /11 denier' and 'unpatriotic'. If
we went too long without evidence of this terror then somewhere would be bombed and the
bomber would be 'neutralised' before we would ever learn who was behind it. It took time to
become a 'new normal' but it became the 'new normal'. Complain- you were a 'dangerous'
conspiracy theorist; in some states it was considered grounds to label you under the mental
health act. Just for asking questions.This was how to protect democracy- by
tyranny.
So, two decades on we were ready and primed.
Gates and his cohort billionaire 'philanderers' had been beavering away for decades
creating more subtle forms of terror. No bangs; no smoke; no mess. These 'missiles'
were microbes and the control groups had been observed closely. From mice, to bats to black
people to gay people. Once the results /data became big enough numbers, the bomb factory went
to work behind the closed doors of 'Cancer Research ' facilities.
We all know now about the hypothetical exercises 'imagined' by the Gates 'Good
Club' ; nightmares of being unprepared etc. They penned in 2030 as target date for the
endgame. . A date that will have seen the human race enslaved or culled by their
terrorism.
Liability would have been taken off the table, giving them free reign. All involved sank
their pennies into the manufacturing of these little bombs. And all Academic Institutions,
MSM platforms, and pharmaceutical industries were funded by Gates and Co. Then
Monsanto and it's subsidiaries were purchased the same way, and the same immunity from
prosecution granted from the damaging synthetic /poison crops and food.
So, 2020, was Trump's last stand. He had his '9 /11'. He had domestic bio
terrorists. Then the rest of the world had it. We had the same threats to national
security and the same 'need' for a new version of a Dystopian Patriot Act.
This wasn't about ISIS or Al -Qaeda and their radicalised lunatics. Trump had found a new
group of Bogeymen. China. He would have sounded a bit paranoid if Russia was blamed for
something again. Besides, everyone knows that all SARS- type or flu-like viruses are made in
China quicker and cheaper. And the US should know that by looking in their many, many
stockpiles in their own Biological War labs they pretend are trying to cure
cancer.
Trump decided to refer to the Covid 19 virus as 'The Chinese disease '. Fang
Ling Fauci had told him to on behalf of Wong Sing Gates.
He went on to call himself a 'war time president' ( there you go- he got one).
He invoked the Defence Production Act, an old Cold War law which allows the Executive
Branch to control and redirect the production and distribution of scarce materials deemed
"essential to the national defense. " In an executive order dated March 18th,
2020.
To add another layer to the movie the troops were brought in and all medics were now
'heroes on the front line'.
The script went global. It began in the country that Gates had composed such a
hypothetical scenario- America. Hence the 'Chinese Disease'. It was the new war on terror
minus the James Bond bad guy Bin Laden.
So Trump ushered it in right on time. It didn't win the election( we were told). Instead,
it won it for Obama's man, Biden.
Biden and Obama were the most vehement advocates of Monsanto, Sterilisation, and Social
Technology ( eugenics ; social cleansing). Obama was made a very wealthy man for his
services to the Gates agenda, pharma and GM / Frankenfood. He was surprisingly racist
as well as elitist. Tom Vilsack was their frontman. Biden has already called him out of
retirement.
So, given the 'war-on-(bio)-terror ' that was born in the USA and sold worldwide,
there was no place for Trump. His job was to let the the 'enemy' in, warn us of the possible
'war ahead' and leave it to Gates. But Trump seemed to have spotted that and didn't
seem too keen on the narrative. So, come on down Barack O Biden. The timing's right.. Jan 20,
2021 11:40 PM Reply to Ben
Do not be bamboozled, in SHAM DEMOCRACY USA there is only one party, THE
REPUBLICRATS (the WAR RACKETEER CORPORATE FASCIST political racket so corrupt it needs two
aliases).
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral
and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never
did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have
found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of
tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
~ Frederick Douglas, 1857
Schmitz Katze , Jan 20, 2021 10:44 PM
„That said, Biden will technically be "President", so it's time to ask ourselves
– what kind of world are we in for? –
The real crackdowns are going to be domestic.-
Will the pandemic be "solved"? „
It will only be solved when people have had enough of it. The deep state got rid of Trump
(for the timebeing-) under the guise of a pandemic. For them and their minions in MSM,
government and academia it´s a gift that keeps on giving, with never ending corona
mutation fearporn.
It´s totalitarianism, it´s dystopia under under the guise of –
domestic-safety.
@42 I'm sure Maduro would take dollars.....or gold. Of course buying Venezuelan oil from an
evil brutal socialist dictator would be a major climb down.
The USA doesn't pay for oil or gas. It takes over the mining company, demands the project
be funded by local or national borrowing from USA banks with sovereign guarantees, sells the
product to a separate US company that pays peanuts to the miner and then onsells for a major
markup (transfer pricing). Its called modern day stealing of other countries resources.
Look at the report on keystone that you cited at #39 where
The Canadian province that invested $1.1 billion of taxpayers' money in the controversial
Keystone XL project is now considering the sale of pipe and materials to try to recoup some
funds.
"If the project ends, there would be assets that could be sold, such as enormous
quantities of pipe," Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said in a press conference Monday.
Meanwhile the directors and shareholders got their fat checks and dividends from the
municipal loan funds ;)
The USA will not pay in gold until it is on its knees - it simply will not pay. See how
the USA 'bought' Tik Tok: blatant extortion/theft. The same as was done to Japan's high tech
in the 60's 70's or whenever. Thieves.
In the end, it's all about money. And the US has an army that costs more than can be
plundered from the countries it occupies.
The US military costs about a trillion every year. There are no countries left to be
conquered by the US where that kind of treasure can be looted.
Policy to stop Nord Stream 2 will continue under Biden, although here we're told
Biden will extend New START Treaty by the same person, Biden's nominee for Secretary of
State, Antony Blinken.
Defense nominee Austin was also covered in this article where we can see he reads from
the same playbook as those who went before him. So it seems like continuity of its dystopic
imperial policy will be what we see from the Outlaw US Empire, although we'll soon see if
that also applies to Trump's Farewell boast that he was proud not to have started any "new"
wars.
@42 I'm sure Maduro would take dollars.....or gold. Of course buying Venezuelan oil from an
evil brutal socialist dictator would be a major climb down.
The USA doesn't pay for oil or gas. It takes over the mining company, demands the project
be funded by local or national borrowing from USA banks with sovereign guarantees, sells the
product to a separate US company that pays peanuts to the miner and then onsells for a major
markup (transfer pricing). Its called modern day stealing of other countries resources.
Look at the report on keystone that you cited at #39 where
The Canadian province that invested $1.1 billion of taxpayers' money in the controversial
Keystone XL project is now considering the sale of pipe and materials to try to recoup some
funds.
"If the project ends, there would be assets that could be sold, such as enormous
quantities of pipe," Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said in a press conference Monday.
Meanwhile the directors and shareholders got their fat checks and dividends from the
municipal loan funds ;)
The USA will not pay in gold until it is on its knees - it simply will not pay. See how
the USA 'bought' Tik Tok: blatant extortion/theft. The same as was done to Japan's high tech
in the 60's 70's or whenever. Thieves.
Hi b, Jim Kunstler has an interesting piece this week on the impact of EROI on the US
recovery or lack thereof in the US shake sector. Just not enough cheap energy to get their
economy going. Will Germany hold up against Trumps last minute sanctions against
Nordstream if Biden maintains them? If Germany doesn't won't that put Germany in the same
over expensive boat as US and lead to economic stagnation? Especially if all Russia's
cheap energy ends up in China, which it almost certainly will.
"Why do the USA, UK and Europe so hate Russia? How it is that Western antipathy, once
thought due to anti-Communism, could be so easily revived over a crisis in distant Ukraine,
against a Russia no longer communist? Why does the West accuse Russia of empire-building,
when 15 states once part of the defunct Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO, and NATO troops now
flank the Russian border? These are only some of the questions Creating Russophobia
iinvestigates. Mettan begins by showing the strength of the prejudice against Russia through
the Western response to a series of events: the Uberlingen mid-air collision, the Beslan
hostage- taking, the Ossetia War, the Sochi Olympics and the crisis in Ukraine. He then
delves into the historical, religious, ideological and geopolitical roots of the detestation
of Russia in various European nations over thirteen centuries since Charlemagne competed with
Byzantium for the title of heir to the Roman Empire. Mettan examines the geopolitical
machinations expressed in those times through the medium of religion, leading to the great
Christian schism between Germanic Rome and Byzantium and the European Crusades against
Russian Orthodoxy. This history of taboos, prejudices and propaganda directed against the
Orthodox Church provides the mythic foundations that shaped Western disdain for contemporary
Russia. From the religious and imperial rivalry created by Charlemagne and the papacy to the
genesis of French, English, German and then American Russophobia, the West has been engaged
in more or less violent hostilities against Russia for a thousand years. Contemporary
Russophobia is manufactured through the construction of an anti-Russian discourse in the
media and the diplomatic world, and the fabrication and demonization of The Bad Guy, now
personified by Vladimir Putin. Both feature in the meta-narrative, the mythical framework of
the ferocious Russian bear ruled with a rod of iron by a vicious president. A synthetic
reading of all these elements is presented in the light of recent events and in particular of
the Ukrainian crisis and the recent American elections, showing how all the resources of the
West's soft power have been mobilized to impose the tale of bad Russia dreaming of global
conquest. "By hating Russia, one hurts oneself. Swiss journalist Guy Mettan pieces together
the reasons of detestation of the Kremlin and of a rhetoric that goes back to Napoleonic
times despite the long list of aggressions perpetrated in the meantime by the West. And he
explains why pushing Moscow toward Asia is a very serious error." -Panorama, Italy "Like
Saddam Hussein's mythical weapons of massive destruction in 2003, Peter the Great's fake will
has been used to justify the aggressions and invasions that the Europeans, and now the
Americans, still carry out against Russia." -Liberation, France
"Not at all, the center of russophobia will now be Germany. In is not a surprise that
Russia recently declared that the center of russophobia in the EU are now France and
Germany."
Nord Stream 2 will be completed contrary to the opinions of four to five commenters on
here. This is Germany & Russia that you are talking about. Sanctions did not stop the
Crimean bridge. It makes no economic sense to deny European/West Asian (Russian produced)
Liquid natural gas in order to subsidise 'transit fees' to Ukraine. The U.S.Congress'
sanctions here are untenible, but don't expect Germany & Russia to publish how they will
do it until completion.
Reuters gleeful that Gazprom announced the possibility Nord Stream 2 won't be completed
due to "political pressure." But such a warning is part of all standard potential risks
announcements accompanying any prospectus--a fact Reuters ignored--which in this case is for
the issuance of Eurobonds, although I question the judgement in making them dollar
denominated.
Its not contrary to my opinion, but you appear to be young and naive person. There is
nothing new in that German policy, for example it supported the building of pipelines from
the USSR over President Reagan objections. Which does not mean that it wasn't enemy of the
USSR - its destruction was the key for taking control of Eastern Europe and turning it into
Germany's Latin America.
Someone can hate you and may want to make money at the same time too. But as soon as there
is weakness, they will pounce on you and stab you in the back.
As for the pipeline, it will remain under a puppet russian government. No loss there
too.
What the EU wants is to subdue Russia and later dismember it, taking hold of the
population and natural resources.
In the mean time, there is nothing wrong with making some money too. As the EU worships a
good living too.
This comes at a time when Americans are now
reporting that they trust corporations more than they trust their own government or media,
when pundits are gleefully proclaiming in The New
York Times that "CEOs have become the fourth branch of government" as they pressure the
entire political system to smoothly install Biden, when the leading contender for the
Department of Justice's Antitrust Division is an Obama holdover who went from the
administration to working for both Amazon and Google, and when Americans are being
paced into accepting an increasing amount of authoritarian changes for their own good.
And this manic celebration and increasing brazenness of corporate power are of course
overlaid atop an unceasing river of human blood as the globe-spanning empire continues to smash
any nation which disobeys it into compliance so as to ensure lasting uncontested planetary
hegemony.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
DH Fabian , January 18, 2021 at 12:03
Yes, nervous middle classers pray Joe Biden will be their salvation. The rest of us know
why "business as usual" will continue. The only real difference between Biden and Trump is
that Biden is more likely to start a catastrophic war (as his record clearly indicates).
Jeff Harrison , January 17, 2021 at 23:17
Good points. Since Americans don't see any consequence to their government's outrageous
behavior, everything's outstanding (there are real benefits to those two oceans)! And it will
remain outstanding until someone shoves our bad behavior in our faces (which could really
happen. The Russians and Chinese are arming themselves to defend themselves from the US.
That's a lot cheaper than having to support a major offensive capability) or our brokeness
blows our economy to hell. You might want to read up on what happened to Sparta ..
No, I am not excited for the inauguration of a man who: Wrote the crime and bankruptcy
bills, voted for the Iraq War, took more money from Wall Street than Trump, and told a room of
rich donors that "nothing will fundamentally change." Democrats are part of the problem
too.
"Unfortunately, not everywhere and not always has this quest for solidarity and joint work
manifested itself during the pandemic. Some of our Western colleagues, primarily the United
States and its closest allies, tried to take advantage of the situation and to ratchet up
pressure, blackmail, ultimatums and illegitimate actions while introducing unilateral
restrictions and other forms of interference in the internal affairs of many countries,
including our closest neighbour Belarus.
"The West unanimously ignored the calls by the UN Secretary General and the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights to suspend, at least for the duration of the pandemic,
unilateral and illegitimate sanctions regarding the supply of medications, food and equipment
needed to fight the virus while Russia was ready to back up this approach. President Putin
put forward a parallel initiative during the G20 summit to create green corridors in the
economy that are free from sanctions and other artificial barriers. Unfortunately, these
sensible appeals - both ours and those of the UN leaders - were left hanging in the air.
"Last year we observed the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII, the birth of the United
Nations and the entry into force of its Charter. Against the backdrop of these anniversaries,
we are very concerned about the continuous arrogant actions of the United States and most of
its Western allies, which are aimed at undermining international security, which is based on
the UN, its Charter and its agencies and replacing the traditional norms and standards of
international law with a "rules-based international order.'"
Lavrov then proceeds to indict the EU for promoting "multilateralism" outside the
framework of the UN in a manner meant to replace the UN with EU diktats: "The EU views the
establishment of specific rules as its exclusive right in the belief that all others must
follow these standards. Examples are many." Thus the EU follows the Outlaw US Empire's lead.
Lavrov then shares his own analysis:
"[T]hese are apprehensions of competition and the understanding that in today's world the
West can no longer dictate its own orders to others as it has over the last five centuries.
History is moving forward, it is developing. This has nothing to do with ideology. This is
just a statement of fact. It is necessary to consider the views of the countries that now
have a much greater weight in the world arena (completely incomparable with that of the
colonial era) and the countries that want to preserve their civilisational identity and that
do not see in the West the ideals for their societies. Tolerance of diversity is another
characteristic that the West is losing very quickly."
And all that is connected to other related developments:
"There are situations where half a dozen people that have created their own technological
empires do not even want to know what rights they have in their own states. They determine
their rights themselves proceeding from so-called corporate standards and completely ignore
the constitutions of their states. We have seen this clearly in the US and this is a source
of deep concern . Much has been said about this recently in television reports and
special analytical materials. We are not pleased by the attempts of the Western elites to
find external enemies to resolve their internal political problems. They find these enemies
in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. The list of these countries is well
known. [Yet, Lavrov insists there's no ideology involved, a point of contention I have with
him.]
"We all see the response to the news of Alexey Navalny's return to the Russian Federation.
Carbon-copy comments on this event are coming in one after another. They are full of joy
because they allow Western politicians to think that in this way they can divert public
attention away from the deepest crisis of the liberal development model.
"I am convinced that it is necessary not to seek outside excuses to justify one's own
actions or sidetrack attention from one's deepest problems and crises. On the contrary, it is
essential to play an honest game and look for opportunities to resolve domestic problems via
fair and equitable international cooperation. No one can expect to resolve its own problems
outside multilateral formats any longer."
Unfortunately, they do exhibit just that expectation. Yet, the most insidious, factual
accusation made against the West in Russia's defense is this:
" They just don't provide the facts, which is what decent people always do in order to
justify their discussions ." [My Emphasis]
Thus my very heavy critique of Cynthia Chung who invented facts to fit her ideological
hypothesis.
Lavrov closes his peroration by directly addressing those foreign reporters in the
audience:
"We are interested in addressing problems through a dialogue. However, 'forcing a
closed door' that the West keeps 'under lock and key' is beneath our dignity . Your
governments are well aware of our proposals that we have made repeatedly, starting with the
dialogue on strategic offensive arms, arms control and nonproliferation to interaction on
cybersecurity and non-deployment of weapons in space. There are many such areas. For each of
them, Russia has proposals for establishing honest cooperation on key threats that are common
to all countries around the world instead of using these threats to achieve unilateral
geopolitical advantages by means of unscrupulous competition. President Putin's initiative to
hold a summit of the five UN Security Council permanent members is a manifestation of such a
desire to start a dialogue. All other leaders of the Group of Five responded positively to
this proposal." [My Emphasis]
Lavrov closes by reminding his audience that Russia is hardly alone or isolated, that it's
in combination with over 1/3 of the planet's people; and that instead of an unhealthy
competition, Russia has openly asked all Eurasian nations to join together with its partners
who "share our common philosophy: to say no to confrontation and to address existing
problems on a balance of interests ." [My Emphasis]
In his presser, Lavrov referred to Russia's Main Foreign Policy Results in
2020 , the document available at the link. There's so much to read! Lavrov's response to
the question about Latvia's recent behavior IMO best encapsulates the depth of Western
immorality and blatant double-standards for its behavior. When it comes to the Outlaw U
Empire:
"The most important thing is that our proposals on cybersecurity and on investigations
into our alleged interference in US affairs, as well as on space projects and arms control,
are on the table. As recently as in September 2020, President Putin publicly invited the
United States – not President Trump or anyone else, but the United States as a power
which, we hope, has retained at least a degree of respect for continuity and compliance with
foreign policy agreements – to reboot our relations in the sphere of cybersecurity and
non-intervention into internal affairs of each other."
Russia simply would like to hear an answer, even no is better than being ignored. There's
so much more, particularly on the Freedom of Speech topic where Lavrov again remined people
of their nations's responsibilities under the treaties they've signed and ratified. Lavrov
made the effort to highlight this:
"I have already mentioned the topic of states' obligations and now want to remind you
about them. The US is a member of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Interestingly (however, this issue is often omitted) there have been two international
treaties, one for civil and political rights, and the other the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Having signed the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (it was in the 1960s), the US flatly refused to sign the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as the Convention on the Rights of
the Child [just as it refused to ratify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was
the product of Eleanor Roosevelt's doggedly determined efforts].
" This is a refusal to take any responsibilities related to providing adequate quality
of life to its population and solving social and economic problems ." [my Emphasis]
My point is the same as Lavrov's: The Outlaw US Empire has on several occasions not to
sign and ratify a treaty that it's Constitution says it ought to in order to form a more
perfect union and to advance the general Welfare, which is quite telling when we discuss the
reasons for the rise in Populism and the reasons someone like Trump is elevated well beyond
his standing and abilities.
And since no English language media source published anything about Lavrov's very
important presser, how should we rate its Information Hygiene while Pompeo's illegal antics
get reported no matter their outrageousness? Gross failure is my verdict.
As Paco said, reporting on Lavrov's presser would be rather long, and he was quite
correct! I left quite a lot on the cutting room floor.
What a lie. The bombs being dropped from the U.S. made jets the Saudi pilots fly over Yemen
killing civilians leaves blood all over his hands not to mention shaking the hand of the
Saudi that murdered a journalist before selling him weapons to kill Yemen's civilians.
Waryaa Moxamad 48 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 05:36 PM
1) False flag chemical attack on Syria. 2) killing Soleimani in a sovereign country he was
invited to 3) Guaido 4) Bolivia. 5) continuing the wars predecessors started.
Who is being fooled that U.S. presidency has any say in America's imperialism?
Who really pushed for General Soleimani to be killed and has the most personal and intense
vendetta against Soleimani? Mike Pompeo. Trump did not give the Pentagon and CIA all the wars
they wanted, especially in Syria. Now the Pentagon and the CIA have their puppet, Corrupt
Biden, who will do what they command him to do. I would expect in one year to see another
massive war. Where? Syria. The US mothers will cry when their sons come home in coffins. The
Hez in Lebanon will not back down, and they will enter Syria again. Trump did not want young
American boys coming back in coffins!!!!!!!
By 2016 the concept of "liberal democracy," once bright with promise, had dulled into a
neoliberal politics that was neither liberal nor democratic. The Democratic Party's turn toward
market-driven policies, the bipartisan dismantling of the public sphere, the inflight marriage
of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the cockpit of globalization -- these interventions
constituted the long con of neoliberal governance, which enriched a small minority of Americans
while ravaging most of the rest.
Jackson Lears is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers,
Editor in Chief of Raritan, and the author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern
America, 1877–1920, among other books. (January 2021)
If there must be a CIA, I feel better with Bill Burns being in charge of it.
William Burns in 2014 as U.S. deputy secretary of state. (State Department)
By John Kiriakou Special to Consortium News
P resident-elect Joe Biden has finally named a new CIA director, one of the final
senior-level appointees for his new administration. Much to the surprise of many of us who
follow these things, he named senior diplomat Williams Burns to the position. Burns is one of
the most highly-respected senior U.S. diplomats of the past three decades. He has ably served
presidents of both parties and is known as both a reformer and as a supporter of human
rights.
Burns is currently the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an
important Washington-based international affairs think tank. He served as deputy secretary of
state under President Barack Obama and was ambassador to Russia under President George W. Bush
and ambassador to Jordan under President Bill Clinton. He was instrumental in the negotiations
that led to the Iran Nuclear Deal and spent much of his career focused on the Middle East Peace
Process. Burns joined the Foreign Service in 1982.
Please
Contribute to Consortium
News ' Winter Fund Drive
"Bill Burns is an exemplary diplomat with decades of experience on the word stage keeping
our people and our country safe and secure. He shares my profound belief that intelligence
must be apolitical and that the dedicated intelligence professionals serving our nation
deserve our gratitude and respect. The American people will sleep soundly with him as our
next CIA Director."
The message from Biden is clear: The CIA will not be led by a political hack like Mike
Pompeo, a CIA insider like John Brennan, or someone associated with the CIA's crimes of
torture, secret prisons, or international renditions like Gina Haspel. Instead, the
organization will be led by someone with experience engaging across a negotiating table with
America's enemies, someone experienced in solving problems, rather than creating new ones,
someone who has dedicated much of his career to promoting peace, rather than to creating
war.
Rank & File Response
The question, though, is what will be the response from the CIA's rank-and-file to Burns'
appointment? I can tell you from my 15 years of experience at the CIA that there will be two
reactions. At the working level, analysts, operators, and others will continue their same level
of work no matter who the director is. Most working level officers don't even care who the
director is. It doesn't matter to them. They never encounter the director and policies made at
that top level generally don't impact them on a day-to-day basis.
At the senior levels, the leadership levels, CIA officers will be of two minds. Some will
welcome Burns and his professionalism. They'll welcome a director who doesn't attract adverse
press because of a past history of committing war crimes or crimes against humanity. (Even if
they supported those crimes when they were being committed, press attention is always
unwelcome.) They'll welcome a director who didn't head secret prisons overseas. They'll
welcome a director who wasn't in charge of Guantanamo. They'll welcome a director who
wasn't in charge of maintaining a secret "kill list."
Others will resent Burns, though, as they resented an earlier outsider, Admiral Stansfield
Turner. Turner had been appointed by President Jimmy Carter to "clean up" the CIA. Turner then
fired fully a third of the CIA's operations officers, some just months away from qualifying for
retirement. He was universally reviled after that, and he never regained the trust of agency
personnel.
That's not Burns' style. He's not a military officer who demands fealty. He's a diplomat, a
negotiator. The CIA has to be cleaned up. Its policies have to be reformed. If there must be a
CIA, I feel better with Bill Burns being in charge of it. At the very least, we should give him
enough time to at least get started.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the
Obama administration under the Espionage Act -- a law designed to punish spies. He served 23
months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture
program.
As a top-level State Department official through the administrations of Reagan, Bush I,
Clinton, Bush II and Obama, Burns is implicated in virtually every crime of US imperialism
over the past three decades, including the war in Iraq, the US-NATO attack on Libya, the
military coup that drowned the Egyptian Revolution in blood, and the US intervention in
Syria.
After such a career, as the saying goes, Burns knows where all the bodies are buried. Now
he is assigned to head an agency that is probably responsible for more killing, torture and
mass suffering than any other on the planet: the CIA.
A preview of what to expect from a Burns-led CIA was given during an interview with
National Public Radio's Mary Louise Kelly on "US Global Leadership" held June 19, 2019 at the
Truman Center for National Policy in Washington, DC. In the extended conversation, Burns
defended the US and NATO-led coup in Libya which ended with the grisly murder of Muammar
Gaddafi, followed by an ongoing civil war, the torture and killing of refugees and the return
of slave-markets.
"It was right to act in Libya in the way that we did," Burns said. While the US government
might have "got some assumptions wrong," he expressed no regrets, saying that he still
thought Obama's "decision to act was unavoidable."
Anne , January 12, 2021 at 14:15
I would agree with your estimation some one, anyone who can think, believe, say etc that
what we did in Iraq, Libya (I don't doubt Serbia), Syria is "rightful" has a heinously
distorted mind (pretty much everyone in DC, in the MICIMATT) And Biden has revealed himself
– again – as a subject of the corporate-capitalist-imperialist plutocratic ruling
elites (and one with his hand forever stuck out)
was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows
(including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator. Follow him on Twitter
@georgegalloway
19 Jan,
2021 18:23 It's hard not to wonder if Joe Biden will even last his first 100 days in office...
but those arguing his mind isn't sound enough shouldn't expect a swift exit, because since when
was that a disqualifier?
... ... ...
The madness of Donald Trump had nothing on his Republican predecessor and fellow-impeachee
Richard Nixon. So disturbing were the last days of Tricky Dicky, it came as a relief to America
and the world when he resigned – even though it was famously said his successor Gerald
Ford couldn't chew gum and walk in a straight line at the same time. Bovine he may have been,
but a mad-cow he wasn't.
The Raging Bull Donald J Trump – grotesque, bizarre, unbelievable – had the
misfortune to go quite mad in the age of cable news and social media. His narcissistic
predilections always bordered on personality disorder. But his natural braggadocio stormed him
to victory in 2016 in a backlash against the super-smooth professorial presidency of Barack
Obama, with Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton riding shotgun.
Under Obama, the Clintonite deindustrialisation of America became almost complete .
China was presented with America's lunch. And in no less than nine conflicts across the
globe Obama was 'nation-building' in other people's countries while his own country was falling
apart. But a dark storm was gathering
If only the Democrats had not started out by trying to steal Trump's election in a flurry of
pussy-hats and fake Russiagate hoaxes. If only they hadn't striven might and main to railroad
the Electoral College into betraying their mandate and – in the case of
Nancy Pelosi – make a thinly disguised call for "uprisings throughout the country."
If only they hadn't spent countless millions and two whole years of a four year-term with the
Mueller Inquiry and the cockamaney theorem that the man who confronted Russia from Ukraine and
the Baltics through the wrecked INF and Open Skies treaties to the killing fields of the Levant
was, in fact, an agent of Vladimir Putin. If only, if only
As it happened, the descent into madness of Trump was complete by the end. The coronavirus
he derided at first, before predicting it would disappear in the warm weather of spring, before
pondering whether bleach up the bahookie might not be an option as a cure. The Tammany Hall
skullduggery of election day, practiced over a century in places like New York, rolled out
across the country. The political suicide of only half-making a revolution on January 6 dug
his own grave. Nobody ever beat a candidate who polled over 75 million votes before. But
Sleepy Joe Biden did.
And he did it hardly ever leaving his basement home studio, where he painfully struggled to
read an autocue even with an earpiece shrieking the words to him. When he did speak, it was
often gibberish that would have made Ronald Reagan blush. He oftentimes plainly didn't know
where he was, what office he was running for, which woman was his sister and which was his
wife.
When Boris Yeltsin was rattling down, the world endlessly amused itself at the sight of
Russia on its back, legs akimbo with thieves picking its pocket. With Joe Biden, though, the
political class and its media echo-chamber merely look the other way.
Despite Democratic Party control of all levels of Federal power, it seems unlikely we are
about to witness an FDR or a JFK barnstorming 100 days. It seems fair to wonder if Sleepy
Joe will even see out a hundred days in office. It is, however, certain that if he is in office
he will not be in power. Because power has already passed to the cavernous uncertainty of Vice
President Kamala Harris.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Mark Conley 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:44 PM
Thanks for reminding the world that the president of the USA including his puppet elected
office bearers has absolutely no power whatsoever. Well said. Thus you have answered your own
observation at the end. The future is indeed dark and uncertain with the only certainty that
nothing good can be expected from any USA government. Thus the onus is on the peaceful
majority to do what is necessary.
Atilla863 42 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:15 PM
One thing is certain in the new leadership - the debt will go on growing, perhaps reaching
40+ T dollars before the next elections. While this trend continues - the Chinese will be
laughing all the way running to their banks as their economy records fortune after fortune
proportional only inversely to the rate at which America recedes into superpower sunset.
JJ_Rousseau 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:18 PM
I'm surprised at George Galloway's comments, as he is a former MP in British politics. Kamala
in charge? Don't make me laugh. The cabal is in charge, as they have been since Woodrow
Wilson. Before actually, as Garfield was assassinated for shedding light on the banker
machinations. Garfield knew that control of the nation's money was control of the nation. The
coup of America is complete. The POTUS is only the spokesman for the cabal, nothing else
Biden will be much easier to control and manipulate by the Jewish Banking Cartel, which
ultimately controls the US government and Wall Street. Trump was too unpredictable and would
have made it difficult for them to achieve their historical hope. "The Jews energetically
reject the idea of fusion with other nationalities and cling firmly to their historical hope
of World Empire." - Dr. Max Mandelstamm ***We should always listen to the doctors.
Not stolen.....50 states certified, 60 plus courts found nothing fraudulent, and the
electoral votes were confirmed by the House and Senate, with the Senate led by Pence. So, as
the world knows and anyone who knows election laws, the election was one of the most
legitimate ever held in the US.
KarlthePoet 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:10 PM
The Jewish Banking Cartel is ultimately in control of the US government and Wall Street.
They've been in control for decades. Now they've obviously teamed up with the Jewish Big Tech
companies like Facebook and Google in order to gain even more control. Controlling the money,
money system, and the minds of the masses has been their goal. Two Jewish controlled
companies control over $9Trillion of American's wealth. (BlackRock Inc. & Goldman Sachs)
They've finally achieved their goal. The cartel is now in control of a country that is
completely out of control. Karma!
Daffyduck011 KarlthePoet 38 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:18 PM
Ashkenasty banking cartel.
JJ_Rousseau KarlthePoet 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:29 PM
It's not only the banking cabal, it's the media (which the same gang own, of course). This
cannot happen without a complicit media. This is a very old strategy
Blackace180 7 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:49 PM
He'll be impeached multiple times, along with his family. Removed and jailed. People need a
reminder of just how messed up Obama/Biden was and it is coming. The caravans are already on
the way and gas has jumped 55 cents a gallon since the election, for no reason other than it
is Biden. People will run the nutcracker right out of office, hopefully before the country
collapses from his nutcracker policies.
White Elk 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:45 PM
The press-elected.
Xilla White Elk 33 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:23 PM
How did the press elect him?
Franc 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:28 PM
Xilla/Herrbifi, you're not welcome here. We all know what your goals are, and we all know
you're just here to make a pointless mess.
5th Eye 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:18 PM
An Italian bureaucrat once said, "Everything is changed, so that it remains the same." It
will be exactly like that under Biden to legitimate his regime.
The_Chosenites 51 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:06 PM
Since both Trump and Biden are proud zionists, the only thing I am certain of is Israel and
the Jewish community have won another election and we'll see many jewish politicians elevated
to positions of power in the Biden administration. Biden best do what's best for Israel if he
knows whats good for him and his health.
KarlthePoet The_Chosenites 16 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:40 PM
Maybe when Kamala becomes President she can get advice from her Jewish husband, who is a
lawyer. What a coincidence.
Enki14 9 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:48 PM
That Henry Kissinger, long time shadow government puppet endorsed demented biden is a clue as
to what might happen as they know in 2 years the masses will reinstate conservatives and in 4
years another trumpster. We may see sweeping changes, with some huge blowback.
The_Chosenites Enki14 4 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:53 PM
Kissinger has had a bed in the oval office for many a President, he must have been installed
by the Chosennites to stay in office forever. Presidents come and go, but Kissinger remains
to pull the strings. Goldman Sach's et al rule the roost.
Daniel Fernald 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:42 PM
Biden's 100 days are interesting. It's exactly 100 days from January 20 to May 1, which is
the communist May Day.
Skeptic076 Daniel Fernald 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:44 PM
Used to be the American May Day as well, you know? Interesting if you research why it is not
anymore.
Michael Knight 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:46 PM
Impossible to believe he'll be in charge????? That's probably because he won't be!
RCBreakenridge Mike Freeman 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:28 PM
Mike, seriously? What echo chamber are you living in? How can you look at Biden and not
understand that he's little more than a life-size cardboard cutout of the man that used to be
Obama's puppet? He'll be in office as long as they can continue to stand him up for photo ops
and he continues to do exactly what he is told. As soon as either of those conditions falter,
Nancy and friends will roll out the 25th amendment, show him the door and lead KH to the
presidents chair. But make no mistake, the only choices Sleepy Joe will be making are to do
as he is told.
>>Today, the Trump administration filed an appeal against the UK decision not to
extradite Assange. I must imagine that means that Trump has no intention of pardoning
Assange.
Trump was a desperate "Murica must have the biggest dick" imperialist massively triggered
by the US decline and trying to save the US Empire. Like a rabid dog that is wounded, he
attacked anything that moves, including those who helped him get into power.
Anyone who thought that he will help the likes of Russia or Assange does not understand
the psychology of elite US WASPs.
These people thought that they and the US should rule the world and that they are the
cream of the cream. Anything denying them that would lead to crazed reactions, hysteria,
rabid animalistic behavior, and snarling and gnashing of teeth at anything that moves.
Simply put, their decline caused them to go rabid. A rabid dog attacks anything that
moves, whether friendly or not. Unfortunately for the likes of Russia and Assange.
"... "A month after the election, Biden's nominations make clear that the president-elect is most focused on trying to fulfill his ..."
"... to donors that nothing fundamentally changes. And yet, that tacit admission may have stunned those who keep hearing from liberal and progressive groups in Washington that, in fact, the left has been notching monumental victories in Biden's cabinet appointments ..."
"... What little organized left political infrastructure exists in Washington is largely valorizing or publicly defending swamp creatures who at minimum deserve a loyal opposition. The ..."
"... being done by a small handful of under-resourced groups to mount a real opposition is getting trampled by a culture of obsequiousness. This culture of acquiescence gives swamp creatures a free pass ..."
"... Despite Tanden's ..."
"... push for Social Security cuts ..."
"... , Beltway liberal groups whose mission is to defend Social Security ..."
"... . Despite Tanden having her organization ..."
"... rake in cash ..."
"... from Wall Street, Amazon, billionaires and ( ..."
"... ) foreign governments, a Ralph Nader-founded, all-purpose consumer advocacy group ..."
"... CAP as "one of our key partners in the fight to tax corporations and the rich, rein in monopoly power, tackle government corruption, and much more." Despite Tanden ..."
"... a union at CAP, ..."
"... union leaders ..."
"... in Washington lauded her. ..."
"... American Prospect ..."
"... "a President Biden would be in the business of confronting Mr. Putin for his aggressions, not embracing him. Not trashing NATO, but strengthening its deterrence, investing in new capabilities to deal with challenges in cyberspace, in outer space, under the sea, A.I., electronic warfare, and give robust security assistance to countries like Ukraine, Georgia, the Western Balkans ..."
"... "a President Putin would be in the business of confronting Mr. Biden for his aggressions (in Syria, or elsewhere), not embracing them. Not trashing the Warsaw Pact, but strengthening its deterrence, investing in new capabilities to deal with challenges in cyberspace, in outer space, under the sea, A.I., electronic warfare, and give robust security assistance to countries like Canada, Mexico, and other nations that are near the U.S. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Bernard Schwartz, ..."
"... a former Vice Chairman and top investor in Lockheed Martin ..."
"... (which is by far the largest seller to the U.S. Government, and also the largest seller to most of America's allied Governments), is one of Joe Biden's top donors. CNN headlined, on October 24th, ..."
"... "Biden allies intensify push for super PAC after lackluster fundraising quarter" ..."
"... , and reported that, "Bernard Schwartz, a private investor and donor to the former vice president's campaign, said he spoke with Biden within the last two weeks and encouraged him to do just that." It's not for nothing that throughout Biden's long Senate career, he has voted in favor of every U.S. invasion that has been placed before the U.S. Senate. ..."
That didn't take long. He's not even in office, and he has already surrounded himself, as
the incoming President, with individuals who derive their wealth from (and will be serving)
America's top defense contractors and Wall Street. The likelihood that these Government
officials will be biting the hands that feed them is approximately zero. Great investigative
journalists have already exposed how corrupt they are. For that to be the case so early (even
before taking office) is remarkable, and only a summary of those reports will be provided here,
with links to them, all of which reports are themselves linking to the incriminating evidence,
so that everything can easily be tracked back to the documentation by the reader here, even
before there are any 'Special Prosecutors' (as if those were serving anyone other than the
opposite Party's political campaigns, and, ultimately, the opposite Party's billionaires).
First up, is the independent investigative team of David Sirota and Andrew Perez. On
December 4th, they bannered "The Beltway
Left Is Normalizing Corruption And Corporatism" , and reported that "A month after the
election, Biden's nominations make clear that the president-elect is most focused on trying to
fulfill hispromiseto donors that nothing fundamentally changes. And yet, that tacit
admission may have stunned those who keep hearing from liberal and progressive groups in
Washington that, in fact, the left has been notching monumental victories in Biden's cabinet
appointments ."
Liberal (that's to say Democratic Party) U.S. media hide the corruptness of Democratic
politicians, and conservative (that's to say Republican Party) U.S. media hide the corruptness
of Republican politicians; and, so, the public today are getting corrupt leaders whichever side
they vote for. No mainstream 'news' media report what independent investigative journalists
such as Sirota and Perez report. Authentically good journalists use as sources -- and link to
in their articles -- neither Democratic nor Republican allegations, but instead are on the
margins, outside of the major media, and so rely on whistleblowers and other trustworthy
outsiders, not on people who are somebody's paid PR flacks, individuals who are being paid to
deceive. As Sirota and Perez state: " What little organized left political infrastructure
exists in Washington is largely valorizing or publicly defending swamp creatures who at minimum
deserve a loyal opposition. Thegood workbeing done by a small handful of under-resourced groups to mount a real opposition is
getting trampled by a culture of obsequiousness. This culture of acquiescence gives swamp
creatures a free pass ." It's all some sort of mega-corporate propaganda -- 100%
billionaire-supported on the conservative side, 100% billionaire-supported also on the liberal
side, and 0% billionaire-supported for anything that is authentically progressive (not
dependent, at all, upon the aristocracy).
That independent reporting team focused on Biden's having chosen an economic team which will
start his Administration already offering to congressional Republicans an initial Democratic
Party negotiating position that accepts Republicans' basic proposals to cut middle class Social
Security and health care benefits in order for the Government to be able to continue expanding
the military budgets and purchases from the billionaire-controlled firms, such as Northrop
Grumman -- firms whose entire sales (or close to it) are to the U.S. Government and to the
governments (U.S. 'allies') that constitute these firms' secondary markets. (In other words:
those budget-cuts aren't going to be an issue between the two Parties and used by Biden's team
as a bargaining chip to moderate the Republicans' position that favors more for 'defense' and
less for the poor, but are actually accepted by both Parties, even before the new
Administration will take office.) Obviously, anything that both sides to a negotiation accept
at the very start of a negotiation will be included in the final product from that negotiation;
and this means that during a Biden Presidency there will be reductions in middle-class Social
security and health care benefits in order to continue, at the present level -- if not to
increase yet further -- Government spending on the products and services of such firms as
Lockheed Martin and the Rand Corporation (firms that control their market by controlling their
Government, which is their main or entire market).
Sirota and Perez focus especially upon one example: Neera Tanden, whom Biden chose on
November 30th to be the White House Budget Director, and who therefore will set the priorities
which determine how much federal money the President will be trying to get the Congress to
allocate to what recipients:
Despite Tanden'spush for Social Security cuts, Beltway liberal groups whose mission is to
defend Social Securitylauded
herthink
tank. Despite Tanden having her organizationrake in
cashfrom Wall Street, Amazon, billionaires and (previously) foreign governments, a Ralph Nader-founded, all-purpose consumer
advocacy group
praisedCAP as "one of our key partners in the fight to tax corporations and the
rich, rein in monopoly power, tackle government corruption, and much more." Despite Tandenbustinga union at CAP,twonationalunion
leadersin Washington lauded her.
Next up: One of the rare honest non-profits in the field of journalism is the Project on
Government Oversight, POGO, which refuses to accept donations from "anyone who stands to
benefit financially from our work," and which states in its unique "Donation Acceptance Policy" that,
"POGO reviews all contributions exceeding $100 in order to maintain this standard." In other
words: they refuse to be corrupt. Virtually all public-policy or think-tank nonprofits are
profoundly corrupt, but POGO is the most determined exception to that general
rule.
On 20 November 2020, POGO headlined "Should
Michèle Flournoy Be Secretary of Defense?" and their terrific investigative team of
Winslow Wheeler and Pierre Sprey delivered a scorching portrayal of Flournoy as irredeemably
corrupt -- it ought to be read by everybody. It's essential reading throughout, and its links
to the evidence are to the very best sources. So, I won't summarize it, because all Americans
need to know what it reports, and to be able to verify, on their own (by clicking onto any link
in it that interests them), any allegation that the given reader has any question about.
However, I shall point out here the sheer hypocrisy of the following which that article quotes
Flournoy as asserting: "It will be imperative for the next secretary to appoint a team of
senior officials who meet the following criteria: deep expertise and competence in their areas
of responsibility; proven leadership in empowering teams, listening to diverse views, making
tough decisions, and delivering results." (Of course, that assertion presumes the
given 'expert' to be not only authentically expert but also honest and trustworthy,
authentically representing the public's interest and no special interests whatsoever -- not at
all corrupt -- which is certainly a false allegation in her own case.) She had urged the 2003
invasion of Iraq, and had participated in planning and overseeing both the war against Syria,
and the coup that destroyed Ukraine (and none of those countries had ever invaded, or even
threatened to invade, the United States); and, so, for her to brag about her
"delivering results" is not merely hypocritical, it is downright evil, because she is obviously
proud, there, of her vicious, outright voracious, record.
Her business-partner, Tony Blinken, has already received Biden's approval to become his
Secretary of State, and the first really good investigative journalist that American
Prospect magazine has had, Jonathan Guyer, headlined on November 23rd, "What You Need to Know About Tony Blinken" , and what Guyer
reports is just what any well informed reader would expect to see for a business
partner of Flournoy's.
Guyer's report closes by making passing reference to a CBS 'news' puff-piece for Blinken. In
that CBS
puff-piece , Blinken says, "a President Biden would be in the business of confronting
Mr. Putin for his aggressions, not embracing him. Not trashing NATO, but strengthening its
deterrence, investing in new capabilities to deal with challenges in cyberspace, in outer
space, under the sea, A.I., electronic warfare, and give robust security assistance to
countries like Ukraine, Georgia, the Western Balkans ." What would Americans think if
Russia were to have retained its Warsaw Pact, and "a President Putin would be in the
business of confronting Mr. Biden for his aggressions (in Syria, or elsewhere), not embracing
them. Not trashing the Warsaw Pact, but strengthening its deterrence, investing in new
capabilities to deal with challenges in cyberspace, in outer space, under the sea, A.I.,
electronic warfare, and give robust security assistance to countries like Canada, Mexico, and
other nations that are near the U.S. "? Guyer pointedly noted that "The [CBS News] podcast
was sponsored by a major weapons maker. 'At Lockheed Martin, your mission is ours,' read an
announcer." Tony Blinken's mission is theirs. These people get the money both coming and going
-- on both sides of the "revolving door." Today's American Government is for sale to
the highest bidders, on any policy, domestic or foreign. 'Government service' is just a
sabbatical to boost their value to the firms that will be paying them the vast majority of
their lifetime 'earnings'. This is the reality that mainstream U.S.-and-allied 'news' media
refuse to publish (or, especially , to make clear). Only an electorate which
is ignorant of this reality can accept such a government.
Back on 26 January 2020, I had headlined "Joe Biden Is as Corrupt as They
Come" and documented the reality of this, but America's mainstream media were hiding that
fact so as to decrease the likelihood that the only Democratic Party Presidential candidate whom no billionaire
supported , Bernie Sanders, might win the nomination. Perhaps now that it's too late, even
those 'news' organizations (such as CNN, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, New York Times ,
Washington Post , PBS, and NPR) will start reporting the fact of Biden's corruptness.
Where billionaires control all of the mainstream media, there is no democracy -- it's not even
possible , in such a country
Bernard Schwartz,a former Vice Chairman and top investor in Lockheed Martin(which is by far
the largest seller to the U.S. Government, and also the largest seller to most of America's
allied Governments), is one of Joe Biden's top donors. CNN headlined, on October 24th,"Biden
allies intensify push for super PAC after lackluster fundraising quarter", and
reported that, "Bernard Schwartz, a private investor and donor to the former vice president's
campaign, said he spoke with Biden within the last two weeks and encouraged him to do just
that." It's not for nothing that throughout Biden's long Senate career, he has voted in favor
of every U.S. invasion that has been placed before the U.S. Senate.
Near the end of the Democratic Party's primaries, on 16 March 2020, CNBC headlined
"Megadonors pull plug on plan for anti-Sanders super PAC as Biden racks up wins" , and
reported that Bernard Schwartz had become persuaded by other billionaires that, by this time,
"Biden could handle Sanders on his own." They had done their job; they would therefore control
the U.S. Government regardless of which Party's nominee would head it.
Biden -- like Trump, and like Obama and Bush and Clinton before him -- doesn't represent the
American people. He represents his mega-donors. And he is staffing his Administration
accordingly. He repays favors: he delivers the services that they buy from him. This is today's
America. And that is the way it functions.
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President Donald Trump has delivered his "parting gift" to the Moscow-led Nord Stream 2 gas
pipeline, with newly announced sanctions targeting a pipe-laying vessel and companies involved
in the multinational project.
The specialist ship concerned, named, 'Fortuna,' and oil tanker 'Maksim Gorky', as well as
two Russian firms, KVT-Rus and Rustanker, were blacklisted on Tuesday under CAATSA (Countering
America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) as part of Washington's economic war on Moscow.
The same legislation had been previously used by the US to target numerous Russian officials
and enterprises.
Russian energy giant Gazprom warned its investors earlier on Tuesday that Nord Stream 2
could be suspended or even canceled if more US restrictions are introduced.
However, Moscow has assured its partners that it intends to complete the project despite
"harsh pressure on the part of Washington," according to Kremlin press secretary Dmitry
Peskov. Reacting to the new package of sanctions on Tuesday, Peskov called them
"unlawful."
Meanwhile, the EU said it is in no rush to join the Washington-led sanction war on Nord
Stream 2. EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said that the bloc is not going to resist
the construction of the project.
"Because we're talking about a private project, we can't hamper the operations of those
companies if the German government agrees to it," Borrell said Tuesday.
Nord Stream 2 is an offshore gas pipeline, linking Russia and Germany with aim of providing
cheaper energy to Central European customers. Under the agreement between Moscow and Berlin, it
was to be launched in mid-2020, but the construction has been delayed due to strong opposition
from Washington.
The US, which is hoping to sell its Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to Europe, has hit the
project with several rounds of sanctions over scarcely credible claims that it could undermine
European energy security. Critics say the real intent is to force EU members to buy from
American companies.
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Fatback33 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:20 AM
The group that owns Washington makes the foreign policy. That policy is not for the benefit
of the people.
DukeLeo Fatback33 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:06 PM
That is correct. The private banks and corporations in the US are very upset about Nord
Stream - 2, as they want Europe to buy US gas at double price. Washington thus introduces
additional political gangsterism in the shape of new unilateral sanctions which have no merit
in international law.
noremedy 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:22 AM
Is the U.S. so stupid that they do not realize that they are isolating themselves? Russia has
developed SPFS, China CIPS, together with Iran, China and Russia are further developing a
payment transfer system. Once in place and functioning this system will replace the western
SWIFT system for international payment transfers. It will be the death knell for the US
dollar. 327 million Americans are no match for the rest of the billions of the world's
population. The next decade will see the total debasement of the US monetary system and the
fall from power of the decaying and crumbling in every way U.S.A.
Hanonymouse noremedy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:37 PM
They don't care. They have the most advanced military in the world. Might makes right, even
today.
Shelbouy 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:25 PM
Russia currently supplies over 50% of the natural gas consumed by The EU. Germany and Italy
are the largest importers of Russian natural gas. What is the issue of sanctions stemming
from and why are the Americans doing this? A no brainer question I suppose. It's to make more
money than the other supplier, and exert political pressure and demand obedience from its
lackey. Germany.
David R. Evans Shelbouy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:58 PM
Russia and Iran challenge perpetual US wars for Israel's Oded Yinon Plan. Washington is
Israel-controlled territory.
Jewel Gyn 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:34 AM
Sanctions work both ways. With the outgoing Trump administration desperately laying mines for
Biden, we await how sleepy Joe is going to mend strayed ties with EU.
Count_Cash 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:20 AM
The US mafia state continues with the same practices. The dog is barking but the caravan is
going. The counter productiveness of sanctions always shows through in the end! I am sure
with active efforts of Germany and Russia against US mafia oppression that a blowback will be
felt by the US over time!
Dachaguy 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:24 AM
This is an act of war against Germany. NATO should respond and act against the aggressor,
America.
xyz47 Dachaguy 42 minutes ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:20 PM
NATO is run by the US...
lovethy Dachaguy 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:04 PM
NATO has no separate existence. It's the USA's arm of aggression, suppression and domination.
Germany after WWII is an occupied country of USA. Thousand of armed personnel stationed in
Germany enforcing that occupation.
Chaz Dadkhah 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:19 PM
Further proof that Trump is no friend of Russia and is in a rush to punish them while he
still has power. If it was the swamp telling him to do that, like his supporters suggest,
then they would have waited till their man Biden came in to power in less than 24 hours to do
it. Wake up!
Mac Kio 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:34 PM
USA hates fair competition. USA ignores all WTO rules.
Russkiy09 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:33 PM
By whining and not completing in the face of US, Russia is losing credibility. They should
not have delayed to mobilize the pipe laying vessel and other equipment for one whole year.
They should have mobilized in three months and finished by now. Same happens when Jewtin does
not shoot down Zio air force bombing Syria everyday. But best option should have been to tell
European vassals that "if you can, take our gas. But we will charge the highest amount and
sell as much as we want, exclude Russophobic Baltic countries and Poland and neo-vassal
Ukraine. Pay us not in your ponzi paper money but real goods and services or precious metals
or other commodities or our own currency Ruble." I so wish I could be the President of
Russia. Russians deserve to be as wealthy as the Swiss or SIngapore etc., not what they are
getting. Their leaders should stand up for their interest. And stop empowering the greedy
merchantalist Chinese and brotherhood Erdogan.
BlackIntel 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:27 PM
America i captured by private interest; this project threatens American private companies
hence the government is forced to protect capitalism. This is illegal
Ohhho 3 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 12:15 PM
That project was a mistake from the start: Russia should distance itself from the Evil
empire, EU included! Stop wasting time and resources on trying to please the haters and
keeping them more competitive with cheaper Russian natural gas: focus on real partners and
potential allies elsewhere!
butterfly123 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 01:58 PM
I have said it before that part of the problem is at the door of the policy-makers and
politicians in Russia. Pipeline project didn't spring up in the minds of politicians in
Russia one morning, presumably. There should have been foresight, detailed planning, and
opportunity creation for firms in Russia to acquire the skill-set and resources to advance
this project. Not doing so has come to bite Russia hard and painful. Lessons learnt I hope Mr
President!
jakro 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:37 AM
Good news. The swamp is getting deeper and bigger.
hermaflorissen 4 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 11:49 AM
Trump finally severed my expectations for the past 4 years. He should indeed perish.
ariadnatheo 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 03:06 PM
That is one Trump measure that will not be overturned by the Senile One. They will need to
amplify the RussiaRussiaRussia barking and scratching to divert attention from their dealings
with China
Neville52 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:01 PM
Its time the other nations of the world turned their backs on the US. Its too risky if you
are an international corporation to suddenly have large portions of your income cancelled due
to some crazy politician in the US
5th Eye 2 hours ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:03 PM
From empire to the collapse of empire, US follows UK to the letters. Soon it will be
irrelevant. The only thing that remains for UK is the language. Probably hotdog for the US.
VonnDuff1 1 hour ago 19 Jan, 2021 02:10 PM
The USA Congress and its corrupt foreign policy dictates work to the detriment of Europe and
Russia, while providing no tangible benefits to US states or citizens. So globalist demands
wrapped in the stars & stripes, should be laughed at, by all freedom loving nations.
Knowing an extremely low quality (and it continues to deteriorate steadily) of the
American historiography of WW II, if I would be you--I would be very cautious with what I
read. The whole title of the book you proposed is already a typical sensationalist
revisionist fantasy, which shows clearly that the author is in historical falsification
business, most likely whitewashing Nazis. There is plenty of "scholar" literature like that
to go around in the Anglo-sphere and it is not a real history, but propaganda. Not to mention
the fact that Morgenthau Plan was never really implemented, to start with. Most of what was
written about USSR in the US after the WW II, with some rare, however important, exceptions,
is garbage along the lines of Ziemke's war fantasies.
"These leaders are trusted at home and respected around the world, and their nominations
signal that America is back and ready to lead the world, not retreat from it,"
Biden said on Saturday in a statement announcing his picks to fill top positions under his
nominee for secretary of state, Anthony Blinken.
Like Blinken, the five latest State Department picks are veterans of the Obama-Biden
administration. Nuland , a
neoconservative who was named undersecretary for political affairs, goes all the way back to
former President Ronald Reagan's administration and was a foreign policy adviser to former Vice
President Dick Cheney.
Other new re-hires include: Wendy Sherman, deputy secretary of state, who led the
Obama-Biden administration's negotiating team on peace talks with Iran; Brian McKeon, deputy
secretary for management and resources, who was a national security adviser to then-Vice
President Biden; Bonnie Jenkins, undersecretary for arms control and international security,
who previously coordinated nonproliferation programs; and Uzra Zeha, undersecretary for
civilian security, who formerly was charge d'affaires at the US Embassy in Paris.
After four years of President Donald Trump's 'America First' policy, including efforts to
wind down foreign interventions and broker peace deals, Biden's declaration of "America is
back" portends a sharp contrast in foreign policy. He said his latest nominees will "use
their diplomatic experience and skill to restore America's global and moral
leadership."
Nuland, who studied Russian literature at Brown University, wrote last summer in Foreign
Affairs of how "a confident America should deal
with Russia " with a more "activist" policy, including "speaking directly to
the Russian people about the benefits of working together and the price they have paid for
(President Vladimir) Putin's hard turn away from liberalism." She added, "Washington and
its allies have forgotten the statecraft that won the Cold War and continued to yield results
for many years after."
Nuland perhaps was using such "statecraft" when, as assistant secretary of state in
December 2013, she handed out cookies
to protesters at Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti square who were demanding the resignation of
President Viktor Yanukovich. An audiotape leaked in February 2014 showed that
her involvement in the uprising went well beyond cookies, as she spoke with US Ambassador
Geoffrey Pyatt about plotting to replace Yanukovich with Washington's chosen opposition leader,
Arseny Yatseniuk, and about involving the UN to "f**k the EU" by pushing through a
US-preferred Ukraine policy.
Ironically, Nuland's appointment comes just as politicians in Washington fret over this
month's storming of the US Capitol by pro-Trump protesters, which some called a
coup attempt.
"I knew it wasn't a real coup because Victoria Nuland wasn't handing out cookies,"
Cato Institute senior fellow Doug Bandow said of the Capitol assault. "She'll be back
overthrowing governments in the Biden administration, so it remains a valid standard."
In light of Nuland's hawkish history, 25
anti-war groups have jointly called for the Senate to
reject confirmation of her nomination as undersecretary for political affairs.
"Victoria Nuland is returning to the State Department," one commenter wrote on
Twitter. "The United States is returning to the former Soviet republics with great strides.
A fierce struggle with Russia begins."
"... , and author of several books, including ..."
"... Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran ..."
"... . @medeabenjamin; Nicolas J. S. Davies, an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of ..."
"... Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq ..."
"... . @NicolasJSDavies; and Marcy Winograd of Progressive Democrats of America served as a 2020 Democratic delegate for Bernie Sanders,and is Coordinator of ..."
Yves here. Biden's nominees have skewed towards the awful, particularly on the foreign
policy front. But his plan to install Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland at State is a standout. For
those of you new to this site and not familiar with Nuland's sorry history, this post gives an
overview of her role in fomenting the coup in Ukraine and in putting relations with Russia on a
Cold War footing. The authors encourage readers to call their Senators and urge them to vote
against her nomination.
And before you get unduly excited by Biden nominating Gary Gensler to the SEC, I would much
rather have seem Gensler at Treasury. Gensler demonstrated at the CFTC that he's effective and
dedicated to combatting abuses by Big Finance. However, his best shot at making the SEC feared
and respected again is to appoint a tough head of enforcement, so keep an eye out for that
pick.
The problem that Gensler will have at the SEC is that it is the only Federal financial
services industry regulator that is subject to Congressional appropriations, rather that living
off its fees and fines (the SEC collects far more than Congress allows it). And Democrats, like
Joe Lieberman, then the Senator from Hedgistan, have been if anything more aggressive than
Republicans in threatening the SEC and in keeping it budget-starved.
I had said to Lambert that if Biden wanted to be Machiavellian, the way to pretend to reward
Elizabeth Warren while actually sandbagging her would be to make her SEC chair. Let's hope that
isn't his logic for appointing Gensler.
Photo Credit: thetruthseeker.co.uk Nuland and Pyatt planning regime change in Kiev
Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her because the U.S. corporate
media's foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that
President-elect Biden's pick for Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs is stuck in
the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an
arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.
Nor do they know that from 2003-2005, during the hostile U.S. military occupation of Iraq,
Nuland was a foreign policy advisor to Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush
administration.
You can bet, however, that the people of Ukraine have heard of neocon Nuland. Many have even
heard the leaked four-minute audio of her saying "Fuck the EU" during a 2014 phone call with
the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.
During the infamous call on which Nuland and Pyatt plotted to replace the elected Ukrainian
President Victor Yanukovych, Nuland expressed her not-so-diplomatic disgust with the European
Union for grooming former heavyweight boxer and austerity champ Vitali Klitschko instead of
U.S. puppet and NATO booklicker Artseniy Yatseniuk to replace Russia-friendly Yanukovych.
The "Fuck the EU" call went viral, as an embarrassed State Department, never denying the
call's authenticity, blamed the Russians for tapping the phone, much as the NSA has tapped the
phones of European allies.
Despite outrage from German Chancellor Angela Markel, no one fired Nuland, but her potty
mouth upstaged the more serious story: the U.S. plot to overthrow Ukraine's elected government
and America's responsibility for a civil war that has killed at least 13,000 people and left
Ukraine the poorest
country in Europe.
In the process, Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan, the co-founder of The Project for a New
American Century , and their neocon cronies succeeded in sending U.S.-Russian relations
into a dangerous downward spiral from which they have yet to recover.
Nuland accomplished this from a relatively junior position as Assistant Secretary of State
for European and Eurasian Affairs. How much more trouble could she stir up as the #3 official
at Biden's State Department? We'll find out soon enough, if the Senate confirms her
nomination.
Joe Biden should have learned from Obama's mistakes that appointments like this matter.
In his first
term , Obama allowed his hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Republican Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates, and military and CIA leaders held over from the Bush administration to
ensure that endless war trumped his message of hope and change.
Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, ended up presiding over indefinite detentions without
charges or trials at Guantanamo Bay; an escalation of drone strikes that killed innocent
civilians; a deepening of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan; a self-reinforcing
cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism; and disastrous new wars in
Libya and Syria
.
With Clinton out and new personnel in top spots in his second term, Obama began
to take charge of his own foreign policy. He started working directly with Russia's President
Putin to resolve crises in Syria and other hotspots. Putin helped avert an escalation of the
war in Syria in September 2013 by negotiating the removal and destruction of Syria's chemical
weapons stockpiles, and helped Obama negotiate an interim agreement with Iran that led to the
JCPOA nuclear deal.
But the neocons were apoplectic that they failed to convince Obama to order a massive
bombing campaign and escalate his covert,
proxy war in Syria and at the receding prospect of a war with Iran. Fearing their control
of U.S. foreign policy was slipping, the neocons launched a
campaign to brand Obama as "weak" on foreign policy and remind him of their power.
With
editorial help from Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan penned a 2014 New Republic
article entitled "Superpowers Don't Get To Retire," proclaiming that "there is no democratic
superpower waiting in the wings to save the world if this democratic superpower falters." Kagan
called for an even more aggressive foreign policy to exorcise American fears of a multipolar
world it can no longer dominate.
Obama invited Kagan to a private lunch at the White House, and the neocons' muscle-flexing
pressured him to scale back his diplomacy with Russia, even as he quietly pushed ahead on
Iran.
The neocons' coup de grace against Obama's better angels was Nuland's 2014 coup
in debt-ridden Ukraine, a valuable imperial possession for its wealth of natural gas and a
strategic candidate for NATO membership right on Russia's border.
When Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych spurned a U.S.-backed trade agreement with
the European Union in favor of a $15 billion bailout from Russia, the State Department threw a
tantrum.
Hell hath no fury like a superpower scorned.
The EU trade
agreement was to open Ukraine's economy to imports from the EU, but without a reciprocal
opening of EU markets to Ukraine, it was a lopsided deal Yanukovich could not accept. The deal
was approved by the post-coup government, and has only added to Ukraine's economic woes.
The muscle for Nuland's $5 billion coup was Oleh
Tyahnybok's neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and the shadowy new Right Sector militia. During her leaked
phone call, Nuland referred to Tyahnybok as one of the "big three" opposition leaders on the
outside who could help the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Yatsenyuk on the inside. This is the same
Tyanhnybok who once
delivered a speec h applauding Ukrainians for fighting Jews and "other scum" during World
War II.
After protests in Kiev's Euromaidan square turned into battles with police in February 2014,
Yanukovych and the Western-backed opposition
signed an agreement brokered by France, Germany and Poland to form a national unity
government and hold new elections by the end of the year.
But that was not good enough for the neo-Nazis and extreme right-wing forces the U.S. had
helped to unleash. A violent mob led by the Right Sector militia marched on and invaded the
parliament building , a scene no longer difficult for Americans to imagine. Yanukovych and
his members of parliament fled for their lives.
Facing the loss of its most vital strategic naval base at Sevastopol in Crimea, Russia
accepted the overwhelming result (a 97% majority, with an 83% turnout) of a referendum in which
Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia, which it had been a part of from 1783 to
1954.
The majority Russian-speaking provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine
unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine, triggering a bloody civil war between U.S.-
and Russian-backed forces that still rages in 2021.
U.S.-Russian relations have never recovered, even as U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals still
pose the greatest single
threat to our existence. Whatever Americans believe about the civil war in Ukraine and
allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, we must not allow the neocons
and the military-industrial complex they serve to deter Biden from conducting vital diplomacy
with Russia to steer us off our suicidal path toward nuclear war.
Nuland and the neocons, however, remain committed to an ever-more debilitating and dangerous
Cold War with Russia and China to justify a militarist foreign policy and record Pentagon
budgets. In a July 2020 Foreign Affairs article entitled "Pinning Down Putin," Nuland
absurdly
claimed that Russia presents a greater threat to "the liberal world" than the U.S.S.R.
posed during the old Cold War.
Nuland's
narrative rests on an utterly mythical, ahistorical narrative of Russian aggression and
U.S. good intentions. She pretends that Russia's military budget, which is one-tenth of
America's, is evidence of "Russian confrontation and militarization" and calls
on the U.S. and its allies to counter Russia by "maintaining robust defense budgets,
continuing to modernize U.S. and allied nuclear weapons systems, and deploying new conventional
missiles and missile defenses to protect against Russia's new weapons systems "
Nuland also wants to confront Russia with an aggressive NATO. Since her days as U.S.
Ambassador to NATO during President George W. Bush's second term, she has been a supporter of
NATO's expansion all the way up to Russia's border. She calls
for "permanent bases along NATO's eastern border." We have pored over a map of Europe, but
we can't find a country called NATO with any borders at all. Nuland sees Russia's commitment to
defending itself after successive 20th century Western invasions as an intolerable obstacle to
NATO's expansionist ambitions.
Nuland's militaristic worldview represents exactly the folly the U.S. has been pursuing
since the 1990s under the influence of the neocons and "liberal interventionists," which has
resulted in a systematic underinvestment in the American people while escalating tensions with
Russia, China, Iran and other countries.
As Obama learned too late, the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time can, with a
shove in the wrong direction, unleash years of intractable violence, chaos and international
discord. Victoria Nuland would be a ticking time-bomb in Biden's State Department, waiting to
sabotage his better angels much as she undermined Obama's second-term diplomacy.
So let's do Biden and the world a favor. Join World Beyond War , CODEPINK and dozens of other
organizations opposing neocon Nuland's confirmation as a threat to peace and diplomacy. Call
202-224-3121 and tell your Senator to oppose Nuland's installation at the State Department.
Nuland has also been declared persona non grata by Russia, so she would not be able to go
with Biden, were he to visit Moscow. Russian foreign minister Lavrov, actually refused to
shake her hand when she attended a US-Russia meeting with Kerry. She is poison to any attempt
to peaceful relationships.
Yes, I remember that meeting clearly. Can't cite the network, but it covered her closely
– body language only. I wonder where Biden stood on that act of diplomacy given his own
corruption, and also what John Kerry's thinking is about now. John Kerry's stepson was in
cahoots with Hunter Biden. It looked like Kerry brought her along for some rehabilitation and
Lavrov was having none of it. Instead he went directly to the delegation from Ukraine and
they stood in a circle all with their backs turned to Vicky who had no choice but to wander
over to the coffee table and pretend she wasn't totally uncomfortable. Totally excluded. How
can she recover from that?
If there is one thing that Russia hates it is fascists and that is because of the enormous
damage caused by them in WW2. We call those invaders Nazis but the Russians seem to call them
fascists. I sometimes wonder if it is part of their mother's milk this hatred. For people
like Nuland to help topple the government of a large, bordering country like the Ukraine and
install people that were literally fascists was too much for the Russians. These were fascist
of a very low order that had the old 1930s routines down pat, including the torchlight
parades. And there was Nuland, handing out cookies to the rioters, many of whom had been
trained in rioting tactics in Poland and were being paid about $100 a day by the US if I
recall correctly. Of course Nuland was not alone as there was also a Representative from the
EU also handing out cookies. The only equivalent that comes to mind is a violent revolution
in Canada using professional rioters and having diplomatic representatives from the Russian
Federation and China handing out donuts to the rioter. I wonder what Washington would say
about a stunt like that.
Nuland is a disgusting human being. Since she is a right winger, regardless of what party
may be listed on her voter ID, I don't think Bettridge's law applies here at all.
So glad all these 'woke' people put good old Uncle Joe back in office. Wonder how many
realized they were supporting people being burned alive by actual Nazis in doing so?
Thanks for this. Our "learned nothing/forgot nothing" Bourbon restoration will be led by
one of the dimmer Bourbons who couldn't even set up a good grift in Ukraine without boasting
about it and then angrily denying it. Should the press finally, improbably turn on him it
should make for some fun news conferences. But perhaps he'll merely be moving to the White
House basement from his Delaware basement.
CFTC's budgets are also set through congressional authorization and appropriations. Yes,
the CFPB is not subject to Congressional appropriations, but for good reasons. However, all
financial regulation can be overturned by the Congressional Review Act.
As for the article, citation needed. Sort of a laundry heap of questionable material. Make
no mistake, the Russo-Ukrainian War is a real war. Uniformed Russian armored infantry of
331st regiment of the 98th Svirsk airborne division dropped into Ukraine territory on 24
August 2014. From 25 to 27 August, Russian troops in civilian clothing, backed up by an
armored column [not in disguise] took Novoazovsk. This is about Russia not being able to
station 25,000 troops in Crimea as they had under Yanukovych. US troop levels in Europe have
been at their lowest for the last 20 years. The US would like to [nay, needs to] keep it that
way. However, the erosion of territorial integrity is a touchy subject in Europe given the
lasting peace of the post-war period in a place where the wars have a pre-fix like "Hundred
Years".
President Arseniy Yatsenyuk is of Jewish origin so the claims of coordination with Nazi
sympathizers is dubious. Not even going to get the boycotted unconstitutional Crimean
referendum.
As for WW III, Obama's defense department made it a priority to recover all the MANPADS,
such as the Chinese-made FN-6 [via Qatar], Russian-made Strela-2's and Igla-S's [via Libya]
from the FSA without so much as a thank you from the Russian Air Force. [Turkey, on the other
hand, armed the FSA with Stinger's.] It should be noted that the Syrian conflict's death
toll, in just four years, surpassed the 19-year death toll in all the Afghanistan, Pakistan,
and Iraq war theatres combined.
Think about this way: who needs NATO and the EU more to maintain his power structure, Joe
Biden or Vladimir Putin. Isn't it clear Americans don't care, and American business does not
look to compete in Russian anytime soon. The geography is wrong. But Putin must find a way to
engender ethnicities who do not like the Russian Empire, who had been cleansed by Stalin. One
way is to sell energy below cost to the republics and buy in back from political allies in
the form of electricity. Something upon which the EU frowns. [Personally, I did not care for
the way Putin early on systematically and indiscriminately starved Chechen civilians for
years. It was cruel on a level unseen outside of the Rwandan genocide. More importantly, it
was the Russian Federation abdicating its authority by not providing for its own citizens and
not letting NGO's fill the calorie gap. I'd like to think had Putin's admin not been so
wobbly the first few years, he might've let the Red Cross feed the children.]
Russia was never going to permit a US orchestrated coup in Ukraine without resistance. The
idea that Putin needs NATO more than Biden does seems unreasonable.
Talking about "citations", perhaps you could supply the readership of this site with some
credible citations and links for a few of the far fetched claims you're making here. Most of
this comment reads like pro-Ukrainian propaganda.
I heard about Gary Gensler, Samantha Power, and Victoria Nuland, and I immediately
thought, "The good, the bad, and the ugly."
Gensler surprised everyone when he was at the CFTC by doing his job, and doing it well,
and his running the SEC is a good thing.
Samantha Power is an aggressive war monger, and in her position at USAID, she will likely
have her fingers in regime change pie, since USAID is part of the deep state regime change
apparatus..
I've long suspected that NATO has existed since 1991 to allow the US/EU axis to control
Middle-Eastern and African resources. For example, the Rammstein military hospital is where
every Gulf War soldier was airlifted for major treatment and convalescence.
Also, there is a huge international trade in opium. It's grown in Afpak and shipped out in
every direction. I suspect that a fair amount of that flows through Ukraine and Crimea. If
you look at a topo map of Crimea, there's a lot of seashore that could be good "smuggler's
coves". Following this line of argument, Russia grabbing it from Ukraine was a gimme to
Russia's gangsters. This, as well as the "Pipeline Wars", gives Russia a strong reason to
encircle Ukraine.
At his press conference on July 8, Joe Biden offered a rather bizarre interpretation of
history, in which he likened Ted Cruz and his challenge to some electoral votes to Nazi
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and the "Big Lie." Biden illustrated his point by referring
to the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 in which, he said, "250 or 2,500 people" were
killed. And yet Joseph Goebbels inflated the number to 25,000, even 250,000, thus perpetrating
"The Big Lie." Biden added, "like Goebbels and the Great Lie. You keep repeating the lie,
repeating the lie."
As an historian I am flummoxed at Biden's illustration of Dresden as a Big Lie. In fact, the
best estimate is that 28,000 people died in the bombing of Dresden. In a bizarre way, however,
Joe Biden has accurately linked the Allied bombing campaign of Germany to the Big Lie of Nazi
propaganda. Except the Nazi Big Lie was not about Dresden. Rather it was about the British and
American bombing of Hamburg in 1943. From July 24 through August 2, 1943, the Allied air
forces, mainly the RAF, unleashed a series of massive bomber raids against Hamburg involving as
many as 700+ planes at a time.
Hamburg, one of Germany's greatest industrial centers, was struck in a way no previous city
had been. The raids were especially devastating, inflicting an estimated 34,000 to 38,000 dead.
The raid of 27 July 1943 alone, in which atmospheric conditions created a firestorm, killed
more than 18,000 Hamburg residents. The Allied attack on Hamburg destroyed or damaged more than
60% of the housing in the city and wrecked more than half the factories, a serious blow to
German industrial production. The Hamburg raids came as a gigantic shock to the Nazi leadership
and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels admitted to his diary that Germany was losing the
war.
The Big Lie about Hamburg was the official position of the Nazi government put through the
German news media: Hamburg had been bombed but casualties were not heavy, damage was not
severe, and the city was carrying on. Indeed, it sounded plausible at first. Up to summer 1943,
Germany was coping well with RAF bombing raids. The German civil defense system was
well-organized and able to quickly repair infrastructure, put damaged factories back into
operation, and efficiently feed and rehouse civilians made homeless.
But in Hamburg the German government and military were simply overwhelmed. More than half
the city's inhabitants lost their housing and possessions, and the streets were choked with the
dead. A million civilians were immediately evacuated from Hamburg, broken into groups and
dispatched from suburban train stations to towns all across Germany so that no single area
would be overwhelmed by the mass of refugees who needed food and housing. Thousands of
concentration camp prisoners (unable to communicate the horrors they saw) were brought into
Hamburg to collect and bury the tens of thousands of dead in mass graves and to clear streets
of rubble. The destruction was so severe that Hamburg never recovered during the war.
The shell-shocked survivors of the Hamburg bombing were warned by the Gestapo not to speak
of what they had experienced -- or else. Every effort was made by the Nazis to insist that
Hamburg was still a functioning city. In 1943 Germans who listened to the news from British
radio (which provided accurate accounts of the scale of casualties and damage of the Hamburg
raids) could be arrested and even executed. Hamburg survivors who told their new neighbors
about the devastation they witnessed invited arrest by the Gestapo. Every effort was made to
keep the truth of Hamburg from the German public.
Yet survivors still talked. One cannot go through such a horrific experience and keep
silent. A million witnesses saw the inability of the Reich government to prevent a major city
from becoming a literal Hell. The stories all rang true, and the common people of Germany
believed the survivors. Only diehard Nazis believed the official German government line after
Hamburg and increasing numbers of Germans turned to listening to forbidden British radio rather
than the state propaganda. German civilian morale plummeted when people realized that if the
Allies could totally devastate one of Germany's greatest cities in a few days, then the war was
truly lost.
The big lie failed. Still, the Gestapo made sure that Germans carried on the war effort to
the end.
It's interesting to watch the Democrats constantly making historical analogies to Naziism
because, at every attempt, they display their astounding ignorance of history. From the
historical context, a Big Lie is a demand by political leaders that the public believe
something highly improbable. This belief is repeated by a government-controlled media and its
public acceptance is coerced by government agencies and a co-opted judicial system. Ted Cruz
and a handful of minority senators and congressmen publicly contesting corrupt and illegal
actions of state and local governments does not fit the historical definition of the Big Lie.
For Biden's charge to work we must accept, as an article of faith, that election fraud is
virtually nonexistent, that one-party Democrat machine cities in the swing states are devoted
to serving the public, and that the humble and devoted leaders and civil servants of these
cities would never, ever break the law for political and personal gain.
The Big Lie of 2020 is that it was a clean and honest election. Like the Big Lie of Hamburg
raids, the Big Lie will fail. Like Hamburg in 1943, there are simply too many witnesses. There
are the videos of election observers being blocked in several cities and videos in Atlanta of
observers sent away, and in their absence election workers piling ballots into the counting
machines. There is sworn testimony from hundreds of election workers detailing illegal actions.
There are the Dominion machines in Michigan that were set up to create ballot errors which were
"adjudicated" (flipped) in favor of Democrats. There is hard documentary evidence of the dead
voting by mail, or of (supposedly) living voters receiving and returning their ballots by the
postal service within a day. There are thousands of Georgia voters who illegally provided post
office box numbers as their place of residence. There is the analysis of highly respected IT
experts and statisticians who have spotted statistically implausible vote spikes, unusual local
turnout, and voting patterns not seen in previous elections. The evidence presented at state
legislative hearings (I watched some on One America News) is thorough, well-documented and
plausible.
Joe Biden is beginning his presidency with one of the biggest lies in the history of
American politics. On top of the "honest election" lie, he will have to maintain lies about his
family's Chinese and Ukrainian business connections, as well as his involvement in illegal deep
state surveillance of political opponents. With so many lies, we'll have an interesting time
seeing the Democrats defending Biden over the next four years. Still, the historical pattern is
consistent. Even the most coercive states cannot maintain the Big Lie.
RESERVES. The Central Bank of Russia has published its account of Russia
reserves as of 30 June 2020 . The total was 561.1 billion USD (up $44.3 billion since a
year before). Euro holdings accounted for 29.5% . For the first time ever gold (22.9%) was a
bigger proportion than USD (22.2%). Renminbi was 12.2%. Russia's economy –
failing always failing .
JOKES. Just heard this one: I can make anti-Putin jokes on Russian social media. So, what,
I can make anti-Putin jokes on Western social media. (A re-tread of a Soviet-era joke). Or
this: Due to travel restrictions abroad, Americans have done a coup at home.
MOON. Moscow considering manned
moon mission .
Hmmmm . Russian/Chinese base on the Moon in ten years?
SURVEILLANCE. Moscow City has revealed a plan to spend
money on a database containing information about every resident, including passport
numbers, insurance policies, salaries, car registrations. Much of it appears to already
exist. For safety, security and convenience, of course. Mind you, we all volunteered: we all
carry smartphones around broadcasting everything we do.
ARMENIA-AZERBAIJAN. Putin chaired a
meeting of the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan . They signed a statement on development
of Karabakh region. Here are the official statements after
the meeting. Its another step in resolving the difficult problem which has deep roots. I note
a reference to the OSCE Minsk Group but I don't expect it
to get much involved. It's done nothing much in 28 years and who wants the West meddling in
the area anyway?
"Diesen takes on and brings together two large phenomena, namely the revolution in
technology and the change in global power relations."
My continual question: Will the Western world's morality evolve quickly enough to keep
pace with technological progress? I have no worries about Eurasian morality. Rather, it's the
West's loss of its 500 years of domination and what it will do to recoup that immoral
position that's most troublesome.
The 16th big press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn a line. In the
history of the "concentration of Russia", a thirty-year period has come to an end,
characterized by successively advancing: fascination with the West, doubt in the West, and
disillusionment with Western "values". Russia has entered a new period.
During the final press conference of Putin, an incident occurred that caused a lot of funny
comments in Russian society and in the Russian press. BBC journalist Steven Rosenberg asked the
Russian President: "Is Vladimir Putin personally responsible for the deterioration of relations
with Western countries? Or is Russia all these 20 years of Putin's rule "white and fluffy"?
And, in addition, as expected, [he asked] "how is it going with the investigation into the
poisoning of Navalny?"
A dialogue ensued, during which the British journalist looked rather pathetic, to which
everyone paid attention. But the result of this conversation, although everyone quoted it, was
not appreciated by anyone. In the end [of the dialogue], it was said that Putin is responsible
for the people of Russia and before the people of Russia, and that yes, we are white and
fluffy, especially compared to you.
I can understand how the British journalist felt at this time. The world collapsed around
him. From his point of view, such an end to the conversation was simply impossible. He was not
taught this.
Recollection of the present
I know very well what I am saying. In 1993, together with another three dozen diplomats
representing all post-Soviet republics (including Russia) and all post-socialist countries of
Eastern Europe (then none of them were members of either NATO or the EU, although everyone
already dreamed of), I was at diplomatic internship in the UK. Among other things, we were
offered an educational format for communicating with the Western press, which (what a
coincidence) was represented by a rather elderly lady from the BBC. She explained to us for a
long time and tediously that we, as government officials, would have to listen carefully to the
position of journalists and if the journalist himself (especially a Western one) became
interested in some information or pointed out some political error, then the information should
be provided immediately, and the error should be corrected with an apology.
She talked for about forty minutes. I waited until she was exhausted and asked: "Why?" I
waited on purpose. Usually, in such cases, our Western friends simply repeat their monologue.
But the journalist was already quite second-hand, she had fizzled out over the previous hour
and, losing her guard, missed a hit. She answered with a question to the question: "What do you
mean why?".
It was then that I explained to her that in any country, Great Britain is no exception,
there are a lot of journalists from mass media. And each of them will be happy to interview a
government official and receive exclusive information on his (official's) terms. And such
"smart" ones as she won't even get into the waiting room. There are many ways to avoid
accreditation under a plausible pretext. And after her publication is given to understand that
no one will ever speak to this journalist in this country, she will simply be fired for
incompetence or sent to the Papuans, from where one report is published every ten years.
This dialogue took place in the summer of 1993. I was 27 then. I think that Steven Rosenberg
was then at the same (plus or minus a couple of years) age. I have long forgotten the name of
the BBC lady, but I will never forget her face. She looked at me as if the gates of hell had
opened behind me and the entire infernal army was about to rush at her. Rosenberg's face was
half hidden by a mask, but it could not hide his confusion, further emphasized by a stampede
from the press conference.
Let me stress again that I understand him well and sympathize with him. 27 years ago, when
the incident I described above happened, journalists already liked to speculate about the
"fourth power", but most of them themselves did not really believe in this thesis.
Nevertheless, open disregard for the "rights of the press" was not comme il faut even then.
Like "homophobia" about ten years later.
Since then, the young and then seasoned BBC journalist Steven Rosenberg was taught for 27
years that he was not just a "fourth power", but a representative of Western civilizers in a
semi-primitive world that dreams of becoming like the West. Stephen is the bearer of
civilization. Any of his statements is a priori true, and the authorities of the "wild tribes"
to whom he brings civilization must justify themselves to him and immediately rush to eliminate
the shortcomings he has noticed.
"Russia is disappointed with Europe's inability to defend its interests on its own"
And after all, for a long time it was so. Including in Russia. Not that the Kremlin believed
in the Western "mission of good offices", but they proceeded from the fact that compromise is
better than enmity and were ready to make reasonable concessions in anticipation of reciprocal
steps. It cannot be said that this strategy has completely failed to justify itself. Part of
the Western world, especially in the EU and especially in Germany and Italy, really strives to
build equal pragmatic relations with Russia on the basis of a mutually acceptable
compromise.
But the part is not the whole, and on the whole, the Western world retains its hostility
towards Russia, poorly hidden by unfounded arrogance. Moreover, it is clear that despite the
strengthening of the Western political circles sympathetic to our country, this trend will not
be broken in the coming years. But then it will be too late. The window of opportunity will
close.
Any political decision is possible and expedient within a certain time frame. If someone
does not have time to meet these deadlines, then they have to implement a different version of
the future. That is why not a single serious state works according to the principle of no
alternative. There are always fallbacks, maybe not as good, but not disastrous, usually just
less profitable. But those who are late for the joint train to the future remain at a broken
trough.
2020 was the year of summing up the results in Russian-European relations. At the level of
statements by politicians and press materials, at the level of visits, agreements and active
events, the fading of Russia's interest in the European vector and the redirection of the
dominant of its foreign policy to the Far and Middle East became noticeable.
The last warning was the autumn speeches of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in which
it was stated openly that Russia is disappointed with Europe's inability to defend its
interests on its own and, given this factor, does not expect anything else from cooperation
with the West and does not plan to unilaterally take into account the opinion and the interests
of the West.
Perhaps in the UK or specifically on the BBC, being immersed in their Brexit, Lavrov was not
heard. But that's their problem. Russia is not doing anything out of the blue. Before openly
telling the West that "We didn't actually want to work with them" a long-term (stretching over
a decade and a half) work was carried out to search for alternative markets, to import
substitution of critical products imported from the West, to strengthen the army, to recreate
the ocean-going fleet, gaining allies, creating military bases controlling trade routes that
are critical for Russia.
The West missed this entire era of "concentration of Russia" (the expression of Chancellor
Gorchakov). Already the second time the West misses (the first "concentration" in the XXI
century ended in 2008). In Europe and the United States they consoled themselves with the fact
that Russia is a "colossus with feet of clay", that it does not have sufficient resources even
to intervene in the situation in the post-Soviet space, that "Moscow is bluffing", that the
West is indispensable because it is a "civilizational choice" etc.
And suddenly, in 2020, the collective West saw that Russia's positioning towards it had
changed dramatically. If earlier [the West's] claims were heard, explanations were given,
Russia was trying to prove something, now Europe began to be ignored as an annoying mistress.
With some countries, the Kremlin has stopped talking altogether, with some it talks, but
"without respect."
"Yes, we are white and fluffy"! -- But only for ourselves. So what will you do to us?
Western journalists, especially BBC journalists, do not ask random questions at press
conferences of heads of state. BBC is a state corporation, its activities are aimed at
realizing the state interests of Great Britain, including collecting information using the
possibilities of journalism. By asking the question "Are you white and fluffy?" -- the leading
circles of the West probed the soil and were ready to hear anything in response, except what
sounded: "Yes, we are white and fluffy" -- and your opinion on this issue interests us least of
all.
This is the point, the end of the long-term flirtation between Russia and the West, which
the West hoped to start up in an absolute moral and material gain, and suddenly sees itself in
the role of "Ariadne abandoned." Given the Western vindictiveness, such public humiliation of
it became possible only following the results of a decade and a half of well-coordinated,
albeit invisible, work of all Russian state structures, including state-owned companies.
In 2014, the West was surprised to learn that Russia is able to ensure its food security
(over the next six years, Moscow has been steadily increasing its food exports). In 2015, the
West became convinced of the stability of the Russian financial system, which it never managed
to break. In 2016, the West still laughed at the "cartoons" and argued that in reality Russia
did not have demonstrated weapons systems, because it could never be. Since 2018, he has been
forced to admit his critical lag in the military sphere. In 2017-2018 the West suddenly learned
that Russia concentrates on itself the supply of liquefied gas, for which the West was a de
facto monopoly, one by one introducing the corresponding terminals in the North and the Far
East (which makes the fight against Nord Stream 2 and other flows senseless, since Russian gas
will come to Europe by a route alternative to the Ukrainian one, if not through gas pipelines,
then with the help of gas carriers). By 2020, the West learned that Russia is also able to
build gas carriers on its own (as well as other ships and vessels of any class).
In parallel, international systems of cooperation between Russia and China, Iran, Turkey and
Egypt were being built. If, until about 2014, Russia's priority was to ensure internal
stability and security in the context of a likely break with the West, then the emphasis in
domestic policy shifted to disavowing the ideological expansion of the West, and in foreign
policy to building alternative trade and economic ties, securing promising markets. and
partners.
All this, of course, is not as beautiful as the even ranks of the royal grenadiers, bravely
breaking the enemy's resistance under a hail of grapeshot. But for the latter to become
possible, many years of routine work are needed to create an independent economy capable of
meeting the needs of the army and the people in any conditions, for a period of time of any
length, as well as to provide the rear with reliable military-political alliances.
And only after many years of efforts of millions of people, someone alone can smile and say
to the unfortunate journalist, turning over his head to the collective West: "Yes, we are white
and fluffy!" -- So what will you do to us?
In the history of Russia, a thirty-year period has come to an end, characterized by
successively advancing: fascination with the West, doubt in the West, and disillusionment with
Western "values." The line has been drawn. Russia has entered a new period characterized by
indifference towards the West and a lack of illusions about all of its current partners and
allies. We leave ideals for home use, for external use we have only interests. Russia itself
has built its own well-being and is going to use it itself. And whoever doesn't like it, can
cry, or gnaw the earth, or bite his elbows. We are "white and fluffy", but only for
ourselves.
The apartheid settler gang is beneath contempt. It blocks supply of vaccines for covid to
the Palestinian people and blockades their trade and freedom of travel and navigation. Like
the USA they have totally filled up with hubris and lost their way in the world.
Biden has surrounded himself with dual allegiance appointees in the critical security
agencies so that he cannot achieve peace or make progress with any of his (foolishly)
perceived enemy nations. He will find it almost impossible to negotiate in any meaningful way
with Iran or China or Russia or Iraq or Syria or pretty much any other nation that is invaded
by his armies or sanctioned by his idiot decisions or threatened by Israel's
belligerence.
The tensions have been incredibly heightened in many nations due to the coronavirus
transmission within their populations and the persistent suspicion that it has a USA origin.
Any USAi pretense of negotiating in good faith in these circumstances is virtually
impossible. All the more so when reactionaries lead both Israel and USA.
Biden is right when he says nothing will change. His ally in the middle east, Israel, has
an arsenal of formidable power sufficient to command an uncomfortable peace in any
circumstance. Yet it has no integrity to clinch a deal with anybody such is the universal
distrust of their intentions. Time and again this illegal settler state has mauled every
neighbor in a most grievous way. Every week they attack Syria with missiles! The aggrieved
neighbors will not forget or forgive the treachery. That is just how it is.
There are no statesmen in the USA or Israel with the nous or capacity to find a way
out.
Few observations on Biden, Iran and the nuclear deal.
I don't know if US will or will not return to implement it's obligations under the UNSC 2231,
nor I know if US Jewish lobby will allow that. But for sure Iran will not renegotiate for new
terms or a new deal on nuclear program secondly under no circumstances Iran will negotiate
(with anyone) her conventional military capabilities or her policies and alliances toward her
allies in the region since these are real matter of national security for Iran. But also
there are signs from Biden that should be considered. Firstly almost all Biden's national
security team are diplomats with experience negotiating with Iran that could be a signal on
policy change, secondly I believe due to strategic failure of maximum pressure to subdue Iran
and more importantly due to US' own strategic necessity to keep China and Russia away from
ME, US and EU will want to decouple or even prevent Iran from a mutual strategic necessity or
alliance with China or and Russia for that reason IMO it might be possible US will adopt a
new posture toward Iran. I also believe Iran's foreign policy in ME is basically based on her
long term interests and security with her regional alliances, multipolarity, and stability in
her region, therefore any proposal by US or EU to agitate this policy will be rejected or not
adopted by Iran.
The apartheid settler gang is beneath contempt. It blocks supply of vaccines for covid to
the Palestinian people and blockades their trade and freedom of travel and navigation. Like
the USA they have totally filled up with hubris and lost their way in the world.
Biden has surrounded himself with dual allegiance appointees in the critical security
agencies so that he cannot achieve peace or make progress with any of his (foolishly)
perceived enemy nations. He will find it almost impossible to negotiate in any meaningful way
with Iran or China or Russia or Iraq or Syria or pretty much any other nation that is invaded
by his armies or sanctioned by his idiot decisions or threatened by Israel's
belligerence.
The tensions have been incredibly heightened in many nations due to the coronavirus
transmission within their populations and the persistent suspicion that it has a USA origin.
Any USAi pretense of negotiating in good faith in these circumstances is virtually
impossible. All the more so when reactionaries lead both Israel and USA.
Biden is right when he says nothing will change. His ally in the middle east, Israel, has
an arsenal of formidable power sufficient to command an uncomfortable peace in any
circumstance. Yet it has no integrity to clinch a deal with anybody such is the universal
distrust of their intentions. Time and again this illegal settler state has mauled every
neighbor in a most grievous way. Every week they attack Syria with missiles! The aggrieved
neighbors will not forget or forgive the treachery. That is just how it is.
There are no statesmen in the USA or Israel with the nous or capacity to find a way
out.
A new JCPOA will obviously have to eliminate all sanctions. But that might not be
enough. Iran might want compensation for the economic damage done, compensation from the UK,
France, and Germany as well as the US. Moreover, Iran will want to keep its now much larger
stockpile of low-enriched uranium. It might want an even larger stockpile, and the right to
enrich to 20%, which it is now doing. A breeder reactor and a plutonium stockpile would be
nice, too.
But there are even other demands that might be made: reduction or removal of
US/NATO/Israeli forces in the Gulf; reduction or elimination of Israeli nuclear
weapons.
That train left the station.
In the past 5 years Iran re-configured it's economy into an autarcic fully industrialized,
food secure, and diversified economy. It now earns more from the sale of manufactures and
foods than from petroleum. It now manufactures AfraMax tankers, general cargo vessels, and
naval vessels. It manufactures cars and trucks, and railroad rolling stock. It built hydro
and irrigation schemes. It launches satellites into orbit.
Iran is now pressing ahead with the Arak heavy water reactor.
Khameni just banned import of NATO vaccines, and ordered the country to be vaccinated with
Iran's own vaccine.
Khameni and the hard liners will not permit Iran to rejoin or to negotiate any agreements
with the "Great Satan". Their line will be the US must show itself to be agreement capable by
rejoining the JCPOA and removing any and all sanctions while paying damages too.
Iran will increase the amount of assistance given the Houthis. Trump's declaration of the
Houthis as terrorists, benefits the resistance by solidifying their adherence to it. The
Houthis must now "go for broke" or surrender. They will not surrender.
The harsh reality is Biden/Harris will be occupied at home suppressing the MAGA crowd.
Since this group is 74 million strong, and mostly white, in a country trying to make them
second class citizens, will be quite a challenge that. The jury is still out on that one.
Then there is the not so small matter of US oil production dropping like a stone from 12
mmBbl/day to 7 by July with further drops in the following 12 months. This coupled with and
likely due to bankruptcies of a large number of producers going forward.
@anarchyst hen made
public utilities available for all (obviously without compensation to the owners). No more of
the sad "private company" excuse, and no more billions into the pockets of criminals who hate
us.
Also, make Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Pichai et al. serve serious jail time for election
tampering if nothing else. Both to send out a clear warning to others, and for the simple
decency to see justice served.
Of course this will not happen short of a French Revolution-style regime shift. But since
(sadly) the same is equally true even for your extremely generous and modest proposal, I see
no harm in dreaming a little bigger.
"... I hate virtually all of Trump's policies. I hate his stupidity in continually hiring people who hated him. He could have turned to members of the genuine left -- men such as Stephen Cohen -- for advice. ..."
"... n a classic act of projection, woke Dems accuse Trump of not conceding, whereas in fact they are the ones who never conceded the presidency in 2016. This is so obvious, and yet it has apparently become invisible to most!!! Memory hole opened up like a crack in the earth behind each step. ..."
"... The gullibility of Trump is astounding. He did everything to keep the swamp happy, to keep Israel happy, flipped on Nato and on Russia, had hawks left and right and at the end he will be discarded like a used condom. ..."
"... can't help but think that Donald Trump is a man with no common sense, lacking the real conviction of his words and just not very bright or he was to some degree willfully complicit in this now obviously dire state the U.S. finds itself. ..."
"... If anyone thinks there is some good news because this murderous, warring empire is coming to an end, I suggest you think again. The war machine is still fully intact and funded. The international bankers who are in complete control are buying up everything and are planning on a 'reset' dictated by them. To the world! Understandably, there will likely be a few countries who do not feel inclined to agree with this reset and it's terms. There will have to be war to correct this thinking, even if a billion or more are killed. The more the merrier. Less 'useless eaters' to deal with. ..."
Mr. Roberts is right on point when he says that Trump will be locked up.
The people running the United States are going to make an example of Trump. They will send
a message that no "outsider" should ever again dare to run for President.
Trump will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
I fear you are right. In this case it might be better if he weren't such a street fighter,
because standing up for himself to me isn't worth the price he will pay. He should get
himself and his family post haste to a country with no extradition and simply live the rest
of his life in peace. No one needs the vitriol that has been and will continue to be heaped
on him.
Trump _should_ spend the rest of his life behind bars -- for contributing to the deaths of
tens of thousands of human beings. Ordinary Syrians, Iranians, Cubans, and Venezuelans died
because of the murderous sanctions Washington put on their countries, and Pres. Trump did
nothing to help -- and in fact, intensified them.
Very similar to his indifference to the plight of Edward Snowden & Julian Assange.
Trump is a monster of self-centredness. In fact, in the words of his own former White House
Chief of Staff, he is 'the most damaged human being I have ever met.' Just the sort of
creature we would expect to find as head of the US empire
I'm afraid you are spot on -- Trump lies to the World when he was running for President
& then broke almost all of his promises -especially to drain the Swamp. He also
unforgivably allowed the Jews to take over Palistinian land etc. He has alot to answer for
even if he wasn't as War like as the 3 Presidents before him.
YOu re problably right, Jimmy.
But it turns out differently when one gets the point where Trump locked up prospect here is
not him but a whole lot of american people trying to get rid of globalism and the need for
wars
Who might be buried up along with him.
But not a word about the crimes of those who preceded him, which included the ultimate
crime, that of engaging in unjustified warfare?
Your post implies you have a standard of behaviour you are judging Trump by. By definition
it must be universally applied, otherwise all you are seeking is the selective imposition of
your view.
I agree. If Trump deserves lockup, so do Obama, Bush, and the Clintons.
I hate virtually all of Trump's policies. I hate his stupidity in continually hiring
people who hated him. He could have turned to members of the genuine left -- men such as
Stephen Cohen -- for advice.
But that is not the point. Since 2016 those who tried to eliminate Trump did so not for
his real crimes but for made-up. Basically his crime of being president in the first
place.
I n a classic act of projection, woke Dems accuse Trump of not conceding, whereas in
fact they are the ones who never conceded the presidency in 2016. This is so obvious, and yet
it has apparently become invisible to most!!! Memory hole opened up like a crack in the earth
behind each step.
Trump's crime, for which he may actually be locked up, was in truth just winning the
presidency in 2016 and humiliating Hillary (whom everyone hated anyhow). I am becoming quite
terrified of people I have known all my my life and even am related to.
Corrected assessment. His wealth and his 5 children (and their future) are too much of a
liability for him to do the necessary. His policy of appeasement will not work though with
the rabid bolshevik kabal.
I think he and his family will be persecuted and likely prosecuted unless the has the
foresight to move to Russia and save his skin.
The gullibility of Trump is astounding. He did everything to keep the swamp happy, to
keep Israel happy, flipped on Nato and on Russia, had hawks left and right and at the end he
will be discarded like a used condom.
Russia saw it from the get go, at the end he will have the full weight of both parties
against him, and instead of locking her up it will be the other way around. The cowards have
no sense of decency, they will not show any good will like he did.
Trump betrayed his base, failed to organize again and again, put his trust in all the
wrong people and now is done. I'll be surprised if he doesn't face jailtime on some trumped
up charges.
For all his charisma and good intentions he turned out a clueless clown, sad clown at the
end. History will not be kind, and neither will the victors.
True Americans have seen their last train leave the station, it will take time to realize
that there are no more trains. Game over.
I thought this was a good summation by Dr. Roberts. I can't help but think that Donald
Trump is a man with no common sense, lacking the real conviction of his words and just not
very bright or he was to some degree willfully complicit in this now obviously dire state the
U.S. finds itself. Maybe he owed the Rothschild clan a favour.
If anyone thinks there is some good news because this murderous, warring empire is
coming to an end, I suggest you think again. The war machine is still fully intact and
funded. The international bankers who are in complete control are buying up everything and
are planning on a 'reset' dictated by them. To the world! Understandably, there will likely
be a few countries who do not feel inclined to agree with this reset and it's terms. There
will have to be war to correct this thinking, even if a billion or more are killed. The more
the merrier. Less 'useless eaters' to deal with.
Try to see something good in creation every day. Try to do good every day. This world as
it is does not have much time. Someone said that what cannot go on forever won't! At some
point, the One who gives life to all will say it is enough. Some of us just celebrated his
most blessed nativity.
This guy biden is king of promises, and as every year goes by and so many promises are not
met, don't think these people wont show up on D.C.'s doorstep looking for revenge.
Who better to preside over the collapse of the empire? The usual rules will apply: the
feckless Dems – always at their abysmal worst when they assume power – will blame
the "evil Reps" for everything that goes wrong (and there will be plenty – although
none of it will ever be discussed publicly!), and the Reps will be at their sterling
obstructionist best. Talk of impeachment for Biden – who will be nowhere in sight for
most of his term – will linger throughout his term, while Trump will soon be prosecuted
and jailed, his entire administration canceled from the official histories, with Queen
Hillary named "Presidentess in Exile" for 2016-2020 due to alleged Russian interference with
her rightful coronation. The Empire will trumpet from on high for all to hear that this
signals the glorious victory of US Democracy (angelic chorus sounds here) over the forces of
darkness, or some such agitprop; and the skies will clear, the birds will sing, and a rosy
glow will return to the cheeks of all the fair maidens and indeterminant gendered of our
great land. The masks, of course, will remain firmly in place, as the "new normal" slowly
becomes merely business as usual, and the sheeple graze contentedly in their prison stalls,
content in the knowledge that Big Brother is looking out for their health and welfare, at
least until the ritual sacrificial slaughter of the lambs should be deemed necessary. For the
good of all, of course. Should all make for some excellent reality TV.
Well the empire is going to collapse the citizens before it collapses, and even before the
empire collapse comes a global scare of epic proportions to shake and rattle the cage for
those whom are not prepared.
Trump isn't going anywhere. I was at the rally in DC and listened to his
entire speech on the ellipse. He stated that he would not concede. With
this assurance why would the demonstrators have any reason to aggressively
breach the Capitol building? The whole thing was a staged provocation by antifa.
There are videos of how this was staged all over the internet. Let us all
hope and pray that the Scarlet(Whore) color revolution against Trump is finally
eradiated and extirpated now that all the Deep Satanists have been exposed for
their participation in the coup and election fraud.
The question has been asked – what is the US military going to do? Will they just
stay put and watch the theft unfold?
Whilst many commentators were soiling themselves in phantasies of a pro trump military coup
to end the charade, drain the swamp and burn down DC, PCR had a very clear view (expressed
elsewhere): why would the military object to a new leadership if it promises more war, more
blood, more money? It won't, it will welcome it in fact.
Be it as it may, and despite all the stinkin' lies about the election I would think it is
too tall an order for a non-murrican to mourn the self-destruction of the most evil, ghastly,
ruthless hegemon the world has seen in the last 100 years.
I second the sentiment. It's not even that. The media are full of Muricans' moaning about
their fate. It's everywhere – and on top of that, the scumbags are accusing China and
Russia for their "tribulations".
We don't care and we don't want to hear about how hard the life is for Billy Bob who would
die for the very criminals that have condemned him to a life of meth, moonshine and
malingering – while telling him that he is solely responsible for his own miserable
existence.
There is a huge big world elsewhere that is currently booming – thousand flowers are
blooming despite the oppression by the parasitical cancerous sub-empire – and yet, we
obsess over whether Trump is a fraud or not.
I suppose it provides a great platform for ranting :-)
It seems even more relevant today than it did then. It's longish, so hang in there if you're
able. In these post-'Capitol' social media de-platforming days, remember that (Chrome) Google
algorithms suppress websites from the conservative and religious right to the 'subversive left
(wsws and popular resistance, for instance). And Google bought Youtube in Oct. of 2006 for a
paltry $1.65 billion.
If you haven't read it and seen the captioned photos, you'll love ' Google Is Not What It
Seems' by Julian Assange, an extract from his new book When Google Met Wikileaks,
wikileaks.org
Also see Scott Ritter's 'By banning Trump and his supporters, Google and Twitter are turning
the US into a facsimile of the regimes we once condemned', RT.com, Jan. 9, 2021 Two excerpts:
"Digital democracy became privatized when its primary architect, Jared Cohen, left the State
Department in September 2010 to take a new position with internet giant Google as the head of
'Google Ideas' now known as 'Jigsaw'. Jigsaw is a global initiative 'think tank' intended to
"spearhead initiatives to apply technology solutions to problems faced by the developing
world." This was the same job Cohen was doing while at the State Department.
Cohen promoted the notion of a "digital democracy contagion" based upon his belief
that the "young people in the Middle East are just a mouse click away, they're just a
Facebook connection away, they're just an instant message away, they're just a text message
away" from sufficiently organizing to effect regime change. Cohen and Google were heavily
involved the January 2011 demonstrations in Egypt, using social networking sites to call for
demonstrations and political reform; the "Egyptian contagion" version of 'digital democracy'
phenomena was fueled by social networking internet sites run by Egyptian youth groups which
took a very public stance opposing the Mubarak regime and calling for political reform."
*************************************
On Sept. 18 , Julian Assange's new book of that name was published. The material was largely
fashioned by conversations he'd had with Google's Eric Schmidt in 2011 at Ellingham Hall in
Norfolk, England where Assange was living under house arrest. The ostensible purpose of the
requested meeting was to discuss idea for a book that Schmidt and Jared Cohen (advisor to both
Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton) were going to write, and in fact did: ' The New Digital
Age ' (2013). They were accompanied by the book's editor Scott Malcomson, former senior
advisor for the UN and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, who eventually worked at the
US State Department, plus Lisa Shields, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations,
closely tied to the State Department, who was Schmidt's partner at the time. Hmmm. The plot, as
they say, thickens. From the book's blurb :
'For several hours the besieged leader of the world's most famous insurgent publishing
organization and the billionaire head of the world's largest information empire locked horns.
The two men debated the political problems faced by society, and the technological solutions
engendered by the global network -- from the Arab Spring to Bitcoin. They outlined radically
opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its
freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with US foreign policy
objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to American companies and markets.
These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's future that has only gathered force
subsequently.'
Some background that will hopefully entice you to listen to the 42-minute Telesur video
(sorry, no transcript) I'll embed below; this is the short version: ' Assange claims Google is
in bed with US government'
Note that in other interviews Assange names 'other private and public security agencies' as
well, and names the figures showing how deep Google is into smartphones and almost every nation
on the planet. 'Do not be evil'.
If your appetite hasn't been sufficiently whetted to watch the 38-minute Telesur interview,
you might at a minimum read 'When Google Met WikiLeaks: Battle for a New Digital Age' by
Nozomi Hayase . An excerpt or three, after reminding us that in his earlier 2012 book
Cypherpunks, Assange had said that " the internet, our greatest tool for emancipation,
has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen
":
'Assange unveils how, contrary to Google's efforts to create a positive public image by
giving away free storage, making it appear not like a corporation driven solely by profit
motives, this seemingly philanthropic company is a willing participant in its own government
co-optation. Indeed, he argues, Google Ideas was birthed as a brainchild of a Washington
think-tank.
Assange described how "Google's bosses
genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they
see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment
of the 'benevolent superpower.'" (p. 35). This process is so gradual and discrete that it is
hardly conscious on the part of the actors. This digital mega-corporation, through getting too
close to the US State Department and NSA, began to incorporate their ambitions and come to see
no evil. This internalization of imperial values created what Assange called " the impenetrable
banality of 'don't be evil' " (p. 35). It appears that bosses at Google genuinely think they
are doing good, while they are quickly becoming part of a power structure that Assange
described as a " capricious
global system of secret loyalties , owed favors, and false consensus, of saying one thing in
public and the opposite in private" (p. 7). Allegiance creates obedience and an unspoken
alliance creates a web of self-deception through which one comes to believe one's own lies and
becomes entangled in them. [snip]
' Assange pointed to how "the hidden fist
that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army,
Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps" (p. 43).
Google does not see evil in itself. By embedding with U.S. central authority, this global
tech company not only fails to see the invisible fist of "American strategic and economic
hegemony" that dictates the market, but moreover aspires "to adorn the hidden
fist like a velvet glove" (p. 43). By advancing the force of monopoly, they subordinate civic
values to economic and U.S. hegemonic interests and escape any real accountability. They no
longer recognize the unmediated market that responds to people's demands, a true market that
functions as a space of democratic accountability. This normalization of control leads to a
subversion of law, creating a rogue state where a ripple effect of corruption is created, as
individuals, companies and the state each betray their own stated principles.'
'In a sense, one might conclude that Assange's new book is in itself another leak . In
publishing what one might call the "GoogleFiles", Assange conducts his usual job of publishing
in the public interest with due diligence by providing the verbatim transcript and audio of the
secret meeting. This time, the source of the material was Google themselves who sought out
Assange for their publication.'
How wonderful it is that he's rocking Google's Very Large Boat. Hayase also writes that
Cohen and Schmidt engage in their own 'statist' version of the 'good whistleblower/bad
whistleblower meme we're familiar with. Pfffft.
Google used its front page to back
the US government's campaign to bomb Syria: snapshot
More if you'd like it:
From HuffPo's : Julian Assange Fires Back At Eric Schmidt and Google's 'Digital
Colonialism', one exchange that's significant:
' HP : What about the substance of Schmidt's defense, that Google is pretty much at war with
the U.S. government and that they don't cooperate? He claims that they're working to encrypt
everything so that neither the NSA nor anyone else can get in. What would you say to that?
JA : It's a duplicitous statement. It's a lawyerly statement. Eric Schmidt did not say that
Google encrypts everything so that the US government can't get at them. He said quite
deliberately that Google has started to encrypt exchanges of information -- and that's hardly
true, but it has increased amount of encrypted exchanges. But Google has not been encrypting
their storage information. Google's whole business model is predicated on Google being able to
access the vast reservoir of private information collected from billions of people each day.
And if Google can access it, then of course the U.S. government has the legal right to access
it, and that's what's been going on.
As a result of the Snowden revelation, Google was caught out. It tried to pretend that those
revelations were not valid, and when that failed, it started to engage in a public relations
campaign to try and say that it wasn't happy with what the National Security Agency was doing,
and was fighting against it. Now, I'm sure that many people in Google are not happy with what
has been occurring. But that doesn't stop it happening, because Google's business model is to
collect as much information as possible and people store it, index and turn it into predictive
profiles. Similarly, at Eric Schmidt's level, Google is very closely related to the U.S.
government and there's a revolving door between the State Department and Google . '
For the Pffft factor plus some history of WikiLeaks' betrayal by both Daniel
Domscheit-Berg ( his Wiki ), and the Guardian,
the
Daily Dot's : ' When WikiLeaks cold-called Hillary Clinton',
including:
'Within hours, Harrison's call was answered via State Department backchannels. Lisa Shields,
then- Google Executive Eric
Schmidt's girlfriend and vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, reached out
through one of WikiLeak's own, Joseph Farrell, to confirm it was indeed WikiLeaks calling to
speak with Clinton. [snip]
'But in an act of gross negligence the Guardian newspaper -- our former partner -- had
published the confidential decryption
password to all 251,000 cables in a chapter heading in its book, rushed out hastily in
February 2011.(1) By mid-August we discovered that a former German employee -- whom I had
suspended in 2010 -- was cultivating business relationships with a variety of organizations and
individuals by shopping around the location of the encrypted file, paired with the password's
whereabouts in the book. At the rate the information was spreading, we estimated that within
two weeks most intelligence agencies, contractors, and middlemen would have all the cables, but
the public would not.'
Background on
the Rassmussen story to make sure he was elected head of NATO by shutting down Roj TV:
Interview: Roj TV, ECHR and Wikileaks by Naila Bozo
Note: Easy Copying from the Café to the Café didn't go well. Everything
doubled up, and not in the same order, and none of the quotation font colors hopped aboard. But
it is what it is, and trying to repair it further seems Quixotic.
"... Clinton hollowed out his own country in order to completely remove all constraints (financial, mediatic, military). He doesn't get called out for it nearly enough in my opinion. ..."
"... Clinton was a particular type of low-class, sybaritic evil but he didn't have a strong USSR to contend with. Instead he had the drunken traitor Yeltsin dance for him like a bedraggled starving bear. ..."
"So when was this golden age? Under Reagan? Well, this is when the dismantling of the
inner core of the empire began."
Beg to differ. Reagan understood how to administer the US empire. He knew the risks of
overstretching it. He made the promise to the Soviets not to encroach on their sphere of
influence. He defended the high interest rates which strengthened the USD and which kept the
banking sector in check.
All of that went to hell with Bill Clinton:
He broke Reagan's promise and expanded NATO eastwards, he dismantled the Glass Steagall act
which led to a malignant hypergrowth of the banking sector, and he was the who introduced the
telecommunications act in 1996 which allowed for the concentration of corporate media in the
hands of the few.
Bill Clinton basically turned the empire into a rapacious and uncontrollable animal.
(Funny how noone here is talking about imprisoning him )
There is a silver lining to Bill C's blood-soaked administration. It was while he was in
power, that the Russians finally awoke from their 1990s stupor. They began to understand the
mortal danger they were facing, and they patriotically chose Putin to lead them in 1999.
– Reagan was a disgusting Russophobe and Serbophobe who proclaimed 10th April (the
founding of the Independent State of Croatia) a national holiday in California as governor.
Not surprising given that his was the most RC government ever – he also colluded with
the Polish anti-Christ to destroy the USSR. In the process he encouraged the German Nazis
(see visit to Bitburg) who then destroyed Yugoslavia.
– He brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust that was prevented by a
vigilant Russian officer (in 1983?).
– He turbo-charged the power of corporations and decimated social structures and the
rights of the working class (the Americans are paying for this now).
This is not to say that the scumbag Clinton was good – after all he was trained at
Georgetown – that seminary for American murderers.
Thanks for this Ken. Good to know who Reagan really was!
To get back to your point about the "dismantling of the empire" Reagan, for all his
personal awfulness and recklessness (and subversiveness) was still more restrained than
Clinton. Clinton hollowed out his own country in order to completely remove all
constraints (financial, mediatic, military). He doesn't get called out for it nearly enough
in my opinion. I guess it's personal, after what he did to us.
Clinton was a particular type of low-class, sybaritic evil but he didn't have a strong
USSR to contend with. Instead he had the drunken traitor Yeltsin dance for him like a
bedraggled starving bear. Never again!
@84:
As sometimes said: don't sweat the small stuff.
This "We are all Taiwanese now" stunt is Pompeo's act of petty spite for getting outfoxed in
the Hong Kong colour revolution play.
Empire's useful idiots were let loose to trash the hapless city, fired up by the Western
propaganda machinery.
Now Beijing is putting the stock on those pompous minions with the National Security Law, and
their foreign masters can't do nuffin' except squeal human rights and apply some nuisance
sanctions.
The West fails because it looks at China through ideological lenses and sees Communists, who
can fall back on 5000 years of statecraft to push back at interlopers.
Beijing's moves can be likened to two classic strategies.
1. Zhuge Liang fools the enemy to fire all their arrows at straw men, which become ammunition
against them.
2. The Empty City strategy. Invaders take over an ostensibly abandoned city, only to be
trapped inside.
Global Times is cantankerous and sometimes risible, but even a broken clock is right, twice a
day.
So when it says that crossing Beijing's red line on the Taiwan issue is not in the island's
best interests, the incoming BiMala administration should take note.
The "patriotism" of the previous establishment was bound up with their economic interests.
Once the USA dropped protectionism, the allure of cheap foreign labor (via immigration or
outsourcing) became too much for them and they abandoned the interests of their fellow
Americans to follow the profits.
Thanks for the Tralfamidor perspective. Those of us here on earth know that the US was
never a democracy and always existed as a mechanism for exploitation of everyone else by an
oligarchy.
The USSR was collapsed by traitors as a function of the US imperial drive to destroy them
economically, not because the people were enraged at the "hostile elite". The US henchmen in
the Kingdom in Riyadh pitched in to break the Soviet economy by destroying the Soviet
capacity to obtain foreign exchange.
High treason, where, what? Did I miss something then ? I think not. The Soviet Union was
doomed,
virtually bankrupt, its population queuing for almost everything, DDR likewise and Poland
too, I have seen it in all three places. Oh, you could get everything if you had dollars!
Poland 1975: 1 kg of Russian Caviar and 4 bottles of the best Crimean Champagne :$10 !
Russia: Brand new Makarow, 9 mm, and 100 shots $20 including nice shoulder holster too in
leather $30
But ordinary people did not have $, only the nomenclature had $. A totally corrupt and failed
system in all the Eastern block. I was there then, saw it, and I have not forgotten.
So it was high time for change, and yes it would be tough, but the eastern people are tough
people ( and hospitable, very indeed)so they stood it out.
Abe, take a trip to Russia and speak to some older people, so you may stop posting
nonsense!
Him and his underlings, along with its successor Yeltsin (died too soon, unfortunately)
are directly responsible for millions of dead and destroyed lives in Russia in the `90-ties.
But I sense you are from countries that now grow unhealthy and pathological hate towards
Russian people, so as far you are concerned, it was great period, right?
Blame the Soviets for the economy of places ravaged by war and sabotaged by the West?
Remember the Eastern Front suffered the majority of action. Russia itself suffered the worst
and had to rebuild more than anybody, whereas USA factories easily re-supplied Western
Europe.
Eastern Europeans better guard against being played by the West into fighting Russia
again. They allied with Western-financed Hitler the last time. So, I'm a little worried
they'll be conned again.
It is curious that in one of the articles MoA wrote that, in his opinion (which I share),
there are now two superpowers - the United States and Russia, while China is only on the way
to this.
But Chinese journalists think differently - for example, in this article (very controversial,
btw) the author asks the question "Russia has the potential to become a superpower,
what are the factors preventing it from doing this?" At the same time, apparently, the
journalist believes that the current superpowers are China and the United States, while
"something prevents" Russia from becoming such.
Funny.
Just one quote from the article:
The distance between Russia and the superpower is still very large, and not only because of
the country's "internal problems" - the United States is also constraining and restraining
Russia by all means. It is not easy to become a superpower.
"If you talk to older people in Russia they'll tell you how deeply they despise the
"marked one" as they call him."
I know there are multiple perspectives when assessing Gorbachev's legacy, but I also
encountered that reaction often during my time there by old and young alike. It was a
surprise to me as I had assumed he would be universally accepted in a positive light as he is
in the west.
Asking them why they felt that way, a common response was that he had been too trusting of
the US promises, which ushered in the looting and manipulation of the 90's. Many mentioned
Baker's promise to Gorbachev that if East Germany went to the west, NATO would not move "one
inch to the east", and Gorbachev's failure to get that in writing. (Not to say the US would
have honored it even then, of course, but at least some proof to show the west's
duplicity).
vk@8 "The USSR could've reformed and opened up like China did, and would be in a much better
situation than what really happened (Yeltsin's neoliberal genocide)."
This is nonsense. That's exactly what Gorbachev did. The relative stagnation of the USSR
turned into an economic catastrophe under Gorbachev who dismantled a still-functional
economy. Yeltsin's neoliberalism was a continuation of Gorbachev's economics. Yeltsin's
revolution was not to impose a new policy but to smash the opposition to the new policy, to
carry it out ruthlessly, to concentrate the theft of public property in Great Russian hands.
China's opening up was deliberately fostered by the western powers as a way of separating the
socialist powers. There was never going to be any such opening up with Europe, not for the
USSR. There wasn't in NEP in the Twenties. This absurd counterfactual misreads what happened
with the capitalist roaders in China.
There also seems to be some nonsense lurking about how the Cultural Revolution was a
gigantic catastrophe. Of course, though no one cares to notice, if this was true, then India
would have had all those years to race ahead of China, not being cursed with such a
nightmare. In truth, the Cultural Revolution brought many benefits to the countryside in
particular, and still progressed the economy as a whole. Then after the murderous Deng took
over, there wasn't any magical Great Leap Forward on IOUs to Imperialism as he promised. For
years and years, the wonders of reform and opening up delivered not much faster (at all?)
than the previous system. Not even the notorious Southern Tour was so miraculous. The failure
to deliver on his overblown promises is why the students at Tien An Men square were so
worried about getting good jobs commensurate with their higher elite status, reaffirmed by
Deng. Only after decades did the economic conjuncture finally lead to rapid growth...but at a
tremendous social cost still denied by too many. The iron rice bowl was broken long before
the privilege of working for a capitalist firm started to really pay.
Nuland will be nominated for the position of under secretary of state for political affairs,
the US media said on Tuesday with Politico being the first to
drop the scoop. It's the highest-ranking post in the department after the secretary and deputy
secretary. During the Obama administration, Nuland served as assistant secretary of state for
European and Eurasian Affairs, and was a key official in formulating and implementing his
Russia policies. She also served as US envoy to the UN under George W. Bush and advised Vice
President Dick Cheney on foreign policy.
The news that the vocal Russia hawk was returning to the White House was understandably met
with loud cheering by the fans of Pax American on both sides of the Atlantic. Critics were
dismayed and somewhat horrified, considering her record.
Arguably the most publicly known episode of Nuland's Obama tenure came in 2014, when a tape
of her conversation with then-ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked. It happened
shortly after Ukraine's democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in a wave
of street protests culminating in an armed coup, which happened with much encouragement from
Washington.
Nuland and Pyatt were discussing who among the coup leaders should be in the upcoming
Ukrainian government, which indicated that Washington played a much bigger role in the crisis
than it publicly admitted. The infamous " F**k the EU" remark came as Nuland expressed
frustration with European nations, who were reluctant to lend legitimacy to the benefactors of
the events, and said UN officials could be called in to help "glue this thing"
instead.
The EU's skepticism at the time could have been due to the fact that President Yanukovich
was expelled under a threat of violence just hours after Germany and Poland helped seal a power
sharing
agreement between him and the opposition leaders, serving as guarantors of the deal. Her
return as a senior diplomatic official is likely to get on a few people's nerves in Europe,
which is ironic considering how the Biden administration is supposed to rebuild alliances
damaged by the Trump presidency.
While flying private in the world of academia and think tanks during the Trump years, Nuland
maintained her confrontational attitude to anyone challenging US dominance. Her recipe for
dealing with Russia, as outlined
in Foreign Policy magazine last summer, is more sophisticated weapons, permanent NATO bases on
the Russian border (which will require abolishing a key Russia-NATO agreement) and deniable
cyber operations against Moscow.
Nuland also played a
peculiar part in US domestic affairs, possibly having a hand in the promotion of the
notorious Steele dossier. The collection of opposition research and rumors was used by the FBI
to justify surveillance of the Trump campaign and fueled the endless flood of claims that the
incumbent president was somehow a Russian stooge.
An FBI memo released last
year revealed that Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson "and others were talking to Victoria Nuland
at the US State Department" about the file. The firm looked into Donald Trump for the
Hillary Clinton campaign and retained retired British intelligence agent Christopher Steele for
the job.
In multiple interviews, Nuland insisted that her role with the dossier was very limited
because it dealt with domestic politics. "[Steele] passed two to four pages of short points
of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was, 'This is not in our
purview,'" she
told CBS News in 2018, adding that she advised him to go to the FBI. Some skeptics believe
her role in launching the Steele dossier may have been much more significant.
Nuland is one of many Obama-era officials tapped by Biden to serve again with him at the
helm. In addition to her, the latest reported batch includes Wendy Sherman, the former under
secretary of state for political affairs, Jon Finer, who had various roles under Obama, and
Amanda Sloat, ex-deputy assistant secretary for Southern Europe and Eastern Mediterranean
affairs.
People feel attacked, unite, rally around the flag. Internal problems are blamed on the
external enemy. The sanctions, the sort the West likes to impose, help develop domestic
industries. Etc. Yeah, favors.
So, according to your logic, a hostile or unfriendly policy [towards Russia] will be when
the United States abolishes its discriminatory measures (they call them sanctions), withdraws
its troops from Europe, agree to North Stream-2, apologize for the coup in Ukraine etc.?
And then Russians will not be able "to justify" their problems with some kind of external
enemy?
I did not hear any more absurdity.
Btw, I am from Russia and I don't know of internal problems that the authorities would try
to "justify" by some external enemy/threat. In Russia, there are fires, there are cases of
corruption of officials, somewhere there is a break in power lines (ice on the wires), in
some places there are no necessary medicines in pharmacies, floods occur in summer... - a lot
of problems, like in any other country. All these are internal problems. And there has never
been such a thing that the Russian authorities said "this is all because of the American
sanctions!".
Yes, as Putin has said, Russia remains a developing nation, and such nations have such
problems and need to resolve them as best they can. In many respects, Russia is still
recovering from the destruction of WW2 and then the rapine it was subjected to from
1990-2000. Putin and his team know there's much to do. IMO, the new Eurasian Bloc will become
far more powerful and vastly improved over the USSR and its Warsaw Pact Bloc. But
improvements don't happen instantly, so people need to remain patient. Thanks much for your
input!
Scenes from the US Capitol on Wednesday, as protesters backing President Donald Trump
disrupted the joint session of Congress meeting to certify the election of Democrat Joe Biden,
looked very much like Belgrade in October 2000
.
The sight was later repeated in Ukraine – twice, in 2004 and 2014 – Georgia,
Moldova, Belarus, and several Central Asian former Soviet republics. On every occasion, the US
backed the "people power," because American NGOs and embassies were supporting what
became known as "color revolutions."
Same thing happened in 2011 with the "Arab Spring" that started in Tunisia and then
burned its way across North Africa to the Persian Gulf. In some places it "succeeded,"
overthrowing decades-old governments. In others it failed, setting off wars in Libya and Syria
and blood on the streets of Bahrain. Again, the US cheered this on as democracy – except
for Bahrain, which hosts a major naval base.
More recently, the US denounced as illegitimate the presidential elections in Belarus,
Bolivia and Venezuela. While Minsk and Caracas managed to resist – and got sanctioned for
it – the "democrats" in La Paz were successful for a while, but ended up losing the vote
last year.
Way back in 2004, the Guardian wrote approvingly about how the
US has created a "slick" operation of "engineering democracy through the ballot box and
civil disobedience," developing since Belgrade a "template for winning other people's
elections."
Now the same mainstream media that slavishly followed the State Department line in
denouncing elections elsewhere as "rigged" and color revolutions as spontaneous
democracy are clutching their pearls when Americans who believe their election was stolen take
to the streets and storm their Capitol.
Ah, but this election wasn't stolen, they'd say – it was pure as driven snow, "most
secure ever," all the experts who told us for four years the previous one was "hacked by
Russia" tell us so! And Joe Biden won the most votes in history while hardly leaving his
basement. Whether you believe this official narrative about the US election or not doesn't
really matter, however. Partisan myopia simply won't let people understand the magnitude of
what is on display here: utter moral bankruptcy of the entire US political and media
establishment.
Republicans and Democrats alike used "color revolutions" as a political weapon for
years, preaching democracy even as their astroturfed coups snuffed out any vestiges of it that
might have developed organically. Over the past year, they've done so at home as well, using
Covid-19 lockdowns to abolish elementary constitutional rights, culminating with changing the
electoral rules to better serve "our democracy," defined as whatever gets them
power.
What did they think people would do when all avenues of airing their grievances were closed
off? Meekly submit – or take a page out of the same playbook the politicians and the
media spent 20 years celebrating?
Don't go "but Trump," either. The supposed Nazi fascist dictator himself ordered
National Guard and police to clear out the protesters who sided with him, and protect the
establishment that did not. He's a real Hitler, right? No matter, expect the media to paint him
as such anyway.
Perhaps the US ought to take a long, hard look at its own house before it continues calling
out, sanctioning, regime-changing or bombing other countries over their supposed lack of
"democracy." Maybe actually answer the question Russian President Vladimir Putin asked at
the UN back in 2015, addressing the consequences of the 'Arab Spring': "Do you realize now
what you have done?"
But we all know that's not going to happen, don't we?
Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to
counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the
headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of
Russian influence over him is surely justified.
There followed 34 headlines and links to stories about Trump actions, from closing Russian
consulates to U.S. attacks on Russian troops, that were hostile to Russia.
In fact no other U.S. administration since the cold war has been more aggressive towards
Russia than Trump's.
But some U.S. media continue to claim that Trump's behavior towards Russia has not been
hostile at all. Consider this line
in Politico about anti-Russian hawks in the incoming Biden administration:
Nuland and Sherman, who entered academia and the think tank world after leaving the Obama
administration, have been outspoken critics of President Donald Trump's foreign policy --
particularly his appeasement of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Where please has Trump 'appeased' Vladimir Putin?
Here are a number of headlines which appeared in U.S. media since we published our first
list two years ago. Which of the described actions were designed to 'appease' Putin or
Russia?
When one adds up all those actions one can only find that Trump cares more about Russia,
than about the U.S. and its NATO allies. Only with Trump being under Putin's influence,
knowingly or unwittingly, could he end up doing Russia so many favors.
Why, you certainly could view most (if not all) of those actions as favors.
People feel attacked, unite, rally around the flag. Internal problems are blamed on the
external enemy. The sanctions, the sort the West likes to impose, help develop domestic
industries. Etc. Yeah, favors.
Point on! Trump was never 'the Russians' bitch'. He was the whore of the Russian
émigré mafia that had relocated to the US in south Queens in New York City. A
major difference!
Well, the logic is to destroy or ad least severely weaken Russia. Yet damn Russia is
getting stronger and stronger, hence what ever happened under Trump's watch must have been a
favor to Russia.
Competent government would look itself in the mirror and admit it is their own fault and
stupidity, but that ship sailed long time ago for US.
Point on! Trump was never 'the Russians' bitch'. He was the whore of the Russian
émigrés mafia that had relocated to the US in south Queens in New York City. A
major difference!
Of course the whole point of US and Western MSM obsession with demonising Russia and
China, and castigating those like Trump (for not going far enough to oppose either one or the
other nation, or both), is to divert public attention away from govt failings at home and to
push the public into supporting regime change against both Russia and China.
B's post should be read as a companion piece to his previous post on China as an
existential threat to the US, as an example of a nation that achieved stability, peace and
enough prosperity for most of its people by pursuing an alternate political and economic
ideology in the space of 40 years. An ideology that moreover challenges the ideology that the
West has followed for the past 500 years, and the assumptions on which that ideology is
based. Despite Western attempts to destabilise, break up and impoverish Russia in the 1990s,
in order to steal its energy and mineral resources, that nation managed to bounce back to
some level of stability and economic security. In addition Russia and China signed a
friendship treaty in 2001 and are committing to a closer political ans economic
relationship.
All this serves to marginalise the Anglosphere nations and to deny the US, the UK and
their elites the opportunity to plunder these nations and their allies for their natural
resources.
Point on! Trump was never 'the Russians' bitch'. He was the whore of the russian
emigrée mafia that had relocatet to the US in south Quens in New York City. A maijor
difference!
Exactly that, thank you. The mafia that manages the D party are of Mediterranean roots and
are totally pi$$ed of with the Russians.
Enough of this polite avoidance of the reality of the USAi gangland - it is a mafia state.
The D 'reformist' squad just blew their best chance to start the reformation. They will be
neutered well before another chance arises.
AFAICT Russiagate's neo-McCarthyism and Trump's supposed friendliness toward Putin was a
set up prior to Trump negotiations with Putin at Helsinki.
"I'm your only friend ... and your last best hope ..." is a powerful pitch -
especially when it is accompanied by generous offers of aid and support. And perhaps it
would've worked if it had come years before.
So now we have a new Cold War - with both Russia and China.
Victoria Nuland, wife of neoconservative Robert Kagan, is expected be nominated for under
secretary of state for political affairs
According to a report from
Politico , Joe Biden's transition team is expected to nominate Victoria Nuland to
be the under secretary of state for political affairs for the incoming administration's State
Department.
Nuland, who is married to neoconservative Robert Kagan, is known for her role in
orchestrating the 2014 coup in Ukraine while she was the assistant secretary of state for
Europe and Eurasian affairs in the Obama administration.
A recording of a phone call between Nuland and then-US
Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked and released on YouTube on February 4th,
2014 . In the call, Nuland and Pyatt discussed who should replace the government of former
Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was forced to step down on February 22nd,
2014.
The US-backed coup sparked the war in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region and led to the Russian
annexation of Crimea. Both regions have a majority ethnic-Russian population who rejected the
nationalist, anti-Russian post-coup government that even had
neo-Nazis in its midst .
In a
2020 column for Foreign Affairs titled, "Pinning Down Putin," Nuland said Russian
President Vladimir Putin "seized" on the 2014 coup and other "democratic struggles" to "fuel
the perception at home of Russian interests under siege by external enemies." She also cited
the war in the Donbas and annexation of Crimea as examples of Russian aggression, as most in
Washington do.
Nuland worked in the Bush administration from 2005 to 2008 as the US ambassador to NATO.
From 2011 to 2013, she served as the spokesperson for Barack Obama's State Department, and from
2013 to 2017, Nuland was the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs.
Politico also reported that the Biden administration is tapping Wendy Sherman to
work directly under Secretary of State-designee Anthony Blinken. Sherman worked in the Obama
administration's State Department and played
a crucial role in negotiating the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Ex-AG Barr Reportedly Met With Jeffrey Epstein's Last Cellmate Attorney General William Barr speaks at the
National Religious Broadcasters Convention Feb. 26, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark
Humphrey)
By Charlie McCarthy | Tuesday, 05 January 2021 07:06 PM
Former Attorney General William Barr investigated the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, reportedly
even meeting with the multimillionaire sex offender's last cellmate.
Epstein was found hanging in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower
Manhattan early on Aug. 10, 2019. Efrain "Stone" Reyes had shared the cell with Epstein until
being transferred a day before the suicide.
Epstein's death rattled the highest levels of the Justice Department, according
to the New York Daily News on Monday.
Following Epstein's death, Reyes was pulled from a privately run jail in Queens to meet
frequently with authorities, once with the attorney general himself.
"Barr wanted to know about what was going on in [the Metropolitan Correctional Center]," a
source told the Daily News. "Barr told him, 'I owe you a favor, thank you for telling us the
truth.'
"He said [Barr] was a good guy. Barr was nice about it. He just wanted to know if [inmates]
were being mistreated. What [Reyes] believed happened. Just basically that. He told them
everything. He cooperated with Barr."
The Daily News source said he befriended Reyes when both were being held at the Queens jail,
per the Daily Mail .
A Justice Department spokesman declined comment to the Daily News.
The New York Times reported previously that a "livid" Barr was personally overseeing four
inquiries into Epstein's suicide.
Reyes caught coronavirus at the Queens Detention Facility earlier this year, was released in
April and died last month. He was 51.
The source said he and Reyes watched a documentary about Epstein, who associated with some
of the world's most powerful men while allegedly running an international child sex trafficking
scheme.
"[Reyes] was like, 'I just didn't see that from him. I didn't see that side of him. I never
pictured him being with young girls. Some guys like that are creepy,'" the source recalled. "He
said he never really got that side of Epstein -- like he was someone who took advantage of
girls. But we all have our secrets, you know? You never know."
Why the protégé of Cheney Nuland? Why now? Did Biden completely succumbs to
Alzheimer? Does Biden administration strive to be as dysfunctional, neocon-dominated and
destructive as Obama administration?
Politico reports Tuesday that President-elect Joe Biden is tapping former senior Obama
administration foreign affairs officials to serve in his cabinet.
Most notably among them is neocon Victoria Nuland, who has just been tapped as Biden's state
department undersecretary for political affairs.
Writes Politico :
"Another veteran diplomat, Victoria Nuland, will be nominated for the role of under secretary
of State for political affairs, one of the people said. Nuland also previously served in the
Obama administration, as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs."
Recall that in this capacity she ran point for Obama's regime change "democracy
promotion" efforts in Ukraine . In 2014 leaked audio clip posted to YouTube caused deep
embarrassment for the State Department amid accusations the US was coordinating coup efforts
using the ongoing "Maidan Revolution" to oust then President Viktor Yanukovych.
In that leaked
phone call Nuland told US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt "F*ck the EU" - for which
she was later forced to apologize. Here's some of the audio for a little trip down memory
lane.
She had also been instrumental in her prior postings at the State Department in Obama's
disastrous Libya intervention.
After the Obama administration she's been part of various think
tanks, including the hawkish Brookings Institution, where she's been a fierce critic of Trump's
supposed "appeasement" of Putin. She's also argued for deeper military intervention in Syria
.
Politico in its description of the incoming Obama-era officials underscores they are
hawks on
Russia :
Nuland and [Wendy] Sherman, who entered academia and the think tank world after leaving
the Obama administration, have been outspoken critics of President Donald Trump's foreign
policy -- particularly his appeasement of Russian President Vladimir Putin .
On the National Security Council, former State Department official Jon Finer will be named
deputy national security adviser, the people said, reporting up to incoming national security
adviser Jake Sullivan. Finer, a former journalist, joined the Obama White House as a fellow
in 2009 and served in various roles throughout Obama's tenure, including as a foreign policy
speechwriter for Biden and a senior adviser to then-deputy national security adviser Blinken.
Finer had been working in political risk and public policy at the private equity firm Warburg
Pincus, which was co-founded by Blinken's father, since leaving government in 2017.
The key NSC role of senior director for European Affairs will go to Amanda Sloat, a
Brookings Institution fellow ...
... ... ...
As is the unfortunate norm in the Washington beltway, the Liberal hawks under Obama simply
went to who's who of neocon think tanks like Brookings, and have now been called back in
revolving door fashion for pretty much a return to Obama era foreign policy (and its
disasters ).
The current term "globalization" was originated by Ted Levitt in an article in the Harvard
Business Review in the 80s and taken up by the Reaganites to push for offshoring of factories
to countries with fewer workers rights and environmental concerns. He edited the magazine and
was a professor at Harvard Business School. Those "weirdos" who championed the term were the
corporate and financial behemoths that preferred it as a euphemism for "economic
imperialism"
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 1:07 utc | 56
Our nation, right now, is on the cusp of a great earthquake which will change its
arrangement so that the interior will not be beholden to the coastal elites much longer,
who have themselves thrown off the mantle of nationhood in favor of the globalist paradigm
which values nihilistic individualism over all.
So, in short, you're describing capitalism. A capitalist economy favors individualism,
profits over morality, and is mostly centered around the idea of private property as
described by John Locke. This worked wonders in the vast uncharted territories of America in
the 18th and 19th century, when the population of the United States was below 20 million and
they needed to compete, FAST, against agressive european civilizations who looked at them
with envy.
Now that they are 332 millions and counting, that their natural resources are slowly
depleting and that other civilizations have adapted to the previously unknown phenomenon of
the American empire, USans are faced with a crisis in all sectors, including faith. How come
a system that worked so well for you these past 300 years suddenly fails? well, not suddenly,
but realizing that took a while.
Oh, I know!! It must be because of all those treacherous businessmen who traded their
souls and their country for a quick buck! but we need to condemn them without condemning the
whole system, and saying "capitalism sucks" makes us sound like Ivan the Red Commie. What a
pickle. Let's call them "globalists"! so we can rally the nationalists as a bonus and say
it's all because of evil foreigners.
On certain sites, it goes as far as calling "globalists" ... communists. Or Chinese. Or
Russian. Sure, why not, everyone needs their Emmanuel Goldstein.
"Globalism" is a funny name some weirdos invented since the first Wall Street crashes
happened to justify the worst excesses of the current capitalist economic system without
pointing the finger at the real culprits. I say it's funny because it looks like nationalist
clickbait for the 2 minutes of hate everyone in the West is prescribed each day in this
hyper-social Internet.
Sad fact is, "globalists" are run-of-the-mill bosses who decided it was better for their
end-of-year bonuses if they outsourced some or all of their production to cheap chinese
companies, and not have to pay US salaries anymore. That's not globalist, that's called
looking to make a profit in the short term.
Tell me a better term than "globalist" for nationals who are titans of industry who
betray their fellow nationals in the labor force by looking outside their own nation?
A term of rather recent vintage is Labour arbitrage that is substituting less
costly labour for higher costing labour. The driving motive for all offshoring or
externalising labour resources from the home marketplace. Walmart made billions doing this as
does Amazon.
I agree with Lemming's position on this. And I think Nemesis Calling is wrong about what
the term "Globalist" implies. If a "nationalist" is someone who's loyal to a nation, then
isn't a "globalist" someone who is loyal to the whole globe? Humanity today has many massive
problems that are extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to deal with on a purely
national basis. Nuclear weapons, global climate change, pandemic diseases, the potential
threats and benefits of real artificial intelligence, the extinction of so many species,
controlling multinational corporations, the threat of mass starvation, global inequality...
these are all problems which seem to many people to need the whole human species, or the
whole globe, working together to address them.
I think the major reason why many capitalists started calling themselves "globalists" back
in the 1980's was because they saw this was an idea which was becoming increasingly popular,
and they wanted to try and coopt it for their own benefit.
The trouble was that the CEO's who decided it would be personally profitable for them to
ship their companies jobs to low wage countries were not "real" globalists. If they had
really understood what the decisions they were making would do to their countries, or even to
the corporations they were responsible to their shareholders for managing, they might be
accused of being frauds or even traitors. But they probably didn't understand, so it's
probably more accurate to just call them parts of a greedy and shortsighted elite, which was
far too arrogant to realize how countries like China would be able to exploit their
shortsighted folly. They thought they were being so clever about their plans to exploit the
Chinese. But the irony is that a major reason why they underestimated the Chinese is that
they didn't understand that the fact that the Chinese were Marxists meant that the Chinese
had a different and in some ways better understanding of how Capitalism worked than they did.
They never dreamed that the Chinese would be able to make Lenin's prediction that capitalists
would sell them the rope they needed to hang capitalism come true.
"Obama Official Ben Rhodes Admits Biden Camp is Already Working With Foreign Leaders:
Exactly What Flynn Did" [ Glenn Greenwald ]. "Any
doubts about how customary it is for such calls to be made by transition officials were
unintentionally obliterated on Monday night by former Obama national security official Ben
Rhodes, who is almost certain to occupy a high-level national security position in a Biden
administration. Speaking on MSNBC -- of course -- Rhodes, while amicably chatting with former
Bush/Cheney Communications Director turned-beloved-by-liberals-MSNBC-host Nicolle Wallace,
admitted in passing that ' foreign leaders are already having phone calls with Joe Biden
talking about the agenda they're going to pursue January 20 ,' all to ensure 'as seamless
a transition as possible,' adding: 'the center of political gravity in this country and the
world is shifting to Joe Biden.'" • Presumably the FBI should be interrogating Rhodes
about his guilty knowledge. Anyhoo, I'm so old I remember when IOKIYAR was current in the
blogosphere: "It's OK If You're A Republican." But now IOKIIOG: "It's OK If It's Our Guy."
>David Sirota – "That was enough to barely defeat Trump.."
I'm getting confused, was Trump officially defeated. If not why are all these folks making
these kinds of statements without any qualifications, none, zip. He could have said "most
likely" or some other qualifier. Am I missing something here? Let the legal process of
contesting the election play out for Pete's sake.
"... The Biden administration, staffed with Obama veterans , may be in effect a third Obama term. Biden may seek a détente with China on some issues. But Democratic foreign policy elites as well as Republicans view China more harshly than they did four years ago. The most likely scenario, then, is an attempt to restore Obama's trilateral strategy of building the biggest possible coalition of allies against China. ..."
"... Democratic foreign policy elites are much more Europhile and Russophobic than their Republican counterparts. ..."
Under Barack Obama, the containment of
China -- the "pivot to Asia" -- took the form of what might be called trilateralism, after
the old Trilateral Commission of the 1970s. According to this strategy, while balancing China
militarily, the United States would create trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade blocs with
rules favorable to the United States that China would be forced to beg to join in the future.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was intended as an anti-Chinese, American-dominated Pacific
trade bloc, while the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) sought to create a
NATO for trade from which China would be excluded.
Obama's grand strategy collapsed even before the election of 2016. TTIP died, chiefly
because of hostility from European economic interests. In the United States, the fact that the
TPP treaty was little more than a wish-list of giveaways to U.S. finance and pharma interests
and other special-interest lobbies made it so unpopular that both Hillary Clinton and
Trump
renounced it during the 2016 presidential election season.
Trump, like Obama,
sought to contain China , but by unilateral rather than trilateral measures. The Trump
administration emphasized reshoring strategic supply chains like that of steel in the United
States, unwilling to offshore critical supplies even to allies in Asia and Europe and North
America. This break with prior tradition would have been difficult to pull off even under a
popular president who was a good bureaucratic operator, unlike the
erratic and inconsistent Trump.
The Biden administration,
staffed with Obama veterans , may be in effect a third Obama term. Biden may seek a
détente with China on some issues. But Democratic foreign policy elites as well as
Republicans view China more harshly than they did four years ago. The most likely scenario,
then, is an attempt to restore Obama's trilateral strategy of building the biggest possible
coalition of allies against China.
An emphasis by the Biden administration on alliances may succeed in the case of the
U.S.-Japan-Australia-India "Quad" (Quadrilateral alliance). The UK may support America's East
Asian policy as well. But Germany and France, the dominant powers in Europe, view China as a
vast market, not a threat, so Biden will fail if he seeks to repeat Obama's grand strategy of
trilateral containment of China.
Democratic foreign policy elites are much more Europhile and Russophobic than their
Republican counterparts. In part this is a projection of domestic politics. In the
demonology of the Democratic Party, Putin stands for nationalism, social conservatism, and
everything that elite Democrats despise about the "deplorables" in the United States who live
outside of major metro areas and vote for Republicans. The irrational hostility of America's
Democratic establishment extends beyond Russia to socially-conservative democratic governments
in Poland and Hungary, two countries that Biden has denounced as "totalitarian."
In the Middle East, unlike Eastern Europe, a Biden administration is likely to sacrifice
left-liberal ideology to the project of
maximizing American power and consolidating the U.S. military presence, with the help of
autocracies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Any hint of retrenchment will be denounced by the
bipartisan foreign policy establishment that lined up behind Biden, so do not expect an end to
any of the forever wars under Biden. Quite the contrary.
Michael Lind is Professor of Practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of the University of
Texas at Austin and the author of The American Way of Strategy. His most recent book is The New
Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite.
After pushing phony stories of 'Russian interference' and working for an agency that
interferes in elections, ex-CIA agent now Congressman Will Hurd thinks the GOP should accept
Joe Biden's win, or risk helping the US' "enemies."
A dozen Republican Senators are getting set to object to the Electoral
College's certification of Joe Biden's win in November, unless an "emergency 10-day
audit" is held in a number of key swing states won by Biden. The move is also backed by a
number of Republican representatives in the House.
However, there's a rival faction of Republicans who want to put allegations of Democrat
fraud behind them and go back to business as usual under a Biden administration. Outgoing Texas
Rep. Will Hurd is one of them, and he made a novel argument against questioning the election on
Saturday.
"When I was undercover at the CIA, I saw firsthand how our enemies steal elections and
try to interfere in ours," he tweeted. "Elected officials continuing to sow doubt
amongst the public for petty political gain is playing into our enemies' hands."
As for who these "enemies" are, Hurd was presumably referring to the reliable old
specter of "the Russians." Throughout Trump's four years in office, Hurd has repeatedly
claimed that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election, despite there literally being zero proof for
these claims.
" This is honestly one of the most hilarious mega-viral tweets I've ever seen on
Twitter," journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted. In a follow-up tweet, Greenwald joked that
Hurd "must have been in a different part of the CIA" than former Director James Woolsey, who
told Fox News' Laura Ingraham in 2018 that his agency had meddled in European elections during
the Cold War "in order to avoid the Communists taking over," and continues to dabble in
election meddling, but "only for a very good cause.
Hurd was mocked on all sides. First for condemning election interference from an agency
famed for
interfering in elections
... ... ...
And then for bragging about his undercover status...
"... Imagine for a while that Pompeo and Netanyahu were able to ignite the huge conflict with Iran which they have been trying to do for years. The wider Middle East would become a land of ruins, and on top of that we would have also the corona crisis. It would be the end for the Chinese project One belt One road and a very promising beginning for Trump’s programme of “decoupling” from China. The same could happen if we go to a Greek-Turkish war, the most probable result of which is enormous destruction in both states and also in Cyprus. Given the destructive capacity of the Greek and Turkish weapons and the impossibility of destroying them by a surprise first strike, the two countries, if they go to war, risk going back two or three hundred years. A conflict around Iran, or between Greece and Turkey would also put enormous pressure on Russia. ..."
"... Spreading Chaos is another way of staging world war when you cannot use ‘normal’, ‘frontal’ methods of war. The policy of Trump and his allies contributes greatly to preparing for world war by attacking the very institutions of bourgeois democracy, any kind of national or international rule, by attacking the very principles of Logic, Logos and Science, necessary in order to transform human societies into herds of wild animals, in a sui generis repetition of the Nazi experiment. ..."
"... The way to get Greece and Turkey to war is by sending them ‘false signals’, either encouraging and supporting them, or implying a threat from the other country. Somebody was able to persuade Ankara to down the Russian jet in 2015, which was a case of extreme miscalculation. It is easier to make a miscalculation regarding Greece and Turkey, and there is an enormity of contradictory signals emanating from the US and Israel towards the two capitals. ..."
"... PS. The above article provides a possible explanation of the present Greek-Turkish crisis. A second explanation is that big oil multinationals want to provoke a crisis in order to exploit the hydrocarbons of the region, but we have no serious indications that big reserves really exist and are exploitable economically. A third explanation, not mutually excluded from what we have analyzed, is that third forces are trying to provoke a war in order to overthrow Erdogan and also have all the other consequences we described. ..."
Twenty years ago, I was covering the Munich Security Forum as a journalist and I took an interview from Brent Scawcroft,
National Security Adviser for President Bush (the father). I believe he was one of the men who played a huge role in pushing
Boris Yeltsin to the crisis which culminated into the bombing of the Russian parliament in October 1993, thus opening the way to
the biggest looting in the history of mankind, the so-called Russian privatisations. I asked Scawcroft what the US policy
towards Russia and China should be . He answered: “We need to have better relations with Moscow and Beijing, than they can have
between themselves”.
The way for the Empire to dominate in the Eastern Mediterranean, imposing its pax or pushing for war, is by having better
relations with Athens and Ankara than they can have between themselves. Now they don’t have any at all.
Maidan Square, Kiev, 2014
The plane carrying the three EU Foreign Ministers, the French, the German and the Polish, had just taken off from Kiev when
the agreement they had negotiated for a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Ukrainian crisis collapsed and the carnage began
in the Ukrainian capital. This was followed by the civil war and the unimaginable destruction of European-Russian relations.
The Ukrainian coup was a huge blow to Russia and the Ukraine, which is now in an extremely miserable state, a harbinger of
Nazi militias and mafia groups, but also, indirectly, to Europe, which, destroying its relations with Russia at the behest of
the Americans, is not only ridiculed, but has deprived itself of the possibility of an independent policy, an achievement which
it is now going to ‘complete’ with the Navalny affair, if it leads to the cancelling of the strategic pipeline project
NordStream II.
‘Fuck the EU’ was not only a phrase from Neocon Assistant Secretary of State Nuland to Ambassador Pyatt (then in Kiev, now
in Athens); it was in reality one of the main purposes of the Maidan operation, that is the inauguration chapter of the new Cold
War. Some weeks ago, Mike Pompeo repeated the Nuland coup, by using his influence on the Greek FM Dendias and on the Egyptian
dictator Sissi to blow up the moratorium between Greece and Turkey the German chancellor Merkel had negotiated. ‘Fuck Germany
and its moratoriums’!
The Coming War
The destruction of the Ukraine, Ukrainian-Russian and European-Russian relations was a very big step in the direction of
preparing for world war against Russia and China. This is the central plan that defines many of the individual crises and
episodes around the globe; and if one does not understand this, one cannot understand anything. As for Trump’s friendship with
Russia, we are afraid that it is of no more value than Hitler’s friendship with Stalin or the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.
The war with China and Russia is the main project of the extremist, radical wing of the Western capitalist establishment. But
such a war cannot happen easily and it will not take a frontal form as WWI and WWII, because of the existence of nuclear
weapons. But it will take all other possible forms.
Imagine for a while that Pompeo and Netanyahu were able to ignite the huge conflict with Iran which they have been trying
to do for years. The wider Middle East would become a land of ruins, and on top of that we would have also the corona crisis. It
would be the end for the Chinese project One belt One road and a very promising beginning for Trump’s programme of “decoupling”
from China. The same could happen if we go to a Greek-Turkish war, the most probable result of which is enormous destruction in
both states and also in Cyprus. Given the destructive capacity of the Greek and Turkish weapons and the impossibility of
destroying them by a surprise first strike, the two countries, if they go to war, risk going back two or three hundred years. A
conflict around Iran, or between Greece and Turkey would also put enormous pressure on Russia.
Spreading Chaos is another way of staging world war when you cannot use ‘normal’, ‘frontal’ methods of war. The policy of
Trump and his allies contributes greatly to preparing for world war by attacking the very institutions of bourgeois democracy,
any kind of national or international rule, by attacking the very principles of Logic, Logos and Science, necessary in order to
transform human societies into herds of wild animals, in a sui generis repetition of the Nazi experiment.
You cannot wage war on Russia or China by any form of ‘liberal capitalism’. To wage such a huge war you need a totalitarian
regime in the West, and this is the real programme, the historic mission of Trump, Pompeo, Thiel, Netanyahu etc.
The way to get Greece and Turkey to war is by sending them ‘false signals’, either encouraging and supporting them, or
implying a threat from the other country. Somebody was able to persuade Ankara to down the Russian jet in 2015, which was a
case of extreme miscalculation. It is easier to make a miscalculation regarding Greece and Turkey, and there is an enormity of
contradictory signals emanating from the US and Israel towards the two capitals.
For example, a very strange article in the Foreign Affairs magazine states that the red line behind which Ankara
will not be permitted to go is south of Crete. This red light is indirectly a green light for Turkey to go to the east or
south-east of Crete. If Turkey sends its ships there the Greek government will be under tremendous pressure from both public
opinion and the Armed Forces to react. This is not something Foreign Affairs can ignore, making us wonder if in fact some
people want a war between Greece and Turkey to overthrow Erdogan, to weaken Turkey for decades, to attack Chinese projects and
the EU. We could multiply such examples, including Trump’s encouragement of Erdogan. Insofar as the Turkish President does not
want to go to a full rupture with the West, he is better prepared to accept as genuine any encouraging signals from Washington.
But they can be a trap, as happened for example with Milosevich or Sadam.
Russia, NATO and a Greek-Turkish war
The other day a friend told me that a conflict between Greece and Turkey would only harm NATO: only the Russians would
benefit, so it could not happen.
I replied that he was wrong. ‘If you are preparing for a world war, you do not even care so much about NATO. Instead you have
to tear down all the institutions of bourgoies society and of the liberal capitalist order, including the EU, maybe even NATO
itself, because they are not really made for such a war. They are certainly made to contain Russia, but not to play Russian
roulette with the very existence of the world. A world war will not be decided by a Senate, no matter how oligarchic it will be.
For such decisions you need Nero, Caligula, Heliogabalus. Such are Trump, Bolsonaro, Pompeo, Netanyahu and those behind them.
They would certainly prefer a Russia-Turkey conflict and have already tried to provoke it. But it is not easy.
A conflict with Greece is their second best alternative, because Greece has the means to destroy Turkey by destroying itself.
A war between the two countries will destroy them and would set them back 200 or 300 years.
It is doubtful, after all, that Russia would benefit from such a development, even if it would be a blow to NATO. First,
because Moscow would see the destruction of Hellenism, the main strategic ally of Russia in the Mediterranean for a thousand
years. Governments and regimes can change, but losing a nation is another matter.
Second, Moscow will likely see, as a result of a war, a pro-Western dictatorship set up in Ankara. Having contributed to the
destruction of a historic country like Greece, Turkey would not have the slightest future. It would be considered the outcast of
all civilised nations, like Germany after World War II.
And of course, the big victims of the war will be China, with the One Belt, One Road plans and Europe itself.
This is the Chaos Strategy. It remains to be seen whether her opponents also have a strategy or not.
PS. The above article provides a possible explanation of the present Greek-Turkish crisis. A second explanation is that
big oil multinationals want to provoke a crisis in order to exploit the hydrocarbons of the region, but we have no serious
indications that big reserves really exist and are exploitable economically. A third explanation, not mutually excluded from
what we have analyzed, is that third forces are trying to provoke a war in order to overthrow Erdogan and also have all the
other consequences we described.
HARPER: THE LESSONS OF STALINGRAD BY STEVE DOUGLAS
After hearing a lecture by my friend Steve Douglas on the lessons of the battle of
Stalingrad, I urged him to write this essay on the topic. Given the current toxic relationship
between the United States and Russia--the two predominant thermonuclear-armed states--it is a
useful reminder of a crisis moment in world history when the U.S. and Russia were allies
against a great common threat. it primarily serves as an invaluable lesson in the role of the
subjective factors and leadership in warfare.
STALINGRAD: A LESSON IN THE PRIMACY OF THE SUBJECTIVE IN WAR
November 19, 2020 marked the 78th anniversary of the strategic counteroffensive that the
Soviet Red Army launched against the German Wehrmacht at Stalingrad in World War II. The vast,
surprise double-pincered armored envelopment that the Soviets launched that day---from
apparently out of nowhere---sealed the fate of the German Army in Russia. It was arguably the
turning point of the entire war.
Stalingrad was the biggest battle in the most destructive war in the history of mankind.
Soviet casualties in the battle that raged between August 23, 1942 and the surrender of Field
Marshal Paulus's 6th Army on February 2, 1943 numbered 1,129,619, including 478,741 personnel
killed or missing. That is, the Soviets suffered more dead and wounded in the Battle of
Stalingrad, than the U.S. Armed Forces suffered on all fields of battle combined during the
entirety of World War II! (982,800 total casualties, including 416,800 killed or missing).
By the time that the Soviets unleashed their November 19th counteroffensive, the badly
battered 62nd Army of General Chuikov, which was the principal Soviet military formation in the
meager thousands of square meters that remained of Soviet-controlled Stalingrad, numbered only
about 6000 men. What had once been a full-sized army of over 100,000 soldiers, had been reduced
in size to less than half of an undersized division! And it was facing round-the-clock assaults
from the elite formations of Paulus's 6th Army and the German Luftwaffe that were more than 30
times its size, with seemingly infinitely greater firepower.
What sustained the Soviet soldiers in the face of these indescribable, almost unimaginable
horrors? What enabled them to triumph against such overwhelming odds? Insofar as the imperial
arrogance of the members of today's anti-Russia lobby ominously echoes the anti-Soviet
arrogance of German political and military strategists in Hitler's time, they would be
well-advised to consider the answers to these questions, before proceeding any further with
their dangerous, ill-considered provocations.
The Leadership Question
The Show Trial purge process which Stalin conducted against the Soviet military from
1937-1939 had virtually decapitated the Red Army. Approximately 50% of the officer corps,
including 3 out of 5 marshals, 13 out of 15 army group commanders, 57 out of 85 corps
commanders, and 110 out of 195 division commanders were executed, imprisoned, or "discharged"
in the purge. Only the ascendancy of General Zhukov and the arrival of Arctic-like temperatures
and snowfall in November 1941 stopped the German Army from taking Moscow.
While the limited success which the Soviets experienced in some winter engagements against
the Germans prompted some expressions of misguided optimism in high level Soviet government
circles, those naïve hopes were shattered by the disaster that the Soviets suffered at the
2nd Battle of Kharkov. The sixteen-day battle which ended on May 28, 1942 resulted in 171,00
dead, missing, or captured Red Army troops, and opened the door for the German advance deep
into southwest Russia. Soviet losses were compounded by the loss of another 118,00 soldiers
when the garrison at Sevastopol in Crimea surrendered to the German 11th Army of Field Marshal
Erich von Manstein on July 4, 1942.
So, when the city of Rostov on the Don River fell to the Germans with hardly a fight on July
23rd, Stalin acted decisively to alter the dynamic of defeat and despair. On July 28,1942
Stalin issued his famous Order 227---the "Ni Shagu Nazad!" Order---the "Not a Step Back!"
Order. In it, he declared: "Every commander, soldier, and political worker must understand that
our resources are not unlimited To retreat further would mean the ruin of the country and
ourselves. Every new scrap of territory we lose will significantly strengthen the enemy and
severely weaken our defense of our Motherland 'Not a Step Back!' this must now be our chief
slogan. We must defend to the last drop of blood every position, every meter of Soviet
territory, to cling on to every shred of Soviet earth and defend it to the utmost." (pp. 41-42.
Stalingrad -- How the Red Army Triumphed , by Michael K. Jones--2007, Pen & Sword
Books LTD, Great Britain).
Stalin coupled his Order 227 with a number of initiatives that were designed to awaken and
unleash the powerful spiritual, patriotic impulses which had resided deep in the souls of
Russian subjects for centuries, long before the birth of Karl Marx or the Bolshevik Revolution.
He had come to recognize that Communist sloganeering was simply not sufficient to mobilize the
people or the soldiers of the Soviet Union for victory.
On July 29, 1942, Stalin established the Order of Kutuzov Award, to be presented to those
officers who conducted effective counterattacks and performed heroically against overwhelming
odds on the battlefield. Mikhail Kutuzov had been appointed by Tsar Alexander I on August 29,
1812 to replace Barclay de Tolly as head of the Russian Army and was charged with the mission
of defeating Napoleon's invading French forces. While Kutuzov did not defeat Napoleon at the
Battle of Borodino on Sept. 7, 1812, he inflicted sufficient damage on the French, that he
helped to create the preconditions for Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Moscow that
winter.
Also, on July 29, 1942, Stalin established the Order of Suvorov Award, named after a
Russian Field Marshal, who had famously served Empress Catherine the Great before his death
in 1800. 48 Soviet generals were ultimately awarded the Order of Kutuzov or Suvorov medal
during World War II. It should be noted that the masterminds of the Stalingrad
counteroffensive, Generals Zhukov and Vasilevsky, were the first and second recipients of the
Order of Suvorov First Class medal. As Stalin declared in an appeal to the troops on Sept. 6,
1942, "The Russians have always defeated the Prussians. The military tradition of the Russian
people lives on in the heroic deeds of Soviet fighting men." (pg. 433. Moscow to Stalingrad:
Decision in the East. Earl F. Ziemke and Magna E. Bauer)
In late August 1942, with great pomp and fanfare, Stalin convened meetings in Moscow with
the leaders of the partisan movement, which was estimated to have at least 100,000 irregular
warfare combatants at that time. By naming Marshal Voroshilov commander in chief of the
partisan movement, Stalin, in effect, accorded it the status of a distinct branch of the
Soviet Armed Forces.
Stalin elevated the status of the officer corps of the armed forces in Soviet society
with several noteworthy initiatives. The designation of "officer", which had been banned from
all military vocabulary since the Bolshevik Revolution and replaced by the socialistically
politically correct term "commander," was reincorporated into Soviet military life in August.
And, more spectacularly, on Oct. 9, 1942, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet abolished the
political commissar system, which, since the days of the Bolshevik Revolution, had been
invested with absolute veto power over the decision-making processes of any and all military
officers. The same Stalin who had decimated the Soviet military leadership with his murderous
purges in the 1930's, was professing his full trust in the independent, professional judgment
of the military leadership in 1942.
In August, Stalin promoted General Zhukov to the rank of Deputy Supreme Commander of the
Soviet Armed Forces, making Zhukov second only to himself in leadership responsibility for
the Soviet military. In October, Stalin promoted the Chief of the General Staff General
Alexander Vasilevsky to Deputy Minister of Defense. Together, Zhukov and Vasilevsky acted as
a team, overseeing all aspects of the battlefield conflict with the Germans. They reported
directly to Stalin, as his two primary plenipotentiaries.
Birth of a Plan and Advent of General Chuikov
On September 12 Zhukov and Vasilevsky spoke with Stalin about the prospects for a strategic
encirclement of Paulus's 6th Army, to change the complexion of the war altogether. Stalin was
intrigued with the idea and dispatched them to Stalingrad to investigate the feasibility of it.
He expressly admonished them, that they were to discuss this idea with absolutely no one but
himself. They returned to Moscow on September 27th and presented him with a detailed report on
their plan, affirming its viability. After some minor alterations, he signed off on it the next
day.
The date for the surprise attack was set for November 9th. The commanders of the three
Soviet Fronts (army groups) in the Stalingrad region were not to be informed of the plan until
mid-October at the earliest. And they, in turn, were not to inform their own command staffs of
the plans until November1st! These strictures would give the Front commanders and their staffs
little time to prepare for the counteroffensive But secrecy was of the highest priority.
Zhukov's and Vasilevsky's plan was premised on the assumption that the beleaguered troops of
the Soviet 62nd Army could continue to conduct such a deadly and effective defense against the
Germans, that the 6th Army of Paulus and the 4th Panzer Army of Herman Hoth would become
narrowly focused on rooting them out of the city to such an extent, that they would leave their
long flanks relatively under-protected, and therefore vulnerable to Soviet attack.
That is exactly what happened, thanks to the extraordinary leadership of the 62nd Army's
Commanding General---Vasily Chuikov. Chuikov was appointed commander of the 62nd Army on Sept.
12, 1942, 6 days after its former commander, General Lopatin, had been arrested for "disobeying
Order 227 and lying to the Soviet High Command." Lopatin had been installed as commander of the
62nd Army after its original leader, General Kolpakchi, had been removed from his post on July
27th because of his poor performance. Chuikov placed the highest priority on the restoration of
the morale in the ranks of his men. "If you rely on an order, without preparing the morale of
the men who will carry it out, then those men will not swim towards the battle, but back to the
bank they set out from. In this situation, posters and slogans won't help you. "(pg. 89 --
Jones).
Chuikov made it a point to visit his soldiers in their forward positions any and everywhere
on the battlefield, soliciting their insights on how better the 62nd Army could combat the
Wehrmacht. Word rapidly spread throughout the ranks that Chuikov was a "soldier's general" who
listened to his troops and spared no effort to get them the backup and supplies that they
needed. Chuikov said, "The soldier is often his own general in street fighting. You can't be a
commander if you don't trust your own soldiers' skills." (pp. 88-89, Jones)
Chuikov knew that he had to "de-awesomize" the combined arms warfare capabilities of the
German Wehrmacht in the minds of his men, if he were going to prevent the Germans from taking
Stalingrad. Respect for the Wehrmacht was healthy; but to harbor awe of it was paralytic and
deadly. Chuikov told his men to think of Stalingrad as a breakwater against the Fascist wave of
Germans. Lt. Anatoly Mereshko, a 20-year-old member of the 62nd Army staff summarized his
thinking:
"Imagine a strong wave from the sea. It hits the coast with tremendous force. But when you
have breakwaters in the sea, the wave gets broken. The same was true in the steppe. There the
Germans had the power of the whole wave. In the city, they were broken into smaller streams.
Houses, especially stone houses, became obstacles. And the further the Germans went into the
city, the more resistance they received from the flanks. The Germans did not change their
tactics at all But a town gives a completely different war arena---especially ruin. We could
split into small groups and occupy strongholds---to split their river into tributaries. We were
very successful in achieving this." (pp 9-10 Jones)
Consulting closely with his troops, Chuikov devised new forms of deployment and battle, that
were calculated to maximize the impact of small ad-hoc groups of soldiers, and individual
soldiers, such as snipers, in deployment against the Germans in the shattered, congested
cityscape of Stalingrad. For example:
The "storm group" unit for assaults on buildings originated in this process;
Night assaults were developed as a new form of offensive action;
The "hug the enemy" mode of deployment was developed in this context, as a way to
neutralize the effect of the Germans' overwhelming air superiority. Chiukov noticed in one
after-action report, that the Germans neglected to call in an air strike against a Russian
gun position, because the gun position was so close to the German lines, that the bomber
pilots would have risked hitting their own troops. The "hug the enemy" positioning radically
reduced the number of air strikes that the Soviet troops in forward positions subsequently
received.
The Red Army soldiers discovered that their German opponents did not have much of a
stomach for room-to-room, building-to-building, hand-to-hand individualized combat
situations. Whereas the Germans had seemed almost invincible in motorized combat on the vast
reaches of the Russian steppes, they were revealed to be decidedly mortal and unhappy in
conditions of close, personal combat. This realization gave the Soviet infantry a tremendous
psychological edge in their struggles with the Germans in the ruins of the city.
It is no doubt one of the great ironies of the Battle of Stalingrad, that the 62nd Red Army
won in no small measure due to the fact that its soldiers, beginning with its commander Vasily
Chuikov, operated on the (Prussian) principle of Auftragstaktik. Auftragstaktik, or "mission
orders", had always been the hallmark of Prussian military excellence, since the early
nineteenth century when Prussia worked with Czar Alexander I to defeat Napoleon. According to
that principle, officers were encouraged to use their own judgment to determine how best to
fulfil their "mission orders". Creative, innovative thinking, not blind obedience to rigid
orders, was encouraged at all levels of the Prussian Army. This is exactly what Chuikov meant,
when he said, "the soldier is often his own general in street fighting." Later he said, "the
most important thing I learned on the banks of the Volga, was to be impatient of blueprints. We
constantly looked for new methods of organizing and conducting battle, starting from the
precise conditions in which we were fighting." (pg. 85 Jones).
The Spiritual Substance of Victory
Notwithstanding the effectiveness of the innovations that Chuikov and his staff made in
battle in 1942, those innovations do not explain how the Soviets were able to triumph at
Stalingrad. Chuikov, himself, said, "The defense of Stalingrad is a paradox of military
science. The encirclement and our final offensive at Stalingrad can be understood in terms of
military science---but our defense is impossible to comprehend through any system of rational
analysis." (pg. 10 Jones) ." It was beyond the understanding of any of us." (pg. 7 Jones)
Lieutenant Vladimir Turov, an infantry officer in the 62nd Army echoed those sentiments when
he said, "In terms of our military understanding, how we held out at Stalingrad is still a
complete mystery to us." (pg. 10 -- Jones)
Chuikov created an environment that was defined by an unrelenting, spiritually animated,
all-encompassing commitment to the fulfilment of an historically-grounded mission whose
realization would determine not only the future of Russian society, but that of the world as a
whole. The spirit of Chuikov's 62nd Army was encapsulated in the Oath that all its veterans,
and all new troops that joined after Oct. 17, 1942 recited.
The Oath Not to Surrender Stalingrad stated: "The Germans have destroyed the avenues and
brought down the factories of Stalingrad; but Stalingrad has remained invincible. Its
burned-out houses, its very stones are sacred to us. We swear to our last drop of blood, to our
last breath, to our last heartbeat that we shall defend Stalingrad, and hold the enemy back
from the Volga. We swear that we shall not disgrace the glory of Russian arms, and we shall
fight to the end. "(pg. 233-- Jones)
Acting as the true leader that he was, Chuikov, the Russian patriot, led what amounted to a
religious crusade of his communist and atheist soldiers against the invading fascists. Anatoly
Kozlov, a veteran of the battle, recalled that the swearing of the Oath "involved swallowing a
piece of Stalingrad's soil. By doing so, men swore to fulfil their mission under any
circumstances---including giving up their lives." (pg. 234 Jones) It was as if, in swearing the
Oath and swallowing the soil, soldiers were taking Communion in a Christian Church, and the
bread/body of Christ was the soil of Stalingrad.
And their pathway to immortality was paved with the sacrifices that they and their fellow
members of the Red Army were making in Stalingrad. Kozlov reported that, "Our soldiers created
their own rituals during the battle." (pg. 234 Jones) Often men would swear over the dead body
of a fellow soldier, that they would take revenge on the German Army. The war correspondent
Vasily Grossman witnessed this ritual and its effect, reporting that "It was as if the dead had
passed on their strength to the survivors, and there were moments when ten resolute bayonets
successfully held an area which had (previously) been held by an (entire) battalion." (pg. 234
Jones)
Lieutenant Mereshko said of this battlefield ritual: "It seemed unbelievable that anyone
could continue to hold out, but when a division of thousands was reduced to a couple of hundred
soldiers, they would hold the ground for their dead friends." (pg. 234 Jones)
Lieutenant Alexander Fortov, the commander of an artillery unit in the 112th Division
reported that, "After the battle ended, guys in my company turned to the Bible. We began to
read sections of the Old Testament to each other. We were all atheists and communists, but
those passages really spoke to us. It was as if someone really understood what we had gone
through." (pg. 248 Jones)
In an illuminating discussion that the son of Vasily Chuikov, Alexander, had with the author
Michael K. Jones, after his father died, Alexander reported,
"I remember sorting through my father's papers after his death I came across a small,
hand-written prayer and immediately recognized his writing. The paper was old and creased, the
ink faded. The scrap of paper would have been folded and kept as a talisman. My father---a
committed communist---never spoke about it. But I know from other members of the family, that
he carried it with him during the war."
The prayer read as follows: "O Powerful One! The one who can turn night into day, and rough
soil into a garden of flowers. Make light everything that is hard for me---and help me." (pg.
249 Jones). "That is how we were defending Stalingrad," Alexander Chuikov said to Michael K.
Jones. (pg. 249)
Under Vasily Chuikov's leadership, this spiritual mission orientation came to dominate and
animate every important aspect of life and death in the 62nd Army. As Chuikov told Vasily
Grossman in an interview, "On other parts of the front they are worried that cowardice will
spread amongst the men; here at Stalingrad it is courage which is infectious." (pg. 135
Jones)
Ivan Burlakov, a defender of Stalingrad's Barrikady Factory spoke of the extraordinary
quality of the spiritual bond that came to predominate among the soldiers: "We spoke of the
saying of (Generalissimo) Suvorov---'Though you may perish in the attempt, come to the aid of
your comrade-in-arms." (pg. 11 Jones)
Led and inspired by the indomitable spirit of Vasily Chuikov, the 62nd Army held its vital
ground in Stalingrad until the Red Army finally, after a ten-day logistical delay, launched its
great encirclement of the German 6th Army on November 19th. As Zhukov and Vasilevsky had
anticipated, the Germans left their long flanks outside of Stalingrad undermanned and
vulnerable to attack, as they poured all their effort into the fight against the remnants of
the 62nd Army in the smoldering ruins of Stalingrad.
It is noteworthy that, given the secrecy strictures that Stalin had imposed on the operation
from the outset, the first that anyone in the 62nd Army knew of the counteroffensive was at
midnight on November 18th. The heroic resistance that the 62nd Army conducted at Stalingrad was
done without the benefit of any direct knowledge of the impending strategic counteroffensive.
It was done for its own sake!
You can start a war with Russia, but Russia will probably be the one to finish it.
I often thank that the cannon-founders of France and the banner-makers of Nazi Germany
certainly did not expect their products to end up where they did.
The Oath Not to Surrender Stalingrad with its dirt eating ritual sounds like it could have
been written by Tyrtaeus himself - from his wiki:
He [Tyrtaeus] wrote at a time of two crises affecting the city: a civic unrest threatening
the authority of kings and elders, later recalled in a poem named Eunomia ('Law and Order')
where he reminded citizens to respect the divine and constitutional roles of kings,
council, and demos; and the Second Messenian War, during which he served as a sort of
'state poet', exhorting Spartans to fight to the death for their city.
Your final paragraph is particularly interesting - extraordinarily good OPSEC from the
Soviets. As a consequence the encirclement of an enemy bent on world domination who viewed
them as deplorable untermenschen came as an almost total surprise - even to allied
forces.
I often thank that the cannon-founders of France and the banner-makers of Nazi Germany
certainly did not expect their products to end up where they did.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 02 January 2021 at 11:28 AM
If Hitler had been an American or Canadian, would he have invaded that endless space of
Russia?
I think not.
Many Europeans have no concept of the vastness of Russia, Canada,
the US.
If you are in Brussels, you can go to Luxembourg for lunch.
A sole line from a college history class well almost 60 years ago always haunted me.
"Russian troops would not fight for the Soviet Union, but the tide of WWII was turned when
they were rallied to fight for , Mother Russia ."
Other details from that lecture are now missing from memory but after reading this superb
article, this must have been the very the battle and the very General the college history
professor was talking about.
That line stayed with me since at the time we were in the height of the Cold War, and it
was comforting to learn the bloodless, automoton "Soviets" could still be sentimental human
beings devoted most to their own Mother Russia homeland.
Our college freshman class motto was "Stay Alive til '65", having been the first Duck and
Cover generation cowering under our school desks in the 1950's fearing nuclear annihilation
was an air raid siren's call away. Ergo, "covid" is piffle.
"If we get caught they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not
matter what you do, America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it
off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world's biggest welfare state that we
will create and control. Why? Because it is the will of God and America is big enough to take
the hit so we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we
hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves."
Herdee 9 minutes ago remove link
This is the philosophy that both the CIA and Pompeo used on Trump in order to help destroy
him. It actually sounds like something very similar or left over from the Nazi German era
from WW2:
In an interview published by Moscow news agency Interfax on Tuesday, Deputy Justice Minister
Mikhail Galperin said that litigation over the collapsed Yukos oil empire and fallout from
Russia's 2014 reabsorption of Crimea means that "a tough year" is on the cards.
The long-running dispute over Yukos, once among Russia's leading energy firms and one of the
most valuable companies in the world, has been raging for years. However, it now appears to be
coming to a head as the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, which claims it has jurisdiction in
the case, prepares to hear an appeal from Russia's lawyers. A legal settlement of more than $50
billion, thought to be the largest in history, hangs in the balance.
"Of course, we're not sitting idly, waiting for the Supreme Court's decision," said
Galperin. "Every day, we're defending our national interests in this case in different ways.
Legal battles related to the Yukos case are taking place not only in the Netherlands, but in
other jurisdictions as well."
Those who lost money in the collapse of the Yukos empire insist that the arrest of its CEO
on fraud charges and a colossal bill in back-taxes amounted to state appropriation.
Russian authorities argue that previous rulings in foreign courts on the side of the
claimants failed to take into account Russia's anti-corruption laws, and claim that the
investors weren't "bona fide." Moscow also insists that only Russia's courts have
jurisdiction, as the Energy Charter Treaty under which the case is being brought was signed but
never ratified.
Galperin added that the country's "main legal argument is that Russia never agreed for
the case to be heard by an international court of arbitration, which means that the judges had
no mandate to consider the lawsuit Yukos ex-shareholders filed against
Russia."
Last week, one of Russia's highest judicial authorities ruled that the country should
disregard any judgement coming from overseas tribunals. They state that, while the government
of the day took steps to join the Energy Charter Treaty in 1994, they did not have the
authority to make national laws subject to international agreements, or to "challenge the
competence" of Russian courts. Therefore, the jurists conclude, adhering to the Dutch
court's demands would be "unconstitutional."
However, if the verdict goes in favor of Yukos' former shareholders, refusing to pay the
bill could have substantial repercussions for Russia, with the claimants already calling for
the confiscation of the country's assets overseas as collateral.
Galperin, however, is confident that Russia could avoid cash and property falling into the
hands of the oligarchs who have brought the case. "Since 2014," he said, "they have
made multiple unscrupulous attempts to seize not only state property, but also assets that
belong to Russian companies in Western Europe. We have successfully repelled all these
assaults."
"While we can't rule out that in 2021 YUKOS ex-shareholders will continue their legal
battle in a number of countries, I can tell you without unnecessary bravado that we are fully
prepared to fight off any attempts to seize our property in any country of the world."
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands is expected to hear the case in February next year,
while simultaneous battles have also been fought in US and British courts. The row comes at a
time when tensions between Russia and the West are growing, with Moscow's diplomats arguing
that verdicts against the country have been "politically motivated." In December,
Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko told journalists that the case is part of a "legal
war that has been declared on Russia."
As well as the Yukos case potentially reaching a dramatic climax, Galperin expects that his
ministry will have their hands full next year with at least two other international disputes.
As early as January, the European Court of Human Rights is expected to announce a decision on a
legal fight between Moscow and Kiev over disputed Crimea. There is a further $8 billion claim
from a Ukrainian energy firm that insists it lost its assets when the peninsula was reabsorbed
into Russia. The same court will also rule on a case brought by Georgia over events in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008.
F ormer acting CIA Director Mike Morell, who has disingenuously argued for years that he had
nothing to do with the agency's torture program, but who continued to defend it, has
taken himself out of the running to be President-elect Joe Biden's new CIA director.
The decision is a victory for the peace group Code Pink, which spearheaded the Stop Morell
movement, and it's a great thing for all Americans. Now, though, we have to turn our attention
to Biden's nominee to be director of national intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines.
Haines is certainly qualified on paper to lead the Intelligence Community. A longtime Biden
aide, she has the president-elect's confidence. But that's not good enough. Haines is exactly
the kind of person who shouldn't be in a position of authority in intelligence. She is
the kind of neoliberal intelligence apologist whom so many of us have opposed for so many
years. Don't just take my word for it, though. Look at
her record .
Haines first began working for Biden when she served as deputy general counsel of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was its chairman. When Biden became vice president in
2009, Haines moved to the State Department, where she was the assistant legal adviser for
treaty affairs. After only a year, she moved to the White House, where she became deputy
assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs,
the National Security Council's chief attorney.
That's quite a position. What it means was that her job was to legally justify President
Barack Obama's decisions on such intelligence issues as drone strikes and whether to release
the CIA Torture Report. She served there under CIA Director John Brennan. Obama apparently
liked the job she did for him because in 2013, he named Haines deputy director of the CIA
(DD/CIA).
Haines was the first woman to be named DD/CIA, and she served again under Brennan, who
proved time and again that he was no fan of
congressional oversight . Haines's attitude was similar to Brennan's: The CIA was going to
do what it was going to do, and she would make no apologies for it.
There were three controversial areas where Haines made a name for herself and for which she
should have to answer in a confirmation hearing: The CIA's refusal to release the Senate
Torture Report and the decision to hack into the Senate Intelligence Committee's computer
system; the CIA's decision to not punish those officers who carried out the hack and who killed
and tortured prisoners beyond even what the Justice Department said was permissible; and the
government's drone program, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians were killed.
Drone "pilots" launch an MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle for a raid in the Middle
East. (U.S. military)
Haines' Torture Cover-Up
You may recall that in December 2014, the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee released a
heavily redacted version of the executive summary of the committee's torture report, the
result of years of investigation using primary-source CIA documents. The executive summary was
about 525 pages long, just a fraction of the nearly 6,000-page complete report. And the release
of the 525 pages was the result of protracted negotiations between the committee and the
CIA.
In the end, the public heard a few details of what the CIA's prisoners underwent at secret
prisons around the world. But the full story was never made public. It likely never will be.
And that's thanks to Avril Haines.
Earlier that year, then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein took to the
Senate floor in a very unusual display and accused CIA Director Brennan of spying on her
committee's staff members. Specifically, Feinstein said that CIA officers had hacked into the
Senate's computers to see what it was that committee investigators were focusing on.
The hacking was unprecedented, and Feinstein referred it to the Justice Department for
prosecution. Attorney General Eric Holder, however, chose not to pursue the case. Brennan took
responsibility for ordering the hacking and he made no apologies for it. But his top aide, his
assistant, his legal adviser through the episode was Avril Haines. She has never explained her
decisions in support of the hack.
Furthermore, it was Haines who
overruled the CIA's inspector general and who decided not to punish those CIA officers who
hacked into the committee's computers, or those CIA officers who had gone over and above what
the Justice Department had authorized in its "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" program,
killing and maiming prisoners.
In the end, not only were no CIA officers punished, but the leaders and most prominent
officers in the torture program were promoted, in some cases into some of the most sought-after
positions in the CIA. I know this to be true. I worked for them.
Haines and Drones
One area in which Haines has not received a great deal of media coverage has been her role
in the drone
program . When Haines was the National Security Council's top lawyer, Brennan was the
keeper of the so-called kill list. It was Haines who took phone calls in the middle of the
night asking her for legal authority -- permission -- to launch missile attacks from drones.
She has never answered for her actions.
Now is the time for Americans to put down their collective foot on Biden's national security
appointees. Morell was utterly inappropriate for a senior position in the Biden national
security apparatus. Haines is, too. She has, very simply, committed crimes against humanity.
I'm under no illusions that Biden is a progressive or that he will differ greatly from previous
Democratic presidents on national security.
But I do believe that wrong is wrong. Avril Haines is exactly the kind of person we
don't want running the Intelligence Community. This is the moment for opponents of her
nomination to lobby senators on the Intelligence Committee. There's still time to defeat
her.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the
Obama administration under the Espionage Act -- a law designed to punish spies. He served 23
months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture
program.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
Cadogan Parry , December 30, 2020 at 21:51
The Intercept (26-June-2020) reported Haines' consulting for controversial data-mining
firm Palantir. Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel is also an investor in Carbyne, co-owned by
the late Jeffery Epstein and members of the Israeli political and intelligence establishment.
Ties between Palantir and Carbyne were cemented when it opened a center in Israel in 2013.
Hamutal Meridor, Palantir Israel's current head, served as senior director of Verint, with
deep ties to Unit 8200. Verint was previously implicated in being one of two companies hired
by the NSA to put a backdoor into US telecommunication systems and popular applications,
ensuring it's immediate access.
I urge all who have read this article to watch "Silenced", a James Spione film about John
Kiriakou, Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack -- whistleblowers who paid a very high price for
their honesty and integrity (hXXp://silencedfilm.com). Mr. Kiriakou gave up a lucrative job
and almost two years with his family for sharing the truth. His voice needs to be heard now .
Avril Haines' record of ignoring tremendous human rights violations makes it clear that she
should not hold a position of power in the intelligence community of the upcoming
administration.
Anonymot , December 29, 2020 at 19:31
Mr. Biden is a male clone of Mrs. Clinton who is a mouthpiece for the CIA/MIC/WallSt. She
is still the person who controls the Democrat National Committee (DNC) via Tom Perez and they
control and advise old Joe. Joe is merely the puppet at the end of the inner organization's
strings. They are all yes-men/women in the service of the shadow's mindset.
We will have another Obama puppet show.
After 4 years of the unique societal insanity ward that destroyed a maximum of the little
remaining democracy, including the directorship and key personnel of every Washington bureau,
there is little improvement to expect under the Biden Harris clone team. In the stupid
intelligence area that Trump damaged even more deeply than is publicly known, Brennan and
Clapper are back as Biden advisors.
Once again, the eagles have died, replaced by beagles sniffing out more war, more oil, and
more empire.
The past year began with the assassination of the Iranian military genius General Qasem
Soleimani by the United States, and it ended with the murder of the prominent scholar Mohsen
Fakhrizadeh by the Israelis. In early January, Iran, expecting another aggressive action from
the West, accidently shot down a Ukrainian civil aircraft that had inexplicably altered its
course over Tehran without request nor authorization. Around the same time, Turkey confirmed
the deployment of its military in Libya, beginning a new phase of confrontation in the region,
and Egypt responding with airstrikes and additional shows of force. The situation in Yemen
developed rapidly: taking advantage of the Sunni coalition's moral weakness, Ansar Allah
achieved significant progress in forcing the Saudis out of the country in many regions. The
state of warfare in northwestern Syria has significantly changed, transforming into the formal
delineation of zones of influence of Turkey and the Russian-Iranian-Syrian coalition. This
happened amid, and largely due to the weakening of U.S. influence in the region. Ankara is
steadily increasing its military presence in the areas under its responsibility and along the
contact line. It has taken measures to deter groups linked to Al-Qaeda and other radicals. As a
result, the situation in the region is stabilizing, which has allowed Turkey to increasingly
exert control over most of Greater Idlib.
ISIS cells remain active in the eastern and southern Syrian regions. Particular processes
are taking place in Quneitra and Daraa provinces, where Russian peace initiatives were
inconclusive by virtue of the direct destructive influence of Israel in these areas of Syria.
In turn, the assassination of Qasem Soleimaniin resulted in a sharp increase in the targeting
of American personnel, military and civil infrastructure in Iraq. The U.S. Army was forced to
regroup its forces, effectively abandoning a number of its military installations and
concentrating available forces at key bases. At the same time, Washington flatly rejected
demands from Baghdad for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and promised to respond with
full-fledged sanctions if Iraq continued to raise this issue. Afghanistan remains stable in its
instability. Disturbing news comes from Latin America. Confrontation between China and India
flared this year, resulting in sporadic border clashes. This situation seems far from over, as
both countries have reinforced their military posture along the disputed border. The aggressive
actions of the Trump administration against China deepen global crises, which has become
obvious not only to specialists but also to the general public. The relationship between the
collective West and the Russian Federation was re-enshrined in "the Cold War state", which
seems to have been resurrected once again.
The turbulence of the first quarter of 2020 was overshadowed by a new socio-political
process – the corona-crisis, the framework of which integrates various phenomena from the
Sars-Cov2 epidemic itself and the subsequent exacerbation of the global economic crisis. The
disclosure of substantial social differences that have accumulated in modern capitalist
society, lead to a series of incessant protests across the globe. The year 2020 was accompanied
by fierce clashes between protesters professing various causes and law enforcement forces in
numerous countries. Although on the surface these societal clashes with the state appear
disassociated, many share related root causes. A growing, immense wealth inequality, corruption
of government at all levels, a lack of any meaningful input into political decision making, and
the unmasking of massive censorship via big tech corporations and the main stream media all
played a part in igniting societal unrest.
In late 2019 and early 2020 there was little reason for optimistic projections for the near
future. However, hardly anyone could anticipate the number of crisis events and developments
that had taken place during this year. These phenomena affected every region of the world to
some extent.
Nevertheless, Middle East has remained the main source of instability, due to being an arena
where global and regional power interests intertwine and clash. The most important line of
confrontation is between US and Israel-led forces on the one hand, and Iran and its so called
Axis of Resistance. The opposing sides have been locked in an endless spiral of mutual
accusations, sanctions, military incidents, and proxy wars, and recently even crossed the
threshold into a limited exchange of strikes due to the worsening state of regional
confrontation. Russia and Turkey, the latter of which has been distancing itself from
Washington due to growing disagreements with "NATO partners" and changes in global trends, also
play an important role in the region without directly entering into the confrontation between
pro-Israel forces and Iran.
As in the recent years, Syria and Iraq remain the greatest hot-spots. The destruction of
ISIS as a terrorist state and the apparent killing of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did not
end its existence as a terror group. Many ISIS cells and supporting elements actively use
regional instability as a chance to preserve the Khalifate's legacy. They remain active mainly
along the Syria-Iraq border, and along the eastern bank of the Euphrates in Syria. Camps for
the temporary displaced and for the families and relatives of ISIS militants on the territory
controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in north-eastern Syria are also breeding
grounds for terrorist ideology. Remarkably, these regions are also where there is direct
presence of US forces, or, as in the case of SDF camps, presence of forces supported by the
US.
The fertile soil for radicalism also consists of the inability to reach a comprehensive
diplomatic solution that would end the Syrian conflict in a way acceptable to all parties.
Washington is not interesting in stabilizing Syria because even should Assad leave, it would
strengthen the Damascus government that would naturally be allied to Russia and Iran. Opposing
Iran and supporting Israel became the cornerstone of US policy during the Trump administration.
Consequently, Washington is supporting separatist sentiments of the Kurdish SDF leadership and
even allowed it to participate in the plunder of Syrian oil wells in US coalition zone of
control in which US firms linked to the Pentagon and US intelligence services are
participating. US intelligence also aids Israel in its information and psychological warfare
operations, as well as military strikes aimed at undermining Syria and Iranian forces located
in the country. In spite of propaganda victories, in practice Israeli efforts had limited
success in 2020 as Iran continued to strengthen its positions and military capabilities on its
ally's territory. Iran's success in establishing and supporting a land corridor linking
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iraq, plays an important role. Constant expansion of Iran's military
presence and infrastructure near the town of al-Bukamal, on the border of Iraq and Syria,
demonstrates the importance of the project to Tehran. Tel-Aviv claims that Iran is using that
corridor to equip pro-Iranian forces in southern Syria and Lebanon with modern weapons.
The Palestinian question is also an important one for Israel's leadership and its lobby in
Washington. The highly touted "deal of the century" turned out to be no more than an offer for
the Palestinians to abandon their struggle for statehood. As expected, this initiative did not
lead to a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Rather the opposite, it gave an
additional stimulus to Palestinian resistance to the demands that were being imposed. At the
same time, Trump administration scored a diplomatic success by forcing the UAE and Bahrain to
normalize their relations with Israel, and Saudi Arabia to make its collaboration with Israel
public. That was a historic victory for US-Israel policy in the Middle East. Public
rapprochement of Arab monarchies and Israel strengthened the positions of Iran as the only
country which not only declares itself as Palestine's and Islamic world's defender, but
actually puts words into practice. Saudi Arabia's leadership will particularly suffer in terms
of loss of popularity among its own population, already damaged by the failed war in Yemen and
intensifying confrontation with UAE, both of which are already using their neighbor's weakness
to lay a claim to leadership on the Arabian Peninsula.
The list of actors strengthening their positions in the Red Sea includes Russia. In late
2020 it became known that Russia reached an agreement with Sudan on establishing a naval
support facility which has every possibility to become a full-blown naval base. This foothold
will enable the Russian Navy to increase its presence on key maritime energy supply routes on
the Red Sea itself and in the area between Aden and Oman straits. For Russia, which has not had
naval infrastructure in that region since USSR's break-up, it is a significant diplomatic
breakthrough. For its part. Sudan's leadership apparently views Russia's military presence as a
security factor allowing it to balance potential harmful measures by the West.
During all of 2020, Moscow and Beijing continued collaboration on projects in Africa,
gradually pushing out traditional post-colonial powers in several key areas. The presence of
Russian military specialists in the Central African Republic where they assist the central
government in strengthening its forces, escalation of local conflicts, and ensuring the
security of Russian economic sectors, is now a universally known fact. Russian diplomacy and
specialists are also active in Libya, where UAE and Egypt which support Field Marshal Khaftar,
and Turkey which supports the Tripoli government, are clashing. Under the cover of declarations
calling for peace and stability, foreign actors are busily carving up Libya's energy resources.
For Egypt there's also the crucial matter of fighting terrorism and the presence of groups
affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood which Cairo sees as a direct threat to national
security.
The Sahel and the vicinity of Lake Chad remain areas where terror groups with links to
al-Qaeda and ISIS remain highly active. France's limited military mission in the Sahara-Sahel
region has been failure and could not ensure sufficient support for regional forces in order to
stabilize the situation. ISIS and Boko-Haram continue to spread chaos in the border areas
between Niger, Nigeria, Cameroun, and Chad. In spite of all the efforts by the region's
governments, terrorists continue to control sizable territories and represent a significant
threat to regional security. The renewed conflict in Ethiopia is a separate problem, in which
the federal government was drawn into a civil war against the National Front for the Liberation
of Tigray controlling that province. The ethno-feudal conflict between federal and regional
elites threatens to destabilize the entire country if it continues.
The explosive situation in Africa shows that post-colonial European powers and the "Global
Policeman" which dominated that continent for decades were not interested in addressing the
continent's actual problem. Foreign actors were mainly focused on extracting resources and
ensuring the interests of a narrow group of politicians and entities affiliated with foreign
capitals. Now they are forced to compete with the informal China-Russia bloc which will use a
different approach that may be a described as follows: Strengthening of regional stability to
protect investments in economic projects. Thus it is no surprise that influential actors are
gradually losing to new but more constructive forces.
Tensions within European countries have been on the rise during the past several years, due
to both the crisis of the contemporary economic paradigm and to specific regional problems such
as the migration crises and the failure of multiculturalism policies, with subsequent
radicalization of society.
Unpleasant surprises included several countries' health care and social protection networks'
inability to cope with the large number of COVID-19 patients. Entire systems of governance in a
number of European countries proved incapable of coping with rapidly developing crises. This is
true particularly for countries of southern Europe, such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece.
Among eastern European countries, Hungary's and Romania's economies were particularly badly
affected. At the same time, Poland's state institutions and economy showed considerable
resilience in the face of crisis. While the Federal Republic of Germany suffered considerable
economic damage in the second quarter of 2020, Merkel's government used the situation to inject
huge sums of liquidity into the economy, enhanced Germany's position within Europe, and
moreover Germany's health care and social protection institutions proved capable and
sufficiently resilient.
Coronavirus and subsequent social developments led to the emergence of the so-called "Macron
Doctrine" which amounts to an argument that EU must obtain strategic sovereignty. This is
consistent with the aims of a significant portion of German national elites. Nevertheless,
Berlin officially criticized Macron's statements and has shown willingness to enter into a
strategic partnership with Biden Administration's United States as a junior partner. However,
even FRG's current leadership understands the dangers of lack of strategic sovereignty in an
era of America's decline as the world policeman. Against the backdrop of a global economic
crisis, US-EU relations are ineluctably drifting from a state of partnership to one of
competition or even rivalry. In general, the first half of 2020 demonstrated the vital
necessity of further development of European institutions.
The second half of 2020 was marked by fierce mass protests in Germany, France, Great
Britain, and other European countries. The level of violence employed by both the protesters
and law enforcement was unprecedented and is not comparable to the level of violence seen
during protests in Russia, Belarus, and even Kirgizstan. Mainstream media did their best to
depreciate and conceal the scale of what was happening. If the situation continues to develop
in the same vein, there is every chance that in the future, a reality that can be described as
a digital concentration camp may form in Europe.
World media, for its part, paid particular attention to the situation in Belarus, where
protests have entered their fourth month following the August 9, 2020 presidential elections.
Belarusian protests have been characterized by their direction from outside the country and
choreographed nature. The command center of protest activities is officially located in Poland.
This fact is in and of itself unprecedented in Europe's contemporary history. Even during
Ukraine's Euromaidan, external forces formally refused to act as puppetmasters.
Belarus' genuinely existing socio-economic problems have led to a rift within society that
is now divided into two irreconcilable camps: proponents of reforms vs. adherents of the
current government. Law enforcement forces which are recruited from among President
Lukashenko's supporters, have acted forcefully and occasionally harshly. Still, the number of
casualties is far lower than, for example, in protests in France or United States.
Ukraine itself, where Western-backed "democratic forces" have already won, remains the main
point of instability in Eastern Europe. The Zelenskiy administration came to power under
slogans about the need to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine and rebuild the country. In
practice, the new government continued to pursue the policy aimed at maintaining military
tension in the region in the interests of its external sponsors and personal enrichment.
For the United States, 2020 turned out to be a watershed year for both domestic and foreign
policy. Events of this year were a reflection of Trump Administration's protectionist foreign
policy and a national-oriented approach in domestic and economic policy, which ensured an
intense clash with the majority of Washington Establishment acting in the interests of global
capital.
In addition to the unresolved traditional problems, America's problems were made worse by
two crises, COVID-19 spread and BLM movement protests. They ensured America's problems reached
a state of critical mass.
One can and should have a critical attitude toward President Trump's actions, but one should
not doubt the sincerity of his efforts to turn the slogan Make America Great Again into
reality. One should likewise not doubt that his successor will adhere to other values. Whether
it's Black Lives Matter or Make Global Moneymen Even Stronger, or Russia Must Be Destroyed, or
something even more exotic, it will not change the fact America we've known in the last half
century died in 2020. A telling sign of its death throes is the use of "orange revolution"
technologies developed against inconvenient political regimes. This demonstrated that currently
the United States is ruled not by national elites but by global investors to whom the interests
of ordinary Americans are alien.
This puts the terrifying consequences of COVID-19 in a new light. The disease has struck the
most vulnerable layers of US society. According to official statistics, United States has had
about 20 million cases and over 330,000 deaths. The vast majority are low-income inhabitants of
mega-cities. At the same time, the wealthiest Americans have greatly increased their wealth by
exploiting the unfolding crisis for their own personal benefit. The level of polarization of US
society has assumed frightening proportions. Conservatives against liberals, blacks against
whites, LGBT against traditionalists, everything that used to be within the realm of public
debate and peaceful protest has devolved into direct, often violent, clashes. One can observe
unprecedented levels of aggression and violence from all sides.
In foreign policy, United States continued to undermine the international security system
based on international treaties. There are now signs that one of the last legal bastions of
international security, the New START treaty, is under attack. US international behavior has
prompted criticism from NATO allies. There are growing differences of opinion on political
matters with France and economic ones with Germany. The dialogue with Eastern Mediterranean's
most powerful military actor Turkey periodically showed a sharp clash of interests.
Against that backdrop, United States spent 2020 continuously increasing its military
presence in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea basin. Additional US forces and assets were
deployed in direct proximity to Russia's borders. The number of offensive military exercises
under US leadership or with US participation has considerably increased.
In the Arctic, the United States is acting as a spoiler, unhappy with the current state of
affairs. It aims to extend its control over natural resources in the region, establish
permanent presence in other countries' exclusive economic zones (EEZ) through the use of the
so-called "freedom of navigation operations" (FONOPs), and continue to encircle Russia with
ballistic missile defense (BMD) sites and platforms.
In view of the urgent and evident US preparations to be able to fight and prevail in a war
against a nuclear adversary, by defeating the adversary's nuclear arsenal through the
combination of precision non-nuclear strikes, Arctic becomes a key region in this military
planning. The 2020 sortie by a force of US Navy BMD-capable AEGIS destroyers into the Barents
Sea, the first such mission since the end of the Cold War over two decades ago, shows the
interest United States has in projecting BMD capabilities into regions north of Russia's
coastline, where they might be able to effect boost-phase interceptions of Russian ballistic
missiles that would be launched in retaliatory strikes against the United States. US
operational planning for the Arctic in all likelihood resembles that for South China Sea, with
only a few corrections for climate.
In Latin America, the year of 2020 was marked by the intensification Washington efforts
aimed at undermining the political regimes that it considered to be in the opposition to the
existing world order.
Venezuela remained one of the main points of the US foreign policy agenda. During the entire
year, the government of Nicolas Maduro was experiencing an increasing sanction, political and
clandestine pressure. In May, Venezuelan security forces even neutralized a group of US
mercenaries that sneaked into the country to stage the coup in the interests of the
Washington-controlled opposition and its public leader Juan Guaido. However, despite the
recognition of Guaido as the president of Venezuela by the US and its allies, regime-change
attempts, and the deep economic crisis, the Maduro government survived.
This case demonstrated that the decisive leadership together having the support of a notable
part of the population and working links with alternative global centers of power could allow
any country to resist to globalists' attacks. The US leadership itself claims that instead of
surrendering, Venezuela turned itself into a foothold of its geopolitical opponents: China,
Russia, Iran and even Hezbollah. While this evaluation of the current situation in Venezuela is
at least partly a propaganda exaggeration to demonize the 'anti-democratic regime' of Maduro,
it highlights parts of the really existing situation.
The turbulence in Bolivia ended in a similar manner, when the right wing government that
gained power as a result of the coup in 2019 demonstrated its inability to rule the country and
lost power in 2020. The expelled president, Evo Morales, returned to the country and the
Movement for Socialism secured their dominant position in Bolivia thanks to the wide-scale
support from the indigenous population. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that these developments in
Venezuela and Bolivia would allow to reverse the general trend towards the destabilization in
South America.
The regional economic and social turbulence is strengthened by the high level of organized
crime and the developing global crisis that sharpened the existing contradictions among key
global and regional players. This creates conditions for the intensification of existing
conflicts. For example, the peace process between the FARC and the federal government is on the
brink of the collapse in Colombia. Local sources and media accuse the government and affiliated
militias of detentions and killings of leaders of local communities and former FARC members in
violation of the existing peace agreement. This violence undermine the fragile peace process
and sets conditions for the resumption of the armed struggle by FARC and its supporters. Mexico
remains the hub for illegal migration, drug and weapon trafficking just on the border with the
United States. Large parts of the country are in the state of chaos and are in fact controlled
by violent drug cartels and their mercenaries. Brazil is in the permanent state of political
and economic crisis amid the rise of street crime.
These negative tendencies affect almost all states of the region. The deepening global
economic crisis and the coronavirus panic add oil to the flame of instability.
Countries of South America are not the only one suffering from the crisis. It also shapes
relations between global powers. Outcomes of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and the global
economic crisis contributed to the hardening of the standoff between the United States and
China.
Washington and Beijing have insoluble contradictions. The main of them is that China has
been slowly but steadily winning the race for the economic and technological dominance
simultaneously boosting own military capabilities to defend the victory in the case of a
military escalation. The sanction, tariff and diplomatic pressure campaign launched by the
White House on China since the very start of the Trump Presidency is a result of the
understanding of these contradictions by the Trump administration and its efforts to guarantee
the leading US position in the face of the global economic recession. The US posture towards
the South China Sea issues, the political situation in Hong Kong, human rights issues in
Xinjiang, the unprecedented weapon sales to Taiwan, the support of the militarization of Japan
and many other questions is a part of the ongoing standoff. Summing up, Washington has been
seeking to isolate China through a network of local military alliances and contain its economic
expansion through sanction, propaganda and clandestine operations.
The contradictions between Beijing and Washington regarding North Korea and its nuclear and
ballistic missile programs are a part of the same chain of events. Despite the public rhetoric,
the United States is not interested in the full settlement of the Korea conflict. Such a
scenario that may include the reunion of the North and South will remove the formal
justification of the US military buildup. This is why the White House opted to not fulfill its
part of the deal with the North once again assuring the North Korean leadership that its
decision to develop its nuclear and missile programs and further.
Statements of Chinese diplomats and top official demonstrate that Beijing fully understands
the position of Washington. At the same time, China has proven that it is not going to abandon
its policies aimed at gaining the position of the main leading power in the post-unipolar
world. Therefore, the conflict between the sides will continue escalating in the coming years
regardless the administration in the White House and the composition of the Senate and
Congress. Joe Biden and forces behind his rigged victory in the presidential election will
likely turn back from Trump's national-oriented economic policy and 'normalize' relations with
China once again reconsidering Russia as Enemy #1. This will not help to remove the insoluble
contradictions with China and reverse the trend towards the confrontation. However, the Biden
administration with help from mainstream media will likely succeed in hiding this fact from the
public by fueling the time-honored anti-Russian hysteria.
As to Russia itself, it ended the year of 2020 in its ordinary manner for the recent years:
successful and relatively successful foreign policy actions amid the complicated economic,
social and political situation inside the country. The sanction pressure, coronavirus-related
restrictions and the global economic crisis slowed down the Russian economy and contributed to
the dissatisfaction of the population with internal economic and social policies of the
government. The crisis was also used by external actors that carried out a series of
provocations and propaganda campaigns aimed at undermining the stability in the country ahead
of the legislative election scheduled for September 2021. The trend on the increase of sanction
pressure, including tapering large infrastructure projects like the Nord Stream 2, and
expansion of public and clandestine destabilization efforts inside Russia was visible during
the entire year and will likely increase in 2021. In the event of success, these efforts will
not only reverse Russian foreign policy achievements of the previous years, but could also put
in danger the existence of the Russian statehood in the current format.
Among the important foreign policy developments of 2020 underreported by mainstream media is
the agreement on the creation of a Russian naval facility on the coast of the Red Sea in Sudan.
If this project is fully implemented, this will contribute to the rapid growth of Russian
influence in Africa. Russian naval forces will also be able to increase their presence in the
Red Sea and in the area between the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Oman. Both of these areas are
the core of the current maritime energy supply routes. The new base will also serve as a
foothold of Russia in the case of a standoff with naval forces of NATO member states that
actively use their military infrastructure in Djibouti to project power in the region. It is
expected that the United States (regardless of the administration in the White House) will try
to prevent the Russian expansion in the region at any cost. For an active foreign policy of
Russia, the creation of the naval facility in Sudan surpasses all public and clandestine
actions in Libya in recent years. From the point of view of protecting Russian national
interests in the Global Oceans, this step is even more important than the creation of the
permanent air and naval bases in Syria.
As well as its counterparts in Washington and Beijing, Moscow contributes notable efforts to
the modernization of its military capabilities, with special attention to the strategic nuclear
forces and hypersonic weapons. The Russians see their ability to inflict unacceptable damage on
a potential enemy among the key factors preventing a full-scale military aggression against
them from NATO. The United Sates, China and Russia are in fact now involved in the hypersonic
weapon race that also includes the development of means and measures to counter a potential
strike with hypersonic weapons.
The new war in Nagorno-Karabakh became an important factor shaping the balance of power in
the South Caucasus. The Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc achieved a sweeping victory over Armenian
forces and only the involvement of the Russian diplomacy the further deployment of the
peacekeepers allowed to put an end to the violence and rescue the vestiges of the
self-proclaimed Armenian Republic of Artsakh. Russia successfully played a role of mediator and
officially established a military presence on the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan for the
next 5 years. The new Karabakh war also gave an additional impulse in the Turkish-Azerbaijani
economic and military cooperation, while the pro-Western regime in Armenia that expectedly led
the Armenian nation to the tragedy is balancing on the brink of collapse.
The Central Asia traditionally remained one of the areas of instability around the world
with the permanent threat of militancy and humanitarian crisis. Nonetheless, despite forecasts
of some analysis, the year of 2020 did not become the year of the creation of ISIS' Caliphate
2.0 in the region. An important role in preventing this was played by the Taliban that
additionally to securing its military victories over the US-led coalition and the US-backed
Kabul government, was fiercely fighting ISIS cells appearing in Afghanistan. The Taliban, which
controls a large part of Afghanistan, was also legalized on the international scene by direct
talks with the United States. The role of the Taliban will grow and further with the reduction
of the US military presence.
While some media already branded the year of 2020 as one of the worst in the modern history,
there are no indications that the year of 2021 will be any brighter or the global crises and
regional instability will magically disappear by themselves. Instead, most likely 2020 was just
a prelude for the upcoming global shocks and the acute standoff for markets and resources in
the environment of censorship, legalized total surveillance, violations of human rights under
'democratic' and 'social' slogans' and proxy wars.
The instability in Europe will likely be fueled by the increasing cultural-civilizational
conflict and the new wave of newcomers that have acute ideological and cultural differences
with the European civilization. The influx of newcomers is expected due to demographic factors
and the complicated security, social situation in the Middle East and Africa. Europe will
likely try to deal with the influx of newcomers by introducing new movement and border
restrictions under the brand of fighting coronavirus. Nonetheless, the expected growth of the
migration pressure will likely contribute to the negative tendencies that could blow up Europe
from inside.
The collapse of the international security system, including key treaties limiting the
development and deployment of strategic weapons, indicates that the new detente on the global
scene will remain an improbable scenario. Instead, the world will likely move further towards
the escalation scenario as at least a part of the current global leadership considers a large
war a useful tool to overcome the economic crisis and capture new markets. Russia, with its
large territories, rich resources, a relatively low population, seems to be a worthwhile
target. At the same time, China will likely exploit the escalating conflict between Moscow and
the US-led bloc to even further increase its global positions. In these conditions, many will
depend on the new global order and main alliances within it that are appearing from the
collapsing unipolar system. The United States has already lost its unconditional dominant role
on the international scene, but the so-called multipolar world order has not appeared yet. The
format of this new multipolar world will likely have a critical impact on the further
developments around the globe and positions of key players involved in the never-ending Big
Game.
* * *
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It sure looks like Biden will take over the White House one way or another, and while Trump
and his supporters might still try a few things, the political correlation of forces inside the
US ruling classes is clearly against Trump. As for the "deplorables" – they have been
neutralized by stealing the election. Which means that Russia will soon face the most rabidly
russophobic gang of messianic Neocons in history. So what can the world expect next?
The Dems are not meaningfully different from the Republicans. True, the Dems blame Russia
for everything, while the Republicans blame China. Not much of a difference here: it is all
about hate and scapegoating. And both of these factions of the oligarchic Uniparty like to
blame Iran for, well, being located in the "wrong" part of the world, the Middle-East, which
all US politicians (and not to mention their Israeli masters) want to control. As for the
Israel Lobby, it has been trying to trigger a US attack on Iran for many decades. Recent US
moves of key personnel and bombers might indicate that discussions of an attack on Iran are
still very much taking place.
I don't believe that these fundamental directions in US foreign policy will change much.
Why?
Primarily because the AngloZionist Empire and even the US as we knew them are basically
dead, which means that irrespective of who is in control of the US, the objective
means/capabilities of the Empire and the US will remain the same . In other words, when
Biden promises to show Russia how tough and mighty he will be, he will not have any more
capabilities to threaten Russia with than Trump had.
So the first thing we can expect is simply "more of the same".
Now, in the Empire of
Illusions which the United States has become, appearances matter much more than
facts . US politicians have two quasi-reflexive reactions to any problem: use violence or
throw money at it. Of course, using violence against Russia (or China and Iran) would be
extremely dangerous. So throwing money at a problem is the way chosen by the US political
elites (see here for the, rather
boring, details).
A lot of that money will also be spent on ideological nonsense like supporting trans-gender
rights in Africa, woke-awareness in the Baltic, "critical race theory" in Japan (good luck with
that!), "Holocaust studies" in Poland and the like.
What will happen next is that this money will be spread amongst a pretty large US and EU
bureaucracy (and its subcontractors) to all sorts of political PR actions aimed at presenting
modern Russia as "Putin's Mordor" whose "Nazguls" (scary GRU and/or SVR and/or FSB agents) run
around the planet looking for more targets to infect with the totally ineffective, but still
scary, "Novichok". In the past, much of that money was spent inside Russia by all sorts of
CIA-run NGOs and much of it was also spent on various propaganda efforts outside Russia. Again,
this will not change, if anything, expect even more money poured into what are in reality
strategic PSYOP operations.
The sad truth is that US politicians know very little about Russia, a country which they
hate and fear, but not a country they even begin to understand. In this case, what US
politicians will not realize is that Russia herself has changed a great deal in the past years:
many new laws and regulation (see machine translated example
here ) were adopted which, in essence, "plugged" many political "holes" in the Russian
legislation which allowed AngloZionist organizations to have a great deal of influence in
Russia. As a result of these reforms, it has become far more difficult for western run NGOs to
influence the Russian political scene.
As a direct result of these new rules, I expect that a higher ratio of money will stay
allocated to activities situated in the West and less for Russian-based activities. In plain
English, this means that more US printed money will be spent on completely useless activities.
The only people benefitting from this will be the entire class of pseudo "Russia experts" whose
only true expertise is on how to secure grant money. They will produce even more conferences
and papers which nobody will care about, but which will allow the US Neocons and their deep
state to show how "Biden is firm with Russia". The typical US cocktail of waste, mismanagement
and fraud (and let's not forget good old corruption!).
Russia's response to that will also be "more of the same": Russian politicians will continue
to express their disgust with their western "partners" (FYI – when Russians speak of
"partners" it is understood by all that they mean this only sarcastically). Foreign Minister Lavrov and one of his
deputies have recently made statements basically indicating that Russia will not seek any
(!) form of dialog with the West, because, frankly, it is pretty clear to them that this is a
total waste of time: Russia has nobody in the West to speak to: the only country with real
agency (albeit severely limited by its subordination to Israel) would be the US, all the other
countries of the West are really colonies and/or protectorates with no sovereignty at all.
What about all the many military provocations the Empire is organizing all around Russia? Do
they concern Russia leaders or not?
Well, no and yes.
In purely military terms, US/NATO military capabilities are no real threat to Russia whose
military is much smaller, but also much more capable than the western ones. Why? Simply because
building a truly powerful military has been a core strategic priority for the Kremlin who
needed a military actually capable of a) deterring the West from attacking Russia and b)
defeating the West should deterrence fail. In sharp contrast, western militaries have not been
training for real wars for decades already: most of what the US/NATO do is using western
militaries for all sorts of propaganda purposes (like "sending messages" or "showing
determination" etc.) and for counter-insurgency operations, not for fighting a real, major,
wars.
Right now the Russian military is much more modern (about 80% of new gear on average across
all military branches and services!) and much better trained for real combat operations. In
sharp contrast, the US MIC is heavy on hot air (Space Force! Hypersonic missiles! Artificial
Intelligence!) and short on any actually deployed and engageable weapon systems. Away from the
propaganda machine (aka "corporate legacy ziomedia"), the reality is that the West is about
1.5-2 decades behind Russia in most critical military technologies.
Last, but not least, wars are not won by machines, computers or fancy engineering: they are
won by soldiers, real men, who know what they are defending and why. The contrast between the
typical Russian soldier (in any service or branch of the military) and his western counterpart
could not be greater than it is today. Simply put: no western country can boast that it has
soldiers like Russia has and, again, I don't mean the "super dooper" elite Spetsnaz operators,
I am talking about your very average, garden variety, infantry soldier, like the ones who saved
Russia in the Chechen conflict in spite of operating in truly horrible and totally chaotic
circumstances. These guys might not look like much, but as soldiers they are the kind every
commander dreams about.
All this is to say that Russians have nothing to fear from all the western sabre-rattling,
except maybe one thing: the rogue officer, on either side, who would suddenly decide to open
fire (for whatever reason) thereby creating a situation which could escalate into a full-scale
war very rapidly.
The other thing which is objectively bad for Russia is the number of key treaties the US has
now withdrawn from: these treaties are most needed, especially as confidence building measures.
Right now there are very few treaties left and that means that the US is desperate to try to
suck Russia into an arms race.
This won't work.
Why?
Putin himself explained it very well when he recently said that while the West throws huge
sums of money at any problem, Russia allocates brains, not money. According to Putin, it is the
use of brains, rather than wasting money, which allowed Russia to develop all the weapon
systems mentioned by Putin for the first time in 2018. This made it possible for Russia to get
ahead by a decade or more, while using only a small fraction of the kind of money the US, and
other western countries, are allocating on "defense" (while not being threatened by anybody!).
In the competition between the US money printing press and the Russian brains, you can be sure
that the latter one will always prevail.
The bottom line is this: the US can spend many hundred billion dollars on " countering
Russian (or Chinese) influence ", but this will do absolutely nothing to help the objective
circumstances and capabilities of the Empire or the US.
So the real question is what will change on the level below direct military
confrontation.
In a recent press conference, Putin mentioned something very interesting about the outgoing
Trump administration. He said:
"The current administration introduced new sanctions against Russia 46 times –
against our legal entities and economic operators. Forty-six times – this has never
ever happened before. But at the same time, bilateral trade grew by 30 percent over the
previous year, oddly enough, even despite those restrictions."
So if the putatively pro-Russian Trump Administration sanctioned Russia 46 times, it is
normal for the Russians to look at Biden with equanimity or even a resigned fatalism: " the
West has always hated us, the West still hates us and the West will always hate us "
– this truism is all but unanimously accepted amongst Russian politicians.
Still, we can count on Biden and Harris to try to show how "tough" they are on Russia and
Putin: they will show their prowess mostly by demanding that their NATO/EU colonies and
protectorates continue "send
messages" to Russia and show their "unity" and "solidarity" with each other, mostly by
parroting self-evidently nonsensical Anglo and German propaganda. Will the bilateral trade
between Russia and the US continue to grow? Probably not as the list of corporations and
agencies the US declares to be under sanctions will only grow further. But never say never,
especially with the comprehensively hypocritical Dems
How about the kind of self-evidently ridiculous stories about Russians using (a clearly
ineffective) combat biological agent like the so-called "Novichok", trying to kill irrelevant
bloggers and failing to do so, or some variation on "animal Assad" "poisoning his own people"?
Will that nonsense also continue? Probably, mainly simply because this is something which the
Empire has demonstratively proved that it has the ability to do. So why not continue,
especially with a press corps willing to parrot even the most ridiculous nonsense.
The bottom line is this: to get a sense of what any actor could do next, one always has to
multiply intentions by capabilities. If there is one thing which the outgoing Maga
Administration has shown, is that its declared intentions and actual capabilities are not at
all commensurate: hence the long list of countries Trump threatened, but never meaningfully
attacked. "Biden" (and I use this term very loosely, meaning "Biden and his real handlers")
will inherit the very same geostrategic toolkit Trump had at his disposal for four years and
which did not make it possible for him to effectively flex muscles, not even against weak and
nearby Venezuela! We can be pretty sure that the rhetoric about Russia will get even more
hate-filled and paranoid. Petty harassment (such as arrest of nationals, closures of offices,
expulsion from various international events, etc.) will also continue, not so much because they
work, but because a lot of people depend on these for their salary.
How likely is a shooting war? In my personal opinion, not very likely at all. I think that
the folks at the Pentagon are mostly aware of the real world out there, and they probably
recognize that the US armed forces are in no condition to fight any halfway capable
opponent.
How likely is it that the US will use a protectorate like the Ukraine or Georgia to reignite
another local war? It is not impossible, especially since the US did support SBU infiltration
of terrorists into Russia. Keep in mind that the sole goal of such (a, frankly, suicidal)
attack would be to provoke Russia into a military response, not to actually achieve anything
else. The main problem here is that the regular armed forces of the Ukraine and Georgia are in
no condition to fight, and that the (US letter soup controlled) Ukrainian and Georgian special
services have already tried this many times, and so far without success, mainly because, unlike
all the western countries, Russia has the actual means to lock her borders when needed.
What about the reported plan to destabilize Russia by creating conflicts all along her
periphery?
It would take way too long for me here to describe what is taking place in each of these
countries right now, but I will offer just the following bullet points:
Southern Military District or
the 58th
Combined Arms Army in the region). Those who believe that Turkey strengthened its
position in the region simply do not understand the outcome of the recent war (especially the
very interesting drone war which showed that while Armenia could not deal with them, Russian
EW literally destroyed Turkish drones in mid-air (this also happened in Syria, by the way).
Central Asia is an inherently unstable region, mainly because these countries never succeeded
in effectively transitioning from the Soviet period to full independence. And yes, the US has
a great deal of influence in this region. But only Russia can provide effective security
guarantees to the leaders of Central Asia, they all know that. Finally, Kazakhstan plays an
important "buffer" role for Russia,
putting distance between her and her chronically unstable southern neighbors . In the Far
East, Russia and China are enjoying a long honeymoon in which their already very deep
relationship only gets deeper and their collaboration stronger (in spite of western PSYOPs
trying to scare Russians about how China wants to take Siberia, and other silly fairy tales).
Russia is now even supplying key strategic defense technologies to China. Last, but most
certainly not least, Russia has total superiority in the Arctic, where the West is many
decades behind Russia. In fact, Russia is massively expanding her capabilities (civilian and
military) in the Russian north, which will give her even more weight on our planet's very
rich north.
Now ask yourself: do you see any of that changing in the next 4 years, even assuming a
rabidly hostile Biden Administration? I sure don't.
Conclusion:
Yes, the political atmosphere between Russia and the Empire will get worse. Most of the
"action" will take place in the public media space. The quasi simultaneous collapse of the
Anglo-Zionist Empire and the United States (at least as we knew them before the election steal)
will not give much time or energy to western leaders to pursue policies which have already
failed in the past and for which they simply do not have the means.
Trump or Biden was never a meaningful choice for Russia (only the Russian court jester
Zhirinovskii thought otherwise). It's not much of a choice today either. The most likely
consequence of these collapses will be that the world will split in roughly two sections:
"Section A" which will include all the countries of the "collective West" and which will be
busy trying to survive a crisis which has only begun and "Section B": the rest of the world,
which will try hard to decouple itself from the sinking West and try to develop itself in this
rather unstable environment.
Also, many Russians remember the gerontocracy which ruled in the last years of the USSR and
they know how such gerontocracies act (make no difference if the country is ruled by a
Chernenko or a Biden – such rulers are always weak and clueless).
i remember the late 80's when ronald reagan was declared a genius for single handedly
spending the ussr into oblivion. when the reagan administration took over (with a little help
from daddy bush working a deal with the iranians to hold on to the hostages until after the
election) the national debt was $900,000,000,000. when he left office he had tripled that, a
small price to pay for taking down the evil empire, they told me. in the 90's clinton and his
best friend newt gingrich magically balanced the budget (by raiding the social security trust
fund and leaving a rubber iou behind). when the skull and bones division of the neocons
seized power the debt was $6,000,000,000,000. twenty years and several wars later we were at
$23,000,000,000,000. we are about to reach $30,000,000,000,000 after a bad flu season this
year. our military is exhausted, our equipment is so out dated and worn it isn't worth
bringing back, (if we ever leave the middle east), the russians and chinese are decades ahead
in technological terms. now tell me, who spent who into oblivion?
Russia remains vulnerable to Western efforts at political subversion. And Democrats excel
at this. Remember, it was during the presidency of Barack Obama when Putin faced toughest
challenge to his rule. I'm talking, of course, about Bolotnaya protests.
These days millions of Russian kids watch political videos, promoted by Youtube, where
they are being taught, that their country sucks and there is no hope for their lives
whatsoever unless they overthrow Putin. Russian politicians do not use the internet and
appear completely oblivious to this danger. They're a bit like Saker to be honest: obsessed
with their tank divisions and rockets, dinosaurs preparing for yesterday's war. They risk
finding themselves in Lukashenka's position.
Excellent article. Even the US Marine Corps is cutting infantry battalions to fund
"information groups". A new video addresses this anti-Russian propaganda:
Russia doesn't have the working bodies to be a world hegemon.
CCP China does.
The Russian workers (Moscow, Cyprus) I've seen were indolent compared to Chinese.
Infiltration? Even here, the CCP leaning faction is large.
China appears to be Biden's highest bidder, and largest "investor", so far
Either Trump drops the hammer before Jan 20, or we're fucked on China.
Probably so's Russia, on a longer schedule.
Warsaw Pact was canclled –but NATO grew and grew and grew after Bush stating " We
will never expand–honest" and then 911 arrived and Firechief exclaimng "We decided to
PULL IT !" but othing had struck it and of course WMD in Iraq -- –
It's improbable that there would be any direct military clash somewhere even though
there's always the possibility of a mistake leading to a crisis. The US uses color
revolutions, proxy wars, subversion, bribery, economic warfare, sanctions and varying forms
of sabotage. It's been pretty successful so far with this all over the world but Russia is
too big and self-sufficient to be forced to capitulate.
rhetoric about Russia will get even more hate-filled and paranoid
The US propaganda system always needs a boogeyman to scare the public with. Promotion of
fear is an inherent part of the American system of engineering consent.
far more difficult for western run NGOs to influence the Russian political scene.
Big tech collusion in enforcing censorship here in the US has become heavy-handed and
omnipresent. But one supposes there'll be complaints about lack of free speech in Russia.
Trump was verbally belligerent but stopped short of starting any new wars, placating the
establishment with imposing sanctions, assassinating Soleimani, etc. Biden is a stupid,
reckless incompetent who could easily stumble us into conflicts we can't handle. But then, it
would be his handlers who actually pull the strings and they seem to be as cretinous as
him.
As for the "deplorables" – they have been neutralized by stealing the
election.
Neutralized? No way José, the deplorables are mad as hornets about the stolen
election and are just getting started. And they have their Second Amendment assets, and it's
not even January 20th yet.
Do you see the 'YouTube' kids starting a revolution, storming the Kremlin, and the
'organs' watching them with arms crossed from the side? Wouldn't they rather send them to
develop the Arctic?
Unlike the 80s there is no official ideological differences except that Russia's ideology
of national sovereignty, family and strength is in assendence while the US Marxist one of
globo homo anti white hate thyself BLM is openly ridiculed by the quiet majority.
It is about the US that people openly talk about being on the verge of civil war not
Russia these days.
Most Russians know it's a fight against subjugation there is no other way, defend itself
or get eaten.
Besides under the Harris presidency in a year or two it will be white Americans who will
be told officially they suck.
These days millions of Russian kids watch political videos, promoted by Youtube, where
they are being taught, that their country sucks and there is no hope for their lives
whatsoever unless they overthrow Putin
The cleverest trick the Devil ever invented was to convince young (white) people that
Globohomo, Blacks Lives Matter and Immigration are somehow a benefit to them and that they
should fight for their own displacement
Biden has a lot of compromat and Harris is basically akin to a wigger in a black gang, who
will need to prove her devotion when she takes the reigns after Biden.
Both will be like putty in their handler's hands.
Politicians start wars to make the public look away from domestic or personal crises.
Biden already has his corruption probe, and whilst Trump made many errors, he did not fall
for the trap of starting a major foreign policy disaster for personal political gain.
Both Biden and Harris would do that in a heartbeat. So whether that would be Iran or
Ukraine, or pushing Taiwan too far, I'm pretty confident a war will start.
I always said with Trump the odd's are 80% civil war, 10% world war, 10% peace, whilst
Biden is around 50% civil war, 45% world war, 5% peace.
Nice display of your brainwashedness, from western propaganda.
You didn't follow Saker's link to the machine translated example , did you?
One would need a bit more than broad, completely unsubstantiated claims by you that
Russian kids in large numbers actually believe those YT lies and similar.
And Lukashenko isn't doing so bad, currently.
@Felix
Keverich ng "dusty, dirty" -- a term used in 2nd-millennium BCE texts throughout the
Fertile Crescent for people variously described as rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries,
bowmen, servants, slaves, and laborers"(Wikipedia).
The 2001 paper "Who are the Hîabiru of the Amarna Letters?" by retired professor
(Andrews University) S. Douglas Waterhouse (2001) joined a lot of dots for me. A good stumble
on, thanks, Guyénot and others who posted relevant comments etc. (A copy can be found
here: https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/jats/vol12/iss1/3/
)
@Carlos22
ashion. Yet that is what the US empire wants. It is hard to imagine the opportunity for
satire could be greater.
Here is some preliminary ideas
https://www.youtube.com/embed/noIWQFMskG0?feature=oembed
I also did a satire on Bellingcat called Bellingbat that examines some of the same issues. Of
course there is a fair amount of nudity involved as that is the US way when considering if
powerful females can be trusted. Unlike Lautrec I was never allowed into the ballerina's
dressing rooms even though I was a recognized well respected painter and would seek death
should I betray a slack breast or two.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/8Z9pggzVJ68?feature=oembed
Cheers all and have a happy new year.
"Last, but not least, wars are not won by machines, computers or fancy engineering: they
are won by soldiers, real men, who know what they are defending and why."
Azerbaijan just ate Putin's lunch by crushing Armenia's entire AA systems and their piece
by piece destruction of hundreds of T90's and all the Armenian artillery. Azerbaijan
accomplished this through Israeli military technology, likely including remote drone piloting
services.
Saker wants to pretend that it is the US that has Israel on a leash, but it is clearly the
other way around. Israel has already hoovered up all of the US electronics and military
patents and clearly any other patents that would be useful in a war, especially a war for
Eretz Israel.
Azerbaijan took out all the Armenian armor and air defenses with Israeli drones like the
Hovering Artillery Drones and Suicide drones. The amount of live film is staggering, and the
T90's were picked off like sparrows sitting on an electric wire. Some of the drones
Azerbaijan used were Turkish, but we can be certain that the technology is either licensed
from Israel or Israel's gollum the JEWSA.
Added to this complete mastery of the traditional battlespace is the complete Heeb control
over the bio-warfare space. Whether Putin allowed Russia to be circumcised while he played
along to the Rabbi's Covid rituals, or whether Putin is playing it safe and vaccinating and
closing its borders pre-emtively is irrellevant. Russia is being bullied like a lone teenage
Swedish boy at muslim majority high school in Malmo.
And of course, Russia still has a Rothschild controlled Central Bank too.
So Putin, just like Biden, is going to do exactly what his Chabad Lubbovitz Rabbi's tell
him he has to do. Both are Israel's Shabbez Bitches.
@Felix
Keverich everyone knows that the US and England hate Russia and Putin, thus whatever
these 2 countries claim about either is dismissed with a laugh. As for Skripal (where are
they now? dead?), Navalny, novichok, Assad gassing his own people ..a child can see through
this stuff. Sorry!
Young people in Russia watching US propaganda against their country you honestly think
they are going to agree with the country (USA) that has targeted them with missiles and
nuclear bombs for 70 years? Do you think we can't see the corruption and stupidity?
But I'm wasting my time here. Facts, logic, is lost on a person so naive and brainwashedas
yourself.
he's pretending to be Russian intelligent, which I doubt – not his name nor his
thoughts seem to be Russian.
He's right only in one thing – there's quite a big part of our society who think that
Putin (despite his obvious achievements) has to go. And those aren't liberasts, but patriots.
Putin is very deep in oligarchy swamp and he achieved max he could, i'm afraid.
Now he's just trying to keep the status quo.
I believe you have a serious problem. When the stork brought you, it must have dropped you
on your head. Your comment is sheer nonsense. Do you really believe the shit you have written
or do you have a vulgar desire for "replies".
You are either an idiot or an ass wash douche troll. Comment intelligently or not at all
and for heavens sake, seek medical attention for the lump on your head ( and the one inside
it as well)
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own drama . And while you're
studying that drama -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other
new dramas , which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're
drama's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Dont be so hard on Felix the cat. He has been hiding under his mother;s bed surrounded by
rolls of toilet paper and wearing a mask since March 2020. Self imposed solitary confinement
does things to a person more so one who was retarded at birth.
Once he has his operation to remove his head from his ass his IQ should increase by 100%
.from 2 to 4 !
Patrick Armstrong spent 30 years as an analyst for the Canadian government, specializing
in first the USSR and then Russia. He was a Political Counselor in the Canadian Embassy in
Moscow from 1993 to 1996. Given the torrent of anti-Russian sentiment in the West, it's
unlikely Moscow would get a fair hearing in legal proceedings overseen by Western courts. And
recent hints suggest three decades of engagement may be coming to an end.
A Dutch court has just reversed another earlier Dutch court ruling that reversed an even
earlier Dutch court ruling. Russia had been sued by a company representing the shareholders of
erstwhile oil giant Yukos. The latest iteration, reversing the reversal and taking us back to
the original judgment, demands that Russia pay $50 billion to its shareholders. Yukos was
nationalized in the early 2000s, on the grounds of failure to pay tax arrears after the arrest
of its CEO for tax evasion.
So, what should Moscow do? It has appealed, but perhaps it should think about whether it
still wants to play the game.
Let's look at the behavior of other Dutch courts. In 2001, Slobodan Milošević
appeared at the Hague charged with crimes against humanity, genocide – the full package.
And, quite rightly, said most Westerners, because had not their media already named him the
"butcher of the Balkans" ?
In 2016, the International Court of Justice ruled that maybe he hadn't been as guilty as
first assumed. But it was too late: Milošević had died in his prison cell 10 years
before, with the trial still rolling on.
The Netherlands is also in charge of the investigation into the destruction of the MH-17
flight over Ukraine in 2014. Again, we had immediate Western news assertions that Putin and
Russia were responsible, and the personal assurance of former Secretary of State John Kerry
that US intelligence resources had watched the whole thing unfold. And it's been a fact-free
Gish gallop ever since.
After several investigations, suspiciously dependent on Ukrainian intelligence sources,
social media, and the US-government funded agency Bellingcat, with no one asking where the
"we saw it" was, the trial of four individuals began in March 2020 and has been
proceeding at the same comfortable pace as the Milošević trial.
In 2018, Ukraine, without the least suspicion of a chain of evidence, produced some parts it
claimed were from the surface-to-air missile said to have shot the plane down. The parts had
numbers, numbers can be traced, and the missile factory traced them. They were parts of a
missile shipped to an anti-aircraft unit in the west of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
in December 1986.
The judges decided that the documents were irrelevant because they "may say something
about where the missile was between [19]86 and 91, but they say nothing about where the missile
was in July 2014." Presumably, a daring raid from Donetsk to an ammo dump in Western
Ukraine had happened, which nobody noticed. So, one might ask what Russia can expect from any
trial held in the Netherlands except an interminable process until the defendant dies.
Russians might then turn their attention to the practice of the rule of law in other Western
countries today. Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, is approaching her third year
of house arrest in Canada. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been in a British prison with
one of the most severe regimes for the past 18 months and is approaching the second year of his
extradition hearing. Maria Butina, convicted in 2018 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent
of Russia, was in a US prison for five months, often in solitary confinement, on very
questionable charges. Senior French executive Frédéric Pierucci arrested in 2013
and later imprisoned in a US maximum-security facility for unwittingly breaching American
bribery laws. Or the US's open-ended Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act
– a federal law that, in 2017, imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Or the
huge fine imposed on Russia's Gazprom energy corporation in a Polish court just last month over
the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Or they might consider that Venezuela stored its national gold
reserves in London for safekeeping but can't have it back (although that judgment has recently
been reversed – for now). Or that the European Union extended its sanctions on Russia
because it couldn't prove its innocence of the latest accusation over Ukraine. Russian
observers might be forgiven if they regarded this as not rule of law but war of law –
lawfare.
Moscow has generally played the game and accepted Western court rulings and, sometimes,
they've gone its way: for example, the European Court of Human Rights' ruling of 2011 that the
case against Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky had not been politically motivated. But, given
the relentless cascade of accusations – redoubled in the past five years – perhaps
Moscow should reconsider, on the grounds that Western 'justice' will never give it a fair
shake.
Will it do so? Well, there have been some hints. At a conference of the Valdai Discussion
Club think tank last month, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia no longer looked to
Western Europe as an example and was not going to be its vassal. The constitution was recently
amended to make Russian law primary. These would appear to be clues that Moscow is at least
pondering the conclusion that Western courts are not an arbiter, but a weapon.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Moscow is set for a showdown with Western judges and 1990s Russian oligarchs, over a new
ruling enabling the country to refuse to pay what is considered to be the biggest legal
settlement in history, over a collapsed oil empire.
The Constitutional Court, one of Russia's highest judicial authorities, ruled on Friday that
the decision of an international tribunal in the long-running dispute over the now-dissolved
energy giant Yukos is incompatible with Russian law. The case has been heard by a court in The
Hague, which claims jurisdiction under the terms of the Energy Charter Treaty, and awarded the
company's former shareholders a $50-billion payout from the Russian government earlier this
year. Moscow claimed a win in November on the other side of the Atlantic, when a US court,
which had been hearing the case simultaneously, decided to throw it out.
However, as Russia signed but never ratified the Treaty, which hands powers to international
tribunals, the Constitutional Court has now determined it is not bound by the terms of The
Hague judgement. The ruling states that, while the country's government of the day began the
process of signing up to the pact in 1994, they did not have the authority to make national
laws inferior to international agreements, or to "challenge the competence" of Russian
courts. Therefore, the jurists conclude, adhering to the Dutch court's demands would be
"unconstitutional."
The claimants in the case are oligarchs who lost cash when Yukos, once among Europe's
largest firms, collapsed. They say that a multi-billion dollar tax bill and the arrest of its
CEO and founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on fraud charges amounted to state 'appropriation' of
its assets. However, Russian authorities insist that the shareholders cannot be considered
"legitimate," and that the Dutch judges had steamrolled over the country's laws against
corruption and fraud when ruling in their favour.
As far back as July 2014, The Hague ordered Moscow to cough up $50 billion to compensate the
plaintiffs. After exhausting the appeals process in February this year, Russia's lawyers asked
the Dutch Supreme Court to consider the case and overrule the decision. However, at the start
of December, it similarly backed the oligarchs.
Russia has insisted that the judgements are "politically motivated," and in December
the country's Justice Minister, Konstantin Chuychenko, told journalists that the case was part
of a "legal war that has been declared on Russia." He added that "Russia must
adequately defend itself and, sometimes, even attack back."
Now standing at around $50 billion, around the same ballpark as Russia's annual military
budget, the colossal settlement is thought to be the largest award in history. If the country
now rejects the bill, it would spark one of the most serious impasses in international legal
history, and leave Western states deciding whether to respect Russia's constitutional ruling,
or to enforce the demands by confiscating assets.
Yukos' former shareholders have already sought to have Western governments take control of
Russian property overseas as an insurance policy in case Moscow refuses to pay up. However, in
November, a judge in the simultaneous hearing in the US refused that request, saying that
"the Russian Federation is a sovereign country with economic tendrils that cross the globe,
not an insecure potential debtor that must be required to post security lest there be no assets
to seize at a later date."
Not all countries have taken the same approach, however, and in 2015 Russia's diplomats
slammed France and Belgium for confiscating state cash in overseas banks, and even buildings,
to be held as collateral in the case. Moscow again rejected the court's authority and said
their move was "an openly hostile act." Tim Osborne, a British lawyer representing the
former shareholders, said at the time that such seizures were necessary because Russia "has
no regard for international law or the rule of law."
At its height, Yukos produced 20 per cent of Russia's oil, placing it firmly among the ranks
of the world's most valuable enterprises. It had been formed by the privatization of former
state assets after the fall of the Soviet Union, with Khodorkovsky acquiring the assets for a
fraction of their worth at an auction that one economist, Andrey Illarionov, called "the
swindle of the century."
Khodorkovsky claims his arrest on fraud charges and the subsequent collapse of Yukos
was tied to his
political activism and his personal animosity towards Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin,
however, claims that the oligarch, once said to be Russia's wealthiest man, had admitted his
guilt to him privately in exchange for a pardon in 2013.
Khodorkovsky insists that he has renounced any claims to his former empire and that, should
a settlement be reached in the Yukos case, he would not stand to benefit. However, Russian
authorities are said to suspect that a number of claimants have close financial ties to the
former oil magnate.
For the last five years, the American media has been filled with scurrilous articles
demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin has been accused of every crime imaginable, from shooting down airplanes, to
assassinating opponents, to invading neighboring countries, to stealing money to manipulating
the U.S. president and helping to rig the 2016 election.
Few of the accusations directed against Putin have ever been substantiated and the quality
of journalism has been at the level of "yellow journalism."
In a desperate attempt to sustain their political careers, centrist Democrats like Joe Biden
and Hillary Clinton accused their adversaries of being Russian agents – again without
proof.
And even the progressive hero Bernie Sanders – himself a victim of red-baiting –
has engaged in Russia bashing and unsubstantiated accusations for which he offers no proof.
Mettan is a Swiss journalist and member of parliament who learned about the corruption of
the media business when his reporting on the world
anticommunist league rankled his newspapers' shareholders, and when he realized that he was
serving as a paid stenographer for the Bosnian Islamist leader Alija Izetbegovic in the early
1990s.
Mettan defines Russophobia as the promotion of negative stereotypes about Russia that
associate the country with despotism, treachery, expansion, oppression and other negative
character traits. In his view, it is "not linked to specific historical events" but "exists
first in the head of the one who looks, not in the victim's alleged behavior or
characteristics."
Like anti-semitism, Mettan writes, "Russophobia is a way of turning specific pseudo-facts
into essential one-dimensional values, barbarity, despotism, and expansionism in the Russian
case in order to justify stigmatization and ostracism."
The origins of Russophobic discourse date back to a schism in the Church during the Middle
Ages when Charlemagne was crowned emperor of the Roman empire and modified the Christian
liturgy to introduce reforms execrated by the Eastern Orthodox Churches of the Byzantine
empire.
Mettan writes that "the Europe of Charlemagne and of the year 1000 was in need of a foil in
the East to rebuild herself, just as the Europe of the 2000s needs Russia to consolidate her
union."
Before the schism, European rulers had no negative opinions of Russia. When Capetian King
Henri I found himself a widower, he turned towards the prestigious Kiev kingdom two thousand
miles away and married Vladimir's granddaughter, Princess Ann.
A main goal of the new liturgy adopted by Charlemagne was to undermine any Byzantine
influence in Italy and Western Europe.
Over the next century, the schism evolved from a religious into a political one.
The Pope and the top Roman administration made documents disappear and truncated others in
order to blame the Easterners.
Byzantium and Russia were in turn rebuked for their "caesaropapism," or "Oriental style
despotism," which could be contrasted which the supposedly enlightened, democratic governing
system in the West.
Russia was particularly hated because it had defied efforts of Western European countries to
submit to their authority and impose Catholicism.
In the 1760s, French diplomats working with a variety of Ukrainian, Hungarian and Polish
political figures produced a forged testament of Peter 1 ["The Great"] purporting to reveal
Russia's 'grand design' to conquer most of Europe.
This document was still taken seriously by governments during the Napoleanic wars; and as
late as the Cold War, President Harry Truman found it helpful in explaining Stalin.
In Britain, the Whigs, who represented the liberal bourgeois opposition to the Tory
government and its program of free-trade imperialism, were the most virulent Russophobes, much
like today's Democrats in the United States.
The British media also enflamed public opinion by taking hysterical positions against Russia
– often on the eve of major military expeditions.
The London Times during the 1820s Greek Independence war editorialized that no "sane
person" could "look with satisfaction at the immense and rapid overgrowth of Russian power."
The same thing was being written in The New York Times in the 2010s.
A great example of the Orientalist stereotype was Bram Stoker's novel Dracula , whose
main character was modeled after Russian ruler, Ivan the Terrible. As if no English ruler in
history was cruel either.
The Nazis took Russo-phobic discourse to new heights during the 1930s and 1940s, combining
it with a virulent anti-bolshevism and anti-semitism.
A survey of German high school texts in the 1960s found little change in the image of
Russia. The Russians were still depicted as "primitive, simple, very violent, cruel, mean,
inhuman, cupid and very stubborn."
The same stereotypes were displayed in many Hollywood films during the Cold War, where KGB
figures were particularly maligned.
No wonder that when a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin, took power, people went insane.
Russophobia in the United States has been advanced most insidiously by the nation's foreign
policy elite who have envisioned themselves as grand chess-masters seeking to checkmate their
Russian adversary in order to control the Eurasian heartland.
This view is little different than European colonial strategists who had learned of the
importance of molding public opinion through disinformation campaigns that depicted the Russian
bear as a menace to Western civilization.
Guy Mettan has written a thought-provoking book that provides badly needed historical
context for the anti-Russian delirium gripping our society.
Breaking the taboo on Russophobia is of vital importance in laying the groundwork for a more
peaceful world order and genuinely progressive movement in the United States. Unfortunately,
recent developments don't inspire much confidence that history will be transcended.
Professor Mearsheimer discusses the foreign policy agenda of the President Biden administration.
He shares his insights on the likely continuities as well as differences between the Biden administration's policies and the
policies pursued by President Trump over the past four years.
About the Speaker: John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell
Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He
graduated from West Point (1970), has a PhD in political science from Cornell University (1981), and has written extensively
about security issues and international politics. Among his six books, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001, 2014) won
the Joseph Lepgold Book Prize; and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (with Stephen M. Walt, 2007), made the New York
Times bestseller list.
His latest book is The Great Delusion: Liberal Ideals and International Realities (2018), which won the
2019 Best Book of the Year Award from the Valdai Discussion Conference, Moscow.
In 2020, he won the James Madison Award, which
is given once every three years by the American Political Science Association to "an American political scientist who has made
a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science." Recorded on the 17th of November 2020
His predictions here are coming true right now. I would also add that the polarization of politics in the US will have
continued unpleasant domestic social ramifications. Do I want to stay and endure it ? Trump did try like hell to back the
US out of long standing losing wars in the middle east. Nobody appreciates this though.
Mearsheimer expects the Dems to give up on the mindless saber-rattling directed at Russia for the last four years. He may be
right, the D's were likely cynically providing "boob bait for the bubbas." Taking a tough line vs China is more unlikely given
that PRC is so closely tied to the Silicon Valley and Wall Street plutocrats who are the real base of the Democrat Party.
I might have added @ 8 also that another Navalny groupie follower, Lyubov Sobol, also a
lawyer, was arrested recently for invading the apartment of supposed FSB employee Konstantin
Kudryavtsev's mother-in-law (after entering the building on false pretences) and filming
around the apartment. Sobol was accompanied by people illegally wearing
Rospotrebnadzor uniforms.
To date there's no clear evidence that Konstantin Kudryavtsev actually did speak to
Navalny on the phone and the entire phone interview (during which Navalny was told that the
FSB tried to kill him a second time by putting Novichok on his underwear) may have been a
stunt pulled by people who stole parts of a phone database and the metadata attached to phone
transactions on that database.
Der Spiegel, CNN, another media outlet and Bellingcat apparently paid Bitcoin or
cryptocurrency of some sort to access the data from sources to whom the phone database
information was "leaked".
The war in Afghanistan, now in its 19th year, is the longest and most intractable of America's forever wars. There are now
American
soldiers fighting in Afghanistan
who were born after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the ostensible
casus
belli
. The American public has long ago grown tired of the war. A
YouGov
poll
conducted in July of 2020 showed that 46 percent of Americans strongly supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan,
with another 30 percent saying they "somewhat" approved of troop withdrawal.
But this 76 percent majority is deceptive. Given the fact that America has a volunteer army and American casualties in
Afghanistan remain sporadic, this is not an issue that the public is passionate about. An inchoate dissatisfaction is compatible
either with disengagement or just a lack of interest. Conversely, those in the national security establishment who do
passionately support the war are able to thwart political leaders who want a drawdown. Under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump,
presidential efforts to disengage from Afghanistan and the larger Middle East were met with resistance from a foreign policy
elite that sees any withdrawal as a humiliating defeat.
Trump tried to resolve the contradiction between his desire to remove troops and the foreign policy elite's commitment to the
Afghan war by
loosening
the rules of war
. The thinking of the Trump administration was that by unleashing the military and intelligence agencies, it
could subdue the Taliban -- thus preparing the way for a drawdown of troops. Special priority was given to CIA-run covert operations
using Afghan paramilitaries, with the belief that this would lead to a more sustainable war that didn't require American soldiers
to participate in fighting.
A report in
The Intercept
, written by reporter Andrew Quilty,
documents
the horrifying consequences
of this policy: Afghan paramilitary units, known as 01 and 02, have acted as death squads,
launching raids against civilians that have turned into massacres. Many of these raids have attacked religious schools, the
famous madrassas, leading to the death of children as young as 8 years old.
According to Quilty, "Residents from four districts in Wardak -- Nerkh, Chak, Sayedabad, and Daymirdad -- spoke of a string of
massacres, executions, mutilation, forced disappearances, attacks on medical facilities, and airstrikes targeting structures
known to house civilians. The victims, according to these residents, were rarely Taliban. Yet the Afghan unit and its American
masters have never been publicly held accountable by either the Afghan or U.S. governments."
These raids all involve Afghan paramilitaries who are outside the control of the Afghan government and working in conjunction
with American handlers who provide high-tech aid and direction, Quilty reports.
The units' American CIA advisers go by pseudonyms or call signs rather than
names.They not only train Afghan unit members, but also choose their targets, which the Americans call "jackpots"; issue
detailed pre-mission briefings; and accompany Afghan paramilitaries on the ground during raids. The Afghans and Americans are
ferried to remote villages at night by American helicopters, and American assault aircraft hover overhead while they conduct
their raids, providing lethal firepower that is sometimes directed at health clinics, madrassa dormitories, or civilian homes.
Despite providing detailed accounts of American-led war crimes,
The
Intercept
's report has been met with near-silence from the American media. Jake Tapper of CNN
retweeted
the article
, but otherwise there is little indication that the American media cares.
As
Intercept
reporter Ryan Grim
notes
,
"It's been two days since this story was published, and the mainstream media has been largely silent on it. Imagine if the media
treated the My Lai massacre this way." (In fact, the mainstream press sat on whistleblower Ron Ridenhour's warnings about My Lai
for a year before Seymour Hersh and the scruffy Dispatch News Service finally broke the silence.)
Grim also suggested that the Biden administration might want to bring justice to the perpetrators of these alleged war crimes.
"One of the most outspoken proponents of bringing a fine legal eye to war has been Avril Haines, who will be Joe Biden's Director
of National Intelligence," Grim observes. "She'll have the authority and the ability to discover who in the CIA was involved in
these operations, and bring them to justice."
This is a forlorn hope given the Obama administration's
failure
to go after war crimes
committed by the CIA under George W. Bush. Further, Biden himself is ambiguous on Afghanistan in a way
that calls to mind Trump himself.
As Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich
noted
in
The
Nation
earlier this month, Biden "wants to have it both ways" on the Afghan war. Biden will occasionally say, "These
'forever wars' have to end," but he will also say that America needs to keep a contingent of forces in Afghanistan. As Bacevich
observes, "Biden proposes to declare that the longest war in US history has ended, while simultaneously underwriting its
perpetuation." Biden's support for a light military footprint could very easily lead him to the same position as Trump: using
covert CIA operations to maintain American power in Afghanistan with minimal use of uniformed troops. This is a recipe for more
massacres.
Writing in
The Washington Post
last month, veteran Afghanistan
analyst Carter Malkasian
made
a compelling case
that the United States is facing a "stark choice" between "complete withdrawal by May or keeping 2,500
troops in place indefinitely to conduct counterterrorism operations and to try to prevent the collapse of the Afghan government.
There's no doubt that withdrawal will spell the end of the Afghan government that the United States has supported for 19 years."
Malkasian makes clear that the counterterrorism operations would merely be an exercise of staving off defeat, with no prospect of
an end to the war. Given the enormous moral costs of this counterterrorism, unflinchingly described by
The
Intercept
, the argument for complete withdrawal becomes stronger.
It's likely that Biden will continue the policy of previous presidents of kicking the can down the road by using covert CIA
operators to fend off defeat. But Americans should have no illusions: That means perpetuation of horrific war crimes in a
conflict that cannot be won.
"Human rights" agitprop has long been a staple of US imperialist propaganda. As the
Grayzone website pointed out earlier this year, "HRW was founded during the height of the
Cold War as Helsinki Watch, an anti-Soviet lobby group closely linked to the US government
and funded by the Ford Foundation, which served as a CIA passthrough."
The hysterical propaganda against communist nations and fighters goes hand in hand with
the bombs, torture and assassination that are US/British/French/NATO specialties. The modern
version of "human rights" campaigning was born out of the US defeat in Vietnam, and the spate
of revelations that came out of that period about US crimes (Pentagon Papers, Church Senate
investigations, Winter Soldier, etc.) in an attempt to rebrand the Vietnam war criminals as
some sort of humanitarians. The Helsinki Accords were a US propaganda program that the
misguided leaders of the USSR, along with Tito, etc. approved with the vain hope of detente
and peaceful cooperation between nations. In reality, the US never wanted such peaceful
coexistence.
Thanks, b, for bucking the anti-China propaganda campaign. The Pentagon and CIA still lick
their wounds from the last time they faced Chinese forces in battle. Their dream of
anti-Communist conquest of China and North Korea (assisted by their supposedly docile
Japanese assistants) is as dangerous as their dream of dismembering Russia and turning all of
the Eurasian landmass into a colony for US (and Japanese) exploitation. There lies the fuse
for WW3, and the end deaths of hundreds of millions.
Now is the time for every person of clear mind to oppose these mad dreams of conquest! The
lies that have and are being told about Russia and China (only occasionally rooted in some
actual injustice) are being churned out daily by the CIA and Pentagon propaganda machine.
Their purpose is to rally the population for war. Soon the hammer will drop harder on the US
and West Europe/Australian population, as the persecution of Julian Assange suggests, as the
ruling elite tighten up the repression needed to pull off their genocidal war.
Former senior CIA official John Stockwell discusses how the CIA would place false reports
in newspapers around the world, including in the Washington Post. Stories that were complete
fabrications, that were attacking their enemies, like Cuba. John Stockwell
interview
What a courageous man Stockwell is, to give up his career, his support network, and invite
attacks from one of the most dangerous organizations around.
Second the 15-minute clip that Antiwar7 @17 posted. Just saw that one about 3 weeks ago.
It's from 1983, an interview on the University of Southern California campus. Everyone should
watch it if they haven't already.
(There are also YouTube vids with German journalist Udo Ulfkotte who's been mentioned here
before that are related to this.)
Met John Stockwell a few times. He's a terrific guy.
Working for the NSC in the White House, he created the false stories about the Cuban soldiers
raping nuns in Angola. That was his job. He's been around in public since the '80s but never
got any Media attention.
He also was CIA officer in the Vietnam Highlands working with the Hmong against the
government. He married a Vietnamese.
When the US pullout was ordered he was also ordered to sacrifice 150 agents in the
Highlands who worked for him. The US wouldn't take them out.
His book "In Search of Enemies" is vital to read. He testified to Congress about the
machinations of Henry Kissinger that were illegal, antithetical to US best interests, but no
one gave a damn. Left him out on the limb.
John Stockwell is a great voice of the Truth. A good man.
Before our national self-inquest on Donald Trump has run its course, we will be prompted
to remember again that the world exists. President-elect Joe Biden's appointments at the
departments of defense, state, and the national security council are likely to include some
combination of Michele Flournoy, Jake Sullivan, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and others of the
globalization group around Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. These people believe in
the rightness of a world with the United States at its center, deploying commercial strength,
trade agreements, diplomatic suasion, and military alliances in a judicious synthesis. Armed
intervention, preferably multilateral, is held in reserve. They take on trust the global
politics of neoliberalism. For them, the Trump presidency, though unanticipated, was merely a
disagreeable hiatus. They have never stopped planning for their return.
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They did not study the catastrophe of Vietnam, and they have not learned from it. As
Gareth Porter showed in Perils of Dominance , that war, whose atrocities the world
remembers more vividly than Americans do, was protracted not from morbid credulity regarding
the domino theory but rather a primitive fear of losing face. It was carried forward through
presidencies in both parties with a maximum of deception. The War in Afghanistan has
similarly extended over three presidencies; and yet, to the neoliberal establishment,
Afghanistan in 2020 is a good deal like Vietnam in 1971. It must not be "abandoned." A recent
New York Times story praised some generals for "tempering" the rashness of Donald
Trump's attempt to withdraw once and for all.
For reasons of personality that hardly bear looking into, Trump in foreign policy
represented a break from the militarized globalism the United States had adopted with the
fall of the Soviet Union and the coming of a unipolar world. The laboratory for this approach
was the Yugoslavia intervention commandeered by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The madness
under the idealism was revealed in the bombing, invasion, and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
That seems a long generation ago, to the short memory of Americans. Even more thoroughly
forgotten has been the Libya War -- President Obama's disastrous bid to show support for the
Arab Spring -- with all the destruction it wrought: the civil war that followed, the swollen
mass migrations from North Africa to South Europe, the opening of slave markets in Libya
itself. After Libya came Syria, in which the United States supported an Al Qaeda offshoot in
another humanitarian cause. After Syria came the Obama-Trump support for the Saudi
obliteration of Yemen.
The United States has long faced the peculiar choice -- messianic on both sides -- of
serving the world as an exemplary nation or as an evangelical one. The former image was best
drawn by Abraham Lincoln when he said that the proposition "all men are created equal" was
meant as "a standard maxim for free society," which would be "constantly approximated" in the
United States itself, "constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the
happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere." By contrast, the
evangelical image was epitomized by John Kennedy's eloquent and dangerous inaugural address:
"we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any
foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Lincoln's standard
maxim meant the force of our example. Kennedy's bear any burden meant the force
of our weapons.
A new Cold War with Russia was dragged onto center stage in 2013–2014. The process
began at the Sochi Olympics and was locked in by the American reaction to the Russian
reaction to the coup in Ukraine. The neoliberal elite is deciding, at this moment, whether to
prefer Russia or China as the number-one U.S. enemy on the horizon. But must we have one?
"Faith in a fact can help create the fact," said William James. A named expectation of
trouble creates the conditions for that trouble. And yet, informed citizens today in the
United States, in China, and in Russia all know that such a return to the inveterate habits
of the old Great Powers would be supremely irresponsible. Our most dire confrontation now is
with the natural world, which, in the form of climate change, is taking its revenge on
humanity for a century of abuse.
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If the fires and floods of the last many years, in Australia and California, in Prague and
Houston, have nothing to say to you, it is not clear what planet you are fit to live on. The
best thing the policy elite could do, for the United States and the world, would be to put
themselves out of business. Begin a series of international agreements to cooperate in
slowing the progress of climate change, and in anticipating and defending against the worst
of its effects. Practically speaking, as a matter of course, this will require a new ethic of
international cooperation. Not war, not even an enhanced trade war, and not with China and
Russia most of all.
David Bromwich is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. He is the author
of American Breakdown:
One of the leading Russian political scientists in his
recent article stated that in fact, Russia was parting with any illusions about relations
with the West. Well, it is quite a natural outcome of the outgoing year, given the behavior
of "Western partners". Blind hatred, streams of endless lies and slander, frankly clownish
amateur stagings like "Navalny's poisoning", a non-stop conveyor of illegitimate unilateral
discriminatory measures (they call them sanctions), insane and unacceptable rhetoric of
Western officials... Well, sooner or later any patience comes to an end.
On December 17, 2020, a new US Maritime strategy was unveiled putting into practice the
regressive concepts first outlined in the early National Defense Strategy 2020 doctrine which
target China and Russia as the primary enemies of the USA and demanding that the USA be capable
to " defeat our adversaries while we accelerate development of a modernized integrated
all-domain naval force of the future".
The Pentagon's
Advantages at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power continued by saying
"China's and Russia's revisionist approaches in the maritime environment threaten US interests,
undermine alliances and partnerships and degrade the free and open international order
moreover, China's and Russia's aggressive naval growth and modernization are eroding US
institutional advantages."
The document continued to describe that "we must operate more assertively to prevail in
day-to-day competition as we uphold the rules-based order and deter our competitors from
pursuing armed aggression ready, forward-deployed naval forces will adopt a more assertive
posture in day to day operations"
For anyone who has been paying attention to the vast growth of the Pentagon's Full Spectrum
containment policy around China's perimeter begun with Obama's Asia Pivot, it may appear as
though these words are not new, but just a continuation of American unipolar agenda, Pacific
war games, and psychological projection onto perceived enemies, that have been underway for
years. While this is certainly true, it must be noted that they are occurring at a time that
NATO 2030 has
enshrined an anti-China military posture into the Trans Atlantic security doctrine which had
formerly channeled most of its hate purely onto Russia.
The fact is those unipolar zombies programmed to think in no other terms but global
post-nation state dominance are deathly afraid of the Russia-China bond of survival which has
created a uniquely viable foundation for an alternative economic/security architecture for the
world. This model is based on a system of finance that defines money not in speculative but
rather long-term development of the real economic foundations of life. It also features a
strong emphasis on win-win cooperation as opposed to Hobbesian zero-sum logic dominant among
western powers, and it also finds itself driven by OPEN system economic practices shaped by
unbounded scientific and technological progress that once upon a time guided America's better
traditions.
With the obvious threat of nuclear war breaking out between a collapsing unipolar order in
the west and an emergent Multipolar alliance, it is important to review what possible latent
policy traditions may yet be revived within America's history which certain forces have worked
very hard to scrub out of the historical record and memory. This study will take us to the
incredible fights that arose over America's identity at the turn of the 20th century during the
period of President William McKinley and the treasonous anglophile President of vice, Theodore
Roosevelt.
Munroe Doctrine or Empire?
As
Martin Sieff eloquently laid out in his recent article , President McKinley himself was an
peacemaker, anti-imperialist of a higher order than most people realize. McKinley was also a
strong supporter of two complementary policies: 1) Internally, he was a defender of Lincoln's
"American system" of protectionism, internal improvements and black suffrage and 2) Externally,
he was a defender of the Munroe Doctrine that defined America's
anti-imperial foreign policy since 1823.
"After fifty years the United States has, without a single exception, respected the
independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own.
That the United States does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the
well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only
of her own.
That by involving itself in the internal affairs of other nations, the United States would
destroy its own reason of existence; the fundamental maxims of her policy would become, then,
no different than the empire America's revolution defeated. It would be, then, no longer the
ruler of itself, but the dictator of the world."
America's march is the march of mind, not of conquest.
Colonial establishments are engines of wrong, and that in the progress of social
improvement it will be the duty of the human family to abolish them".
It was an aging John Quincy Adams whom a young Abraham Lincoln collaborated with in ending
the imperial Mexican-American war under Wall Street stooge James Polk in 1846. When Adams died
in 1848, Lincoln picked up the torch he left behind as the London-directed "proto deep state"
of the 19th century worked to dissolve the republic from within. The foreign policy conception
laid out by Adams ensured that America's only concern was "staying out of foreign imperial
entanglements" as Washington
had earlier warned and keeping foreign imperial interests out of the Americas. The idea of
projecting power onto the weak or subduing other cultures was anathema to this genuinely
American principle.
A major battle which has been intentionally obscured from history books took place in the
wake of Lincoln's murder and the re-ascension of the City of London-backed slave power during
the decades after the Union victory of 1865. On the one hand America's role in the emerging
global family of nations was being shaped by followers of Lincoln who wished to usher in an age
of win-win cooperation. Such an anti-Darwinian system which Adams called "
a community of principle " asserted that each nation had the right to sovereign banking
controls over private finance, productive credit emissions tied to internal improvements with a
focus on continental (rail/road) development, industrial progress and full spectrum economies.
Adherents of this program included Russia's Sergei Witte and Alexander II, Germany's Otto von
Bismarck, France's Sadi Carnot, and leading figures within Japan's Meiji Restoration.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/gYeVDjFKpOU
On the other hand, "eastern establishment families" of the USA more loyal to the gods of
money, hereditary institutions and the vast international empire of Britain saw America's
destiny tied to an imperial global partnership with the Mother country. These two opposing
paradigms within America have defined two opposing views of "progress", "value",
"self-interest" and "law" which have continued to shape the world over 150 years
later.
William Gilpin vs Alfred Mahan: Two Paradigms Clash
A champion of the former traditionally American outlook who rose to the international scene
was William
Gilpin (1813-1894). Gilpin hailed from a patriotic family of nation builders whose
patriarch Thomas Gilpin was a close ally of Benjamin Franklin and leading member of Franklin's
Philosophical Society. William Gilpin was famous for his advocacy of America's trans
continental railway whose construction he proselytized as early as 1845 (it was finally begun
by Lincoln during the Civil War and completed in 1869 as I outlined in my previous paper
How to Save a Dying Republic ).
In his thousands of speeches and writings, Gilpin made it known that he understood America's
destiny to be inextricably tied to the ancient civilization of China- not to impose opium as
the British and their American lackies were want to do, but to learn from and even emulate!
In 1852, Gilpin stated:
"Salvation must come to America from China, and this consists in the introduction of the
"Chinese constitution" viz. the "patriarchal democracy of the Celestial Empire". The
political life of the United States is through European influences, in a state of complete
demoralization, and the Chinese Constitution alone contains elements of regeneration. For
this reason, a railroad to the Pacific is of such vast importance, since by its means the
Chinese trade will be conducted straight across the North American continent. This trade must
bring in its train Chinese civilization. All that is usually alleged against China is mere
calumny spread purposefully, just like those calumnies which are circulated in Europe about
the United States".
With Lincoln's 1861 presidential victory, Gilpin became Lincoln's bodyguard and ensured the
president survived
his first assassination attempt en route to Washington from Illinois. During the Civil War,
Gilpin was made Colorado's first Governor where he successfully stopped the southern power from
opening up a western front during the war of secession (applying Lincoln's greenback system to
finance his army on a state level) and winning the " Battle of Glorieta Pass ", thus
saving the union.
After the war Gilpin became a leading advocate of the internationalization of the "American
system of political economy" which Lincoln applied vigorously during his short-lived
presidency. Citing the success of Lincoln's system, Gilpin said:
"No amount of argument will make America adopt old world theories To rely upon herself, to
develop her own resources, to manufacture everything that can possibly be manufactured within
her territory- this is and has been the policy of the USA from the time of Alexander Hamilton
to that of Henry Clay and thence to our own days".
Throughout his speeches Gilpin emphasizes the role of a U.S.-Russia alliance:
"It is a simple and plain proposition that Russia and the United States, each having
broad, uninhabited areas and limitless undeveloped resources, would by the expenditure of 2
or 3 hundred millions apiece for a highway of the nations threw their now waste places, add a
hundredfold to their wealth and power and influence"
And seeing in China's potential the means to re-enliven the world- including the decadent
and corrupt culture of Europe:
"In Asia a civilization resting on a basis of remote antiquity has had, indeed, a long
pause, but a certain civilization- although hitherto hermetically sealed up has continued to
exist. The ancient Asiatic colossus, in a certain sense, needed only to be awakened to new
life and European culture finds a basis there on which it can build future reforms."
In opposition to the outdated British controls of "chock points" on the seas which kept the
world under the clutches of the might of London, Gilpin advocated loudly for a system of
internal improvements, rail development, and growth of the innate goodness of all cultures and
people through scientific and technological progress. Once a global system of mutual
development of rail were established, Gilpin stated "in the shipment of many kinds of raw and
manufactured goods, it will largely supersede the ocean traffic of Great Britain, in whose
hands is now carrying the trade of the world."
Gilpin's vision was most clearly laid out in his 1890 magnum opus "The Cosmopolitan Railway" which
featured designs for development corridors across all continents united by a "community of
principle".
Echoing the win-win philosophy of Xi Jinping's New Silk Road today, Gilpin stated:
"The cosmopolitan railway will make the whole world one community. It will reduce the
separate nations to families of our great nation From extended intercommunication will arise
a wider intercourse of human ideas and as the result, logical and philosophical
reciprocities, which will become the germs for innumerable new developments; for in the track
of intercommunication, enterprise and invention invariably follow and whatever facilitates
one stimulates every other agency of progress."
Mahan Derails America's Anti-Imperial Identity
Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) represented an opposing paradigm which true American
statesmen like Lincoln, Secretary of State James Blaine, William Seward, President Grant,
William Garfield, and McKinley detested. Sadly, with McKinley's murder (
run by an anarchist ring with ties to British Intelligence ) and the rise of Teddy
Roosevelt in 1901, it was not Gilpin's but rather Mahan's worldview which became the dominant
foreign policy doctrine for the next 120 years (despite a few brief respites under FDR and
JFK).
Mahan is commonly credited for being a co-founder of modern geopolitics and an inspiration
for Halford Mackinder. Having graduated from West Point's naval academy in 1859, Mahan soon
became renowned as a total failure in actual combat having crashed warships repeatedly into
moving and stationary objects during the Civil War. Since reality was not his forte, Mahan
focused his post-war career on Ivory tower theorizing gushing over maps of the world and
fawning over Britain's power as a force of world history.
His "Influence of Sea Power
Upon History 1660-1783 published in the same year that Gilpin published his Cosmopolitan
Railway (1890) was a total break from the spirit of win-win cooperation that defined America's
foreign policy. According to
the Diplomat , this book soon "became the bible for many navies around the world" with the
Kaiser of Germany (now released from the influence of the great rail-loving statesman Otto von
Bismarck whom he fired in 1890) demanding all of his offers read. Later Teddy Roosevelt ordered
copies for every member of Congress. In Mahan's book, the geopolitician continuously asserts
his belief that it is America's destiny to succeed the British Empire.
Taking the British imperial definition of "commerce" which uses free trade as a cover for
the military dominance of weak nations (open borders and turning off protectionism simply makes
a people easier to rob), Mahan attempts to argue that America need not continue to adhere to
"outdated" habits like the Munroe doctrine since the new order of world empires demands America
stay relevant in a world of sea power and empire. Mahan writes : "The advance of Russia in
Asia, in the division of Africa, in the colonial ambitions of France and in the British idea of
Imperial Federation, now fast assuming concrete shape in practical combined action in South
Africa" demands that the USA act accordingly.
Attempting to refute the "outdated habits" of rail development which consume so many foolish
statesmen around the globe, Mahan states: "a railway competes in vain with a river because more
facile and copious, water traffic is for equal distances much cheaper and because cheaper, more
useful". Like those attacking today's Belt and Road Initiative, the power of railways is that
their returns are not measurable by simple monetary terms, but are rather QUALITATIVE. The
long-term construction of rail systems not only unite divided people, increase manufacturing
and industrial corridors but also induce closer powers of association and interchange between
agriculture and urban producers. These processes uplift national productive powers building
full spectrum economies and also a culture's capacity for creative thought.
The attempt made to justify sea traffic merely because "larger amounts of goods can be
shipped" is purely quantitative and monetaristic sophistry devoid of any science of real
value.
While Gilpin celebrates the successful awakening of China and other great nations of the
world, in the
Problem of Asia (1901) Mahan says:
"It is scarcely desirable that so vast a proportion of mankind as the Chinese constitute
should be animated by but one spirit". Should China "burst her barriers eastward, it would be
impossible to exaggerate the momentous issues dependant upon a firm hold of the Hawaiian
islands by a great civilized maritime power."
Mahan's adherence to social Darwinism is present throughout his works as he defines the
political differences of the 3 primary branches of humanity (Teutonic, Slavic and Asiatic) as
purely rooted in the intrinsic inferiority or superiority of their race saying: "There are
well recognized racial divergencies which find concrete expression in differences equally
marked of political institution, of social progress and of individual development. These
differences are deep seated in the racial constitution and partly the result of the
environment". Mahan goes onto restate his belief that unlike the superior Teutonics "the
Oriental, whether national or individual does not change" and "the East does not
progress".
Calling China a carcass to be devoured by an American eagle, Mahan writes: "If life departs,
a carcass can be utilized only by dissection or for food; the gathering to it of the eagles is
a natural law, of which it is bootless to complain the onward movement of the world has to be
accepted as a fact."
Championing an Anglo American alliance needed to subdue and "civilize" China as part of the
post-Boxer Rebellion, Mahan says " of all the nations we shall meet in the East, Great Britain
is the one with which we have by far the most in common in the nature of our interests there
and in our standards of law and justice".
In case there was any doubt in the minds of Mahan's readers as to the MEANS which America
should assert its dominance onto China, Mahan makes clear his belief that progress is caused by
1) force and 2) war:
"That such a process should be underlain by force on the part of outside influences, force
of opposition among the latter themselves [speaking of the colonial European monarchies
racing to carve up China in 1901 -ed] may be regrettable, but it is only a repetition of all
history Every step forward in the march that has opened in China to trade has been gained by
pressure; the most important have been the result of actual war."
A Last Anti-Imperial Push
The chaos induced by the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion of 1899 which spread quickly across
China resulted a heated battle between imperial and anti-imperial forces in both Russia and the
USA. Where Transport Minister Sergei Witte who spearheaded the development of the Trans
Siberian rail line (1890-1905) tried to avoid military entanglement, McKinley was busy doing
the same.
The boxers soon attacked the Manchurian rail connecting Russia to China by land and Witte
succumbed to pressure to finally send in troops. The reformers of China who attempted to
modernize with American and Russian assistance under Emperor Kuang Hsu and Li Hung Chang fell
from power as total anarchy reigned. The outcome of the Boxer chaos involved the imperial
powers of France, Germany and England demanding immense financial reparations, ownership of
Chinese territory and mass executions of the Boxers.
While McKinley is often blamed for America's imperial turn, the reality is just the
opposite.
The Spanish-American war begun in 1898 was actually launched unilaterally by Anglophilic
racist Theodore Roosevelt who used the 4 hour window he had while Undersecretary of the Navy
(while the actual Secretary was out of Washington) to send orders to Captain Dewey of the
Pacific fleet to engage in a fight with the Spanish over their Philippine territories. McKinley
had resisted the war hawks until that point but found himself finally bending to the momentum.
In China, McKinley, like Witte worked desperately to reject taking territory resulting in great
fears from the British oligarchy that a U.S.-Russia alliance led by McKinley and Witte was
immanent.
The assassination of McKinley on September 18, 1901 catapulted Mahan-loving Vice President
Teddy Roosevelt into high office, who enmeshed America into a new epoch of Anglo-American
imperialism abroad, a growth of eugenics and segregation at home and the creation of an
independent police
state agency called the FBI .
"Roosevelt devoted his next eight years in the presidency and the rest of his life to
integrating the United States and the British Empire into a seamless web of racial
imperialist oppression that dominated Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and that
destroyed the cultural history and heritage of the Native North American nations."
In Russia, the 1902 Anglo-Japan Treaty led to the disastrous Japan-Russo war of 1905 which
devastated the Russian navy, ended the political career of Sergei Witte and threw Russia into
chaos leading to the fall of the Romanovs (Czar Nicholas II was the last statesman occupying
high office that this author is aware of to have actively promoted the Bering Strait Tunnel
rail connection in 1906 . It wasn't
until FDR's Vice President Henry Wallace met with Foreign Minister Molotov in 1942 that the
idea resurfaced once more ).
In his Two Peoples One Friendship , Wallace described his discussions with Foreign Minister
Molotov in 1942 saying:
" Of all nations, Russia has the most powerful combination of a rapidly increasing
population, great natural resources and immediate expansion in technological skills. Siberia
and China will furnish the greatest frontier of tomorrow When Molotov [Russia's Foreign
Minister] was in Washington in the spring of 1942 I spoke to him about the combined highway
and airway which I hope someday will link Chicago and Moscow via Canada, Alaska and Siberia.
Molotov, after observing that no one nation could do this job by itself, said that he and I
would live to see the day of its accomplishment. It would mean much to the peace of the
future if there could be some tangible link of this sort between the pioneer spirit of our
own West and the frontier spirit of the Russian East."
While the "open door" rape of the China was attempted by the Anglo-Americans, a fortunate
rear guard maneuver orchestrated by another follower of Abraham Lincoln named Sun Yat-sen
resulted in a surprise overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 and the institution of the
Republic of China with Sun Yat-sen as the acting President. While Sun Yat-sen sided with Gilpin
and Lincoln in opposition to the Mahanists on the issue of rail and industrial development
(illustrated in his extraordinary 1920 International Development of China
program which called for 160 000 km of rail, water diversion projects, ports and 1.5
million km of paved roads- illustrated below), the intrigues that sank the world into World War
I made any hopes of this early development of China impossible in Sun Yat-sen's lifetime.
Expressing his own deep understanding of these top down tactics of world history (and the
recognition that the same British imperial forces that orchestrated the US Civil War were
planning to do the same to China), Sun Yat-sen wrote in 1912:
"We understand too well that there are certain men of power -- not to include for the
present, certain nations -- who would view with a greater or lesser satisfaction an internal
rupture in the new Republic [of China]. They would welcome, as a move toward the
accomplishment of their own ends and designs, a civil war between the provinces of the North
and the South; just as, 50 years ago, there was applause in secret (in certain quarters) over
the terrible civil strife in the United States.
Americans of today who were alive in those dark days of the great republic will remember
the feelings in the hearts of the people -- the bitter and painful thoughts that arose from
the knowledge that foreigners were hoping and praying for the destruction of the American
Union.
Had the war been successful from the South's standpoint, and had two separate republics
been established, is it not likely that perhaps half a dozen or more weak nations would have
eventually been established? I believe that such would have been the result; and I further
believe that with the one great nation divided politically and commercially, outsiders would
have stepped in sooner or later and made of America their own. I do not believe that I am
stating this too forcibly. If so, I have not read history nor studied men and nations
intelligently.
And I feel that we have such enemies abroad as the American republic had; and that at
certain capitals the most welcome announcement that would be made would be that of a
rebellion in China against the constituted authorities.
This is a hard statement to make; but I believe in speaking the truth so that all the
world may know and recognize it."
Today's Belt and Road Initiative , and strategic friendship established between Russia and
China has re-awoken the forgotten vision of William Gilpin for a world of cooperating sovereign
nation states. Does the USA have the moral ability to avoid disintegration by accepting a
Russia-U.S.-China alliance needed to revive McKinley's American System or will we slip into a
new Great Reset and World War?
This Scott Ritter
op/ed is a good read and puts much into perspective if you've been paying attention. For
example, think of the breakneck speed Putin's trying to get Russia's national projects
underway and completed. Think of the ongoing and quickening pace of Eurasian integration. The
McFaul citation, "Russia is way more powerful today than it was 20 years ago, and it's way
more powerful today than it was four years ago," is yet another consideration. Finally, Putin
and Lavrov have spoken of the ever increasing need to negotiate an International Cyber
Security Treaty for almost all of Trump's term. And I'll wager the USA's National Debt that
Russia is very busily finishing its "for internal use only" internet that firewalls the
energy, defense and communications portions of Russian infrastructure.
The hole Obama/Biden were busy digging from 2009-2017 is now much deeper and getting
deeper daily. We've now seen the bipartisan rejection of the saner, larger, stimulus Trump
and some Rs & Ds demanded for the commonfolk, which provides an excellent signal as to
what's going to follow--nothing, aside from the hole deepening yet further. IMO, the economic
draft will soon cease as who will want to defend something that's indefensible. IMO, a
majority if not now will soon conclude that they no longer have a stake in this society, that
they're being milked for all they're worth then discarded.
is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for
Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic 22 Dec, 2020 12:08 Joe
Biden, set to be the oldest-ever US president, is actually on the younger side of people
currently running the American political establishment, who show no sign of wanting to ever
step aside for another generation.
It is often overlooked that Donald Trump currently holds the distinction of being the
oldest-ever US president, being 70 at the time of his inauguration. Biden will take that trophy
as well if he's inaugurated in January 2021, having turned 78 last month. Even so, he is
actually younger than the current leaders of the House and the Senate!
Though all major power brokers in Washington are older than the "gerontocracy" that
ruled the Soviet Union in the 1970s and the 1980s, you won't hear the US mainstream media make
the comparison, as it wouldn't fit their Narrative.
Sure, there has been some carefully calibrated talk about the "cognitive decline" of
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is 87. But Feinstein is from an overwhelmingly Democrat state and
she can be easily replaced at the same time as Kamala Harris, Biden's running mate who still
hasn't resigned her Senate seat.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) is 80, and has raised eyebrows herself with the
whole "Good Morning. Sunday Morning" glitch-in-the-Matrix behavior during a TV
appearance in September.
Way back in 2018 , Pelosi
insisted that any talk about wanting someone younger in the leadership position was
"sexist," and went on to ruthlessly crush any opposition to her getting the gavel
– and the power that went with it – inside the party. In the same interview, Pelosi
blanked out on the name of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), calling him
"whatshisname."
Born several months ahead of Biden in 1942, McConnell is 78 himself. He had a bout with
polio when very young, and though successfully treated, he's had difficulty climbing stairs all
his life. While he hasn't shown any signs of cognitive decline, his political choices as of
late have certainly caused some Republicans to wonder if he's truly the legislative genius his
supporters make him out to be.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) is "only" 70, but has actually been
in Congress longer than McConnell, if one counts his 18 years in the House before he got
elected to the Senate in 1998.
Only House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, 55, technically qualifies as a member of
'Generation X' rather than a Baby Boomer. Nor does he have any Cold War political baggage like
the rest, having been in the House since only 2006. If the Republicans somehow win the House
majority in 2022, he might gain more influence – but that's speculation at this point, on
both counts.
Meanwhile, the young activist House members who came in with 2018's "Blue Wave," such
as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), are being kept in check by the old guard. Just last
week, AOC was denied a spot on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, thwarting her plans to
push for her "Green New Deal" proposal.
Compare this state of US politics with the notorious "gerontocracy" of the Soviet
Union. Three aging Soviet leaders died in quick succession between 1982 and 1985, prompting
then-US president Ronald Reagan to say "How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians
if they keep dying on me?" Yet Reagan was 74 at the time, older than all three.
Leonid Brezhnev was 54 when he took over the Communist Party in 1964. For the sake of
political stability, he remained a figurehead after his 1975 stroke and "ruled" the USSR
until his death in 1982, as no one in the party could agree on who ought to succeed him. His
18-year tenure was later dubbed the "Brezhnev stagnation."
Former KGB chief Yuri Andropov, part of a triumvirate running things for the better part of
Brezhnev's latter years, died himself at the age of 70 in 1984. He had led the Soviet Union for
less than 16 months. Konstantin Chernenko, 73, took over from Andropov – and died in
March 1985, after only 13 months in charge. His successor, Mikhail Gorbachev, was 54 at the
time, two years younger than Kamala Harris is now.
In one of those strange intricacies of the American political system, Harris went from
getting zero delegates in the Democrats' nomination process and dropping out before the first
primary to being widely expected to take over from Biden sooner rather than later. One might
say her relative youth and being a 'Woman Of Color' – an identity politics feature
increasingly important to the Democrats – might spell the end of the Boomer
dominance.
The thing to keep in mind, however, is that the "young reformer" Gorbachev managed to
run the Soviet Union into the ground within five short years. In 1991, the old guard tried a
military coup against him. Though Gorbachev survived the coup, the Soviet Union didn't. By the
end of that year, the USSR had "dissolved," breaking up along Communist-drawn boundaries
into independent and quasi-independent states.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
UKCitizen 1 day ago 22 Dec, 2020 08:34 AM
Not only American politics but much of USA public life too. I believe one facet of rule by a
gerontocracy is maintenance of the status quo; another is less control over younger and more
vigorous members of society. The two come together in the rise of Silicon Valley and
dominance of USA affairs by corporate interests. But nothing lasts forever and there are long
cycles too. Little will change in the short term but I predict at least four years of more
serious decline in America. The turning point will be final disillusionment with liberal-left
politics (see K/r theory) and the arrival of some younger leaders, not yet known.
Liberal-leftism will fail eventually for the simple reason it is founded in utopian like
fantasies, disconnection with the real life (however harsh,and probably because it is harsh)
but above all an attempt to spread finite resources veneer thin and remove any effort to get
them (free everything and equality for all). America will come round eventually but it will
be painful and will require it to revise much of its political structure to becoming a true
democracy, which even I have realised it isn't, and probably only has been fleetingly since
its founding. K/r theory is magnificently expounded in the 'The Evolutionary Psychology
Behind Politics' and long cycles in 'Biohistory'. The former rings true on just about every
page.
KarlthePoet UKCitizen 1 day ago 22 Dec, 2020 11:35 AM
America is collapsing because its foundation is solidly built on lies. The US government and
Wall Street are ultimately being controlled by the Jewish Banking Cartel. It cannot be
denied. Take the Federal Reserve away and America collapses overnight. Trillions upon
Trillions of dollars that are being printed out of thin air are keeping the failed system
afloat, for now. A massive global economic collapse is imminent. Just watch. Happy Holidays
Thomas74 17 hours ago 23 Dec, 2020 03:46 AM
There are clear parallels between the USSR and USA. The question is whether the leadership in
the USA's leader class has the same self-awareness that arose at the top of the USSR in its
last years. Also whether the American people will tolerate the economic hardship that the
former Soviet peoples endured in the transition. Is this what we're seeing now with the
coronavirus situation? A gradual taking down of expectations in the West behind the
smokescreen of a virus?
Anubis64 1 day ago 22 Dec, 2020 12:24 PM
Dear Nebojsa, So what? Andropov would have made a first-class statesman (give or take his
infatuation with technocracy). Brezhnev was not only a hero but a capable statesman whose era
is remembered with nostalgia. Let us focus on the fact that Russia's responses to the blows
coming hard and fast are rather passive and lacking any historical vision. It is not age but
will that matters.
Anubis64 Anubis64 1 day ago 22 Dec, 2020 12:53 PM
Then, a young scoundrel was brought in by the shady Yakovlev character and destroyed the
greatest country in the world in less than a decade. May the same happen to the insufferable
Americans.
Krieger 1 hour ago 23 Dec, 2020 08:34 PM
I think this is mostly apples and oranges. In the USSR, the "old guard" were patriots who
wanted to preserve their country. The "young reformers" were traitors who wanted to destroy
their own country to benefit their Western masters and personally enrich themselves. In the
USA, on the other hand, both the young and old politicians are totally corrupt and want to
maintain the status quo, which is slowly destroying the country from within.
Mira Golub 1 day ago 22 Dec, 2020 10:17 AM
America is ruled by mobster clans, the puppets are indeed resemble walking dead. Russian
imbecile liberal pro Western 2% 'opposition' though are getting their jollies by calling
Putin who is 68 'grandpa'. Bunch of degenerates.
Marek Weglinski 1 day ago 22 Dec, 2020 08:25 AM
Maybe it's a telltale that the Soviet-like demise for the US is near. Hopefully the American
empire will not come to a SUPERNOVA-like ending (inflicting great damage to the rest of the
world), before turning itself into a dwarf.
Ohhho Marek Weglinski 1 day ago 22 Dec, 2020 11:37 AM
The Evil empire will implode and take the rest of the world down with it, that's the problem!
USSR had it's own economic system pretty much isolated from the Western world, and when that
system collapsed the effect was felt all around the satellite countries for years!
The ascendancy of neoliberal forces to the executive branch of the U.S. state represents a
development that potentially will be even a more dangerous period of aggression from the U.S.
white supremacist settler state and its white supremacist colonial European allies.
Why is this so? The primary agenda of the right-wing neoliberal forces represented by the
Biden Administration is to reassert U.S. global leadership by reconsolidating a common
U.S.-European capitalist program of domination that was disrupted with the "America first"
positions of the Trump Administration.
The Biden Administration is animated by the belief that the objective logic of overall
Western hegemony is tied to finding a way for more effective collaboration around a common
imperialist agenda. This belief is shared by Angela Merkel of Germany, and despite some
contrary public declarations from French President Macron on issue of European independence,
Macron sees an effective Western alliance as critical, even if it is under U.S. leadership
once again.
The racialist character if these appeals are obvious to those of us who operate from a
critical anti-colonialist frame that centers race and violence as the essential elements of
the rise of the Pan-European white supremacist colonial/capitalist patriarchal project. The
commitment to continued white colonial/capitalist global hegemonic dominance is clear.
Biden's objective to revive a U.S. hegemonic role over the Western project of collective
domination must be seen as a race project.
Trump's plan from the beginning of his administration was to complete the Obama pivot to
Asia, but those efforts were undermined by the domestic political obstacles he faced in just
trying to gain full control of the Executive Branch. And while Trump was eventually
successful in winning over elements of the U.S. and European ruling classes to a more
aggressive stance against China, his short-sighted, erratic "America first" policies and his
inability to consolidate effective power over the U.S. state were a destabilizing force for
the continued hegemony of the Western colonial/capitalist project.
The U.S.-EU unity project with its NATO military wing in the service of collective
imperialism and under U.S. leadership is the neoliberal corrective strategy to
Trump.
Biden's Intersectional Imperialism is Exposed
Obama represented the last stage of what Gramsci called a passive revolution where
oppressive state mitigates the influence of antagonistic groups through "gradual but
continuous absorption."
The U.S.-EU race and class project of unity adopted by the Biden Administration will face
serious political and economic challenges. The clumsy attempt to utilize Obama's soft power
ideological mystifications in the present circumstances of capitalist crisis together with a
deep legitimation crisis will result in abject failure by the Biden administration on both
the global and domestic levels.
First among the challenges facing the incoming administration is the competing economic
interests among Western capitalists. The abrogation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPA) with Iran by the Trump Administration and the reimposition of sanctions that required
economic disengagement from Iran by many European firms, was a major fissure in the Atlanta
alliance.
The lost revenues by European firms as a result of economic disengagement with Iran and
the efforts to undermine the Russian NORD stream two pipeline that alienated significant
elements of German capital are just two of the issues that will weigh on the trust factor in
U.S. political leadership going forward.
Moreover, there are two interrelated contradictions of this unity strategy that the
Northern neoliberal capitalist class must confront but will be unable to resolve: first, the
impact of the capitalist crisis exacerbated by COVID that has unleashed forces disruptive to
the capitalist order from both the left and the right. And secondly, the attempt by the left
and social democratic movements and nations to develop, however tentatively, from the
obviously failed neoliberal capitalist model.
The U.S.-EU Unity Process Requires a Countervailing Peoples Unity Process
The strategic challenge for the left in Northern countries is countering these efforts
with a coherent anti-capitalist, internationalist, anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacist
and pro-socialist popular movements and structures.
But in the U.S. and Europe, that is easier said than done. Along with the ideological and
organizational fragmentation of the left, one of the main issues that undermines the ability
for the left to cohere in the U.S. and Europe is the cultural and ideological influences of
white supremacist ideology.
The inability to reject the fiction of a "Europe" and its civilizational superiority has
thoroughly corrupted the worldviews and politics of Western leftism. In the face of the
U.S/EU/NATO attacks and subversion on Syria, Libya to Venezuela and Bolivia, instead of
anti-imperialist solidarity, the left engaged in torturous abstract "discussions" around the
merits and mistakes made by these various Southern nations, not recognizing the arrogant
white supremacist positionality of that approach.
Anti-imperialist marginalization is reflective of the shift in the consciousness not only
of the public in various Western nations but of the putative left as well. Even among Black
liberationist forces in the U.S., who have traditionally had internationalism and
anti-imperialism at the center of their worldviews and politics, a strange U.S.-centrism has
emerged. This tendency along with an ironic embryonic racial chauvinism that elevates a
distinctive "African American" construction of so-called global anti-blackness as an
intractable ontological phenomenon, has created serious ideological and political challenges
for anti-imperialist coalitional work.
Yet, those challenges must be met by African/Black left and left forces in general. It is
impossible for forces in the U.S. and Europe to avoid their unique responsibilities situated
at the center of the colonial empires, to the peoples of the world who have the knee of
collective imperialism on their necks.
Bringing this discussion closer to the territory referred to as the United States,
anti-imperialism, and the struggle against U.S. chauvinism among the left must be taken up as
an area of struggle. For African/Black revolutionaries, and indeed for the working and
laboring classes, our gaze must extend beyond our local and national realities. Not because
those realities are unimportant but because we are unable to understand local realities
without understanding the full constellation of class, race and material forces that shape
those structural realities nationally and locally.
Mobilizing our forces to confront and defeat the Pan-European project is not a call to
abstractionism. The organizational challenge is to answer the question of how does local
work, that is, building a real, concrete internationalism, look.
It is not enough to position ourselves in solidarity with the victims of U.S. imperialism.
The base-building work that we engage in must reflect that mutual connection with the
colonized.
That is why the Black internationalist stance is not some exotic addition to radical
organizing but must be seen as fundamental to our movement building work. Understanding that
we are immersed in a system of exploitation and oppression that is global, even though it has
local manifestations, is critical for us to effectively address that perennial task of
determining "what must be done" to advance our forces.
Confronting that question of what is to be done has become even more crucial today amid
the irreversible decline of the capitalist order. And while we commit to building a mass
movement of the exploited and oppressed, we must take account of some troubling developments
over the last four years.
The unveiling of the left patriots who were concerned with "our democracy" and who
enthusiastically propagated the talking points of neoliberalism while remaining silent on
U.S. imperialism, and entered the intra-bourgeois class struggle as junior partners to
neoliberal right, revealed once again that if the left is not prepared to defeat whiteness
and the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination, it will join as the tail to the neoliberal right in
the cross-class white supremacist fascist project led by neoliberals.
Our survival demands that we remain "woke" to that possibility and plan accordingly.
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016
candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor and contributing
columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch
magazine.
"... USAID led at that time by someone named Rajiv Khan, I think it was, and directed by Hill, comandeered the few landing spots at the airport for themselves preventing planes carrying Actual Aid -- you know, food, clothing, meds -- from landing and unloading. ..."
"... I have friends who lived in Haiti at the time and years after the disaster only 6 new residences had been built and the promised factories? As far as I know, never did get built. ..."
"... USAID seems to be about anything but AID. ..."
"... When pressed about the lack of progress made in the (housing) rebuilding efforts, including inabilities to provide shelter, Secretary of State Clinton said "Those who expect progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are working so hard. ..."
USAID led at that time by someone named Rajiv Khan, I think it was, and directed by Hill,
comandeered the few landing spots at the airport for themselves preventing planes carrying
Actual Aid -- you know, food, clothing, meds -- from landing and unloading.
Then Bill was named "Ambassador to Haiti" and the situation Never improved.
I have friends who lived in Haiti at the time and years after the disaster only 6 new
residences had been built and the promised factories? As far as I know, never did get
built.
good example! I vote Power and Sunstein to head USAID! i was a bit more than surprised
that ann garrison never mentioned it's a CIA cut-out, to say the truth.
on edit: ach; you'd meant Bill Fuck over haiti Clinton!
' F*cking the Haitian 99%: Another Clinton Family Project ', October
27, 2015 by wendyedavis (longish, but this key excerpt)
"Sure, Bill and Hill love sweatshop industrial complexes (from nacla.org) more than houses
for Haiti, and love HELP™ (comically ironic acronym):
"On September 20, Haitian prime minister Jean-Marc Bellerive, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation announced their
partnership with the South Korean garment firm Sae-A Trading Company to establish an
industrial park that will create 10,000 garment assembly jobs in Haiti. Without a doubt,
earthquake-ravaged Haiti needs jobs, mainly to provide the country's 1.3 million homeless
with the means necessary to rebuild their destroyed homes.
While little progress has been made on Haiti's immense housing needs since the January 12
earthquake, Clinton assured the investing public that factory development was moving full
steam ahead. These 10,000 jobs, she assured critics "are not just any jobs. These are good
jobs with fair pay that adhere to international labor standards, . . . Haiti is open for
business again."
Well, sure; at a $3.09 daily minimum wage (upped later to $5, but almost no one actually
gets paid at that rate), what's not to love?
"When pressed about the lack of progress made in the (housing) rebuilding efforts,
including inabilities to provide shelter, Secretary of State Clinton said "Those who expect
progress immediately are unrealistic and doing a disservice to the many people who are
working so hard."
Bill Clinton, UN Special Envoy to Haiti, has been equally optimistic about Haiti's cheap
labor prospects, especially since the passing of the Haitian Economic Lift Program (HELP) in
May. The bill would increase the amount of Haitian assembled goods that could be imported
into the United States duty free. "This important step," Clinton said, "responds to the needs
of the Haitian people for more tools to lift themselves from poverty, while standing to
benefit U.S. consumers."
But my, oh, my; the Big Dog loves high-end resort tourism, too. The Marriott opening was
well-attended by toffs, including Senn Penn, as I remember it.
To refresh my second language, Russian, I watch videos in that language (some mixed with
Ukrainian), and thus I heard the excepts of end-of-the-year news conference of the president
of the Russian Federation. In comments I learned a beautiful new Russian word: naglosaxon ==
essentially, and Anglosaxon, but shameless/insolent (naglo- ).
As Putin and others noted, this was a most difficult year. I hadn't read his concluding
remarks until just now. I'm going to copy/paste them along with the question that sparked
them. And it most unequivocally answers a longstanding question Billy Joel asked at a time
that seems like it was only yesterday:
"Viktor Sineok: Izvestia, Viktor Sineok.
"Mr President, we have heard many questions about many different problems but mine is a
little different. Over the past year we have understood, we really felt what it meant to have
a very hard time, including emotionally. You said at the press conference a few years ago
that you put your emotions into your work. Here is my question: what sort of emotions have
you felt in recent years, including this difficult year of 2020? And which emotions would you
like to wish us in the coming year? Maybe you already know how you will toast the New
Year?
"Vladimir Putin: Please, be seated.
"As to which prevailed – the good or the bad You know, each year brings issues we
have to overcome, and each year brings us great joy – both family, and state, national
achievements. Against all odds, we have great achievements that we can and should be proud
of, and we are.
"Yes, the year was complicated, but what would I like to draw your attention to? You know,
this is what I thought about when you were asking me this question. Haven't we faced
difficulties in our recent history? Just now, in this meeting I remembered how hard life was
in the 1990s and the early 2000s. It seemed at that time that there was no light at the end
of the tunnel, that there was nothing. No army, no economy, a ruined social sphere and
skyrocketing unemployment. One out of three lived below the poverty line, but look at what it
is like now.
"Yes, there are problems. Yes, people are still living a very hard life, and there are
very many such people. That said, the foundations of Russian statehood, the pillars of the
Russian economy, and the potential of the state are incomparable with what they were in the
1990s and the early 2000s. This gives us tools we have never had before. This gives us an
opportunity to focus on resolving the most important, most urgent problems without forgetting
about the strategic development goals of the Russian Federation .
"As for toasts, like every person, every citizen, I always have toasts for the New Year.
It is only important that the amount of champagne and other drinks you consume is limited. As
for toasts, the number does not matter.
"Of course, we will all raise toasts to the people in our lives, our family, friends and
colleagues. But I, my family and friends always have one main toast – 'To
Russia.'
"Not to finish my remarks on this pathetic note but on something heart-felt, I would like
to say the following: during this meeting, some of my colleagues asked me what we were
planning to do to support families with children and whether we have plans for this. This is
what I would like to say. Some volunteers told me recently that they have various ideas and
initiatives on supporting children before the New Year. Unfortunately, this year large events
like children's New Year parties have been cancelled due to the restrictions. Large events in
theatres, children's studios and so on have been cancelled as well.
"But still, this is an unusual holiday. It comes with expectations and hopes for the
future and, at the same time, with difficulties. Therefore, before coming here I consulted
the Government and the Presidential Executive Office. We agreed that our country, our state
will also give a gift to our children. It is a small, modest gift, but nevertheless, we will
pay 5,000 rubles to all families with children under 7 years old; 5,000 will be paid for
every child in this age group .
"I would like to thank all of you for our common work. I would also like to wish you all
the best. I hope we have not worn each other out. I would like to hope that the people who
listened to us for more than four hours, for four and a half hours, have found this useful
and interesting.
"For my part, I would like to say that the meeting was very useful for me. We will do all
we can to give the best possible response to all your questions, concerns and problems that
are faced by the country and each Russian family.
"All the best to you!
"Thank you very much." [My Emphasis]
We now most certainly know that the Russians Love Their Children Too. However given the
behavior of the Outlaw US Empire, I very much doubt the same can be said, which makes for a
very dangerous situation. Putin has a truthful sincerity to him that is utterly vacant from
every US President I've known in my life except for JFK--he made a very positive impression
on my very young mind, something that was clearly missing from LBJ and Nixon prior to my
rather abrupt awakening in 1970. Perhaps that's because none ever promised to do anything for
Commonfolk as anything aimed at promoting the people's wellbeing was always opposed. I don't
know how the average Russian feels about Putin's words, but I would be very proud to have
such a leader as focused on the wellbeing of what makes his Nation great--its people.
I wrote this for the next thread; but after reading your comment, it belongs here since
the Trump thread didn't want to have it. "Provincials" as you said who in reality are
gutter-scum.
This may appear to be about getting Trump, but it's more likely about keeping relations
with Russia in the tank. For example, I remarked this morning that the only media report
about Putin's annual, impressive presser was the highly convoluted answer Putin gave to some
recent fake news reports about his family and how they connect to the Navalny crap. It
appears the writing has similar qualities meaning it was produced by similar sources. There's
only one way to properly illustrate this and that's to provide what Putin related.
The Question:
"Alexander Yunashev: Good afternoon, Mr President.
I will take the advice from the young reporter [from the previous question which is also
of some importance]. A number of interesting investigative reports have been released lately,
for example, about your daughter, your former son-in-law Shamalov and other people who are
allegedly close to you. This week the Alexei Navalny investigation also came out. Could you
tell us why a criminal investigation into his poisoning and who did it has not been launched
until now?
Putin: "I see.
"It is no surprise that these fake news stories emerge. It has always been this way and
always will. There is a battle unfolding in the media space. Nothing new here. Do you
remember the terrible developments in the Caucasus and efforts to fight international
terrorism? How was yours truly portrayed by the international media and, unfortunately, in
Russia as well? Remember how they portrayed me with fangs? I remember all this very well.
Still, I have invariably proceeded from the premise that I need to be doing what I believe to
be right for our country. When I do something, I do it not for the sake of pleasing someone
abroad. This is the first part of my answer.
"The second part has to do with my close ones. This report is impossible to read. I
flipped through it, since it talks about me, it seems, but it is such a cut-and-paste job,
with so many things piling up, that I was unable to finish reading it. What did I want to
point out in this regard? The report keeps repeating 'the president's son-in-law' over and
over again. At the end, however, he is referred to as the former son-in-law. This is the
first thing I wanted to say. Still, in the text they keep driving home the message that he is
my son-in-law. So this goes for point one.
"The second point is about 'President Putin forbidding the elite to hold overseas assets.'
There is no ban preventing the elite from holding assets abroad. Public servants cannot have
financial assets abroad. This was the right thing to do. They cannot hold accounts or other
financial assets abroad. The company in question is 100-percent private. The state does not
own a single share in it.
"The next question: who received shares in this company and how? It turns out that the
company released a statement on this matter and what it thinks about these allegations. The
company had a compensation scheme for its senior executives, and Mr Shamalov received stock
just like all other senior executives. There are also other programmes for executives at a
different level, and they received stock following a different scheme. Nothing special
here.
"But ultimately, in my opinion, the most important thing is this: just now, aspiring
journalist Shnurov asked about our hackers. What is written in the beginning? Note that it
says that an unknown, anonymous person is pursuing goals we do not understand and then,
apparently, this anonymous person is tracked down. What do I mean? It is said that what
happened is similar to the events in 2016 when outlawed Russian hackers associated with
Russian military intelligence hacked US Democratic Party members' emails. Here is your
anonymous person. I think we know who that is. Who called these hackers outlaws associated
with Russian military intelligence? It was the US Department of State and US intelligence
agencies, which are in fact the authors. At any rate, it is completely obvious that it was
done upon their instructions . This is the first thing.
"The second is that the reference to the insinuation that our hackers, as they believe,
interfered with US domestic policy in 2016 means that the purpose of this is clear. The
purpose is to take revenge and try to influence public opinion in our country in order to
interfere, of course, with our domestic politics. This is absolutely obvious. It is
absolutely obvious to me and, I think, it will also become clear to the majority of readers
if they pay attention to the things I have just mentioned.
"But to this end, I would like to emphasise the following:
"One should be driven by now I want to address those who ordered these publications,
not those who actually wrote them. I know that if they get an assignment from intelligence
services they have to write it. But those who order these kinds of articles, should not be
driven by revenge or act on the assumption of alleged exceptionalism; instead, they should
develop relations with their international partners based on mutual respect and the
fundamental standards of international law. Then we will be able to achieve shared success in
the areas that are essential to all of us .
"Now, with regard to the patient of a Berlin clinic. I have already mentioned it many
times, and can repeat only certain things. Mr Peskov told me just yesterday about the latest
speculations in this regard concerning our special service officers' data and so on.
Listen, we are perfectly aware of what this is all about. It is about legalisation the
first time around and now. This is not about an investigation. This is about legalising the
materials from the US special services .
"Do you really think we are unaware of the fact that they are tracking locations? Our
special services understand this well and are aware of it. Officers of the FSB and other
special services are aware of it and use telephones whenever they believe they should not be
hiding their location, etc. But if this is so – and rest assured that this is so
– it means that this patient of a Berlin clinic has the support of the special
services, those of the United States in this particular case. And if this is the case, then
it gets interesting and the special services should, of course, be looking after him.
However, this does not mean at all that he must be poisoned. Who cares about him? If they
really wanted to, they would have, most likely, carried it through . His wife addressed
me, and I gave the green light to have him treated in Germany that very second.
"There is one important thing that the general public is not paying attention to. It is a
trick to attack the people at the top. Those who perform it thus propel themselves up to a
certain level where they can say: see who I am talking to? I am a person of the same calibre,
so treat me as a person of nationwide importance. It is a well-known trick that is used in
political dealings around the world.
"I think, though, that something else, not these tricks, should be used to gain people's
respect and recognition. You need to prove your worth either by doing something important
or by putting together a realistic programme with specific goals that can be implemented in a
particular country, Russia, in this particular case .
"I urge the opponents to the current government and all political forces in our country to
be led not by personal ambitions, but by the interests of the people of the Russian
Federation, and to come up with a positive agenda in order to overcome the challenges facing
the country. And we have many of them." [My Emphasis]
The rational flow is probably better in Russian with some key emphasis lost in
translation. But Putin delivered the main point on the ordering and authorship, and IMO it's
the same for much of the crap thrown our way since 1990. The only reason we aren't being
treated to similar material about Biden is he's not one of the current targets, while
legitimate anti-Biden stories are completely suppressed until they disappear under the rug.
IMO, BigLie Media has become close to what State Media was in the USSR.
IMO, BigLie Media has become close to what State Media was in the USSR.
With one big difference, the scope is global and the tools are well, like comparing a
pencil with the most sophisticated printing press. Overall the translation sounds like what I
heard, and the main point should be that Putin is able to talk at length and just about any
subject since it is very hard to think of a pre arranged setup à la 2016 debate when
the questions to be posed had been previously provided to the Clinton team.
For next year conference, if all the players and myself are still around I'll try to take
advantage of the open offer to pose a question on line, I found out too late but there was a
very accesible setup to do it.
One of the questions was chosen by VVP or his team, and it was from a northern village
resident, complaining about the local health services, claiming that there was a single 86
year old nurse in charge, and that she was unable to tell apart a tonsillitis from a
hemorrhoid. I guess this part could have been prepared, to relax a bit a tense atmosphere.
But it had consequences, the mentioned nurse has sued the daring patient, maybe he'll get his
suppository orally, so as to heal his throat.
The WADA allegations against the Russian Federation's sporting establishment ultimately
rely on the testimony of a single witness (who is also the chief culprit if the allegations
are correct), and a tampering process which the manufacturer of the tamper-proof containers
insists is impossible. The WADA investigation has been prosecuted by Canadian bureaucrats,
who have been publicly outspoken in their animus towards Russia. It appears as another
element in the informational war, moved into the sporting environment - one of the few
truly international cooperative ventures humankind currently sustains. The recommended
punishment, albeit, was halved. Most of the sporting doping these days involves "health"
supplements which enjoy official exemption.
As for the Venezuelan gold - Guaido will soon have no standing as any kind of elected
official. Will he be retained as some sort of "leader" anyway, or what is the future of the
regime-change gambit?
Russia will not be able to use its name, flag and anthem at the next two Olympics or at any
world championships for the next two years after a ruling Thursday by the Court of
Arbitration for Sport.
In other words: this doping scandal never existed; but it was never about sports: it is
all - and always was - about propaganda. Russian athletes will continue to compete normally -
only without the Russian symbols.
" Russia banned from using its name, flag at next two Olympics"
"Russia will not be able to use its name, flag and anthem at the next two Olympics or at
any world championships for the next two years after a ruling Thursday by the Court of
Arbitration for Sport."
It's all about NordStream 2. Same as Skripals, Navalny, Hacking U.S. Treasury and other
agencies, Interfering in U.S.elections. If NS2 comes on line Germany will have a source of
clean energy and will receive income as a hub for pipelines to other European countries.
Gazprom will be paid in Euros, not USD inviting others to follow suit. If that happens the
U.S. is in serious trouble that is why it must stop NS2 at all costs.
Since when has USA needed evidence? They blamed Saddam for years that he had "weapons of
mass distraction". And back in 1990, they created the famous "Iraq solders took babies out fo
incubators " lies. Some of us have lived longer than 30 years and we remember all the lies
USA has said.
All part of the plan to cut Russia from the SWIFT in 2021. Once Biden becomes a president,
he will call on all "democracies" to stand up to Russia. He and other "Western democracies"
will hold a joint meeting sometime in 2021 where they will "condemn Russia for all the malign
things Russia has done" and will press Belgium to cut Russia fro the SWIFT.
Whats wore, instead of doing anything, Russia is just sitting and watching them instead of
warming Europe that this will mean Europe will freeze their collective asses next winter when
they won't be able to get Russia gas. Even Iran is warning Russia that they will be cut off
from the SWIFT...
I have to agree with you, the deep state just cannot get over losing Russia to Putin and
nationalism after the thought that they had turned it into their playground in the 1990s.
They are hot to trot to take out Russia and make it bend the knee, whatever the risks are.
Would not put it past them to pull the SWIFT option, although that would have huge
implications for the Europeans who buy so much oil and gas from Russia.
It could end up as an own goal, as the Europeans join the Russian payments network and
start paying in Euros convertible directly into Rubles (especially with Nordstream 2 in
place). The Indians and Chinese are already setup for payments in local currencies. Right now
China needs Russia as an ally, so they would also probably re-source oil imports to take more
from Russia.
Russia has already made itself self sufficient in food etc., and has been working on
payments in local currencies. They are not stupid, and see such a move coming.
"German prisoners of war in the United States" wiki
"There were insufficient American guards, especially German speakers. They mostly supervised
the German officers and NCOs who strictly maintained discipline. [13]
[25]
[12]:33–34
[16] The Germans woke their own men, marched them to and from meals, and prepared
them for work;
[26] their routine successfully recreated the feel of military discipline for
prisoners.
[12]:34 Prisoners had friendly interaction with local civilians
[26] and sometimes were allowed outside the camps without guards on the honor system
[14]:104,223 (Black American guards noted that German prisoners could
visit restaurants that they could not because of Jim Crow laws .
[20]:52–53 ), luxuries such as beer and wine were sometimes
available, and hobbies or sports were encouraged.
[15] Alex Funke, a former POW at Camp Algona, wrote: "We all were positively
impressed" by the U.S. and that "We all had been won over to friendly relations with" the U.S.
[27] Indeed, unauthorized fraternization between American women and
German prisoners was sometimes a problem.
[24]
[16] Several camps held social receptions with local American girls, and some Germans
met their future wives as prisoners." wiki
-------------------
Well, pilgrims. I find this interesting. This could not be more different from the
situation in the Borg/jihadi wars of the last 20 years.
My father was an officer in the US Army Service Forces in WW2. (logistics and base
operations in CONUS) until he started training to be a military government official in Germany.
He was stationed at several posts that had German POWs confined there. I found them
fascinating. I watched them march to and from work singing in four part harmony. Their officers
and NCOs marched them. They did the gardening around on-post housing. I often went out to watch
them work and talk to them. My mother hated that, but then, she was a person of simple hatreds.
The US MP guards watched but did not interfere. These prisoners were veterans of Panzerarmee
Afrika, all captured at the surrender in Tunisia.. They told me so. A lot of them spoke
excellent English, usually with a British accent that they had learned in school. There were a
lot of family men who missed their children.
I find it particularly interesting that a few volunteered to fight Japan and that OKW
arranged through the ICRC for them to receive constructive credits at German Universities for
the courses that they taught each other.
One of the German POWs bagging groceries at the Camp Cook PX (now Vandenburg AFB) broke
down and cried when he saw my little tow-haired 2 year old presence in line with my mother -
I reminded him of his own little blonde daughter back home in Germany. So the family story
goes.
Local German POW camp residuals in Central California - the water tower at a camp is still
visible off Highway 101, a German School, at one time several local German restaurants and
Delicatessen, and still the German-speaking but now aging, Edelweiss Choir.
Elmore Leonard's "Comfort to the Enemy" develops from an incident at one of the OK POW
camps. And, if memory serves, there's at least one sequel set in Detroit, "Up in Honey's
Room", involving the ethnic German community.
As ever with Leonard, great stories, superbly told.
Thank you for this article. I also find it fascinating, albeit through comparing the
conditions of the German (and their allied) POWs in the USA vis-à-vis the conditions
on the European continent experienced by Allied POWs.
"Daddy" went ashore with the Essex Scottish on RED BEACH at Dieppe, where he accumulated
German steel fragments, some of which stayed with him through 2 1/2 years as a guest of the
Wehrmacht and on to the grave.
Some six decades ago, I asked him if he hated Germans. His immediate retort was an
emphatic "NO, I hate Nazis; but I love the German people."
Glad to learn that something similar was true in the USA at that time.
Algona, Iowa, where the mentioned museum is and the POW camp was is about 40 miles SSE
across the border from my hometown in Minnesota. We also had a camp for prisoners who worked
on farms in the area. I dimly recall its barracks on the edge of town being pointed out to
me. They were torn down shortly after the war and replaced with a drive-in theater. That is
now also history.
In the '80s a co-worker who was 5-10 years older than I and who grew up on a farm in western
MN that used POW labor recalled an "Oh S**t" moment from the era. His dad told his older
brother, who was about 15 or so, to drive the pickup truck to the camp and get the crew for
the day. The 5 or 6 guys piled into the back of the truck for the uneventful trip back to the
farm. But when they arrived and he dropped the tailgate he was appalled to see his loaded 410
shotgun laying at their feet. He'd been rabbit hunting the evening before and had neglected
to stow it properly when he had finished. My friend Herb said his brother swore him to
secrecy, knowing their dad would let him have it if he knew.
After I was born on Dec. 7, 1941, my parents took me every summer to my maternal
grandparents hop farm in Oregon. My grandfather Glen Hiltibrand was very strict but
exceptionally honest in overseeing the neighborhood hop pickers in the 40s and 50s before hop
picking machines existed and Mexican laborers came to help during the peak harvest months. In
1945 the government had posted a group of German prisoners to work on our hop farm under an
American foreman. I used to play with the Germans during their breaks and enjoyed being
carried around on their shoulders as I was transferred from one to the other. I learned later
that the foreman who oversaw the prisoners was stealing their hourly pay. When my grandfather
found that out, he confronted him and demanded that he return all the stolen payments to the
prisoners and never steal from them again. The foreman complained bitterly that they were the
enemy and deserved nothing from Americans. He was quickly and forcefully shut up. Somewhere
in my Oregon house I have a picture of me straddling the shoulders of a prisoner and both of
us smiling happily. I'm sure however that their feelings were on children, families and
friends back home.
Very humane treatment. Those prisoners were very lucky, they probably avoided the fate of
the German PoWs in Europe.
In the UK they were used as slave labour until at least 1947. Our Ministry of Works made
an estimated £24M profit a year (at 2.4 £/$) Must be over $1B in today's money.
But at least they were not among the 100,000s who starved and died on the Rhine.
Your father would probably have been looking after civilians, perhaps I/C a town. Did you
come to Europe with him Colonel?
He went over six months earlier than my mother and I. He was always in financial affairs,
dealt with contracting for agricultural goods for US forces all over Europe. He was a Finance
Corps officer after he left the cavalry.
A few years ago one of the prisoners held at Ft Lewis returned to say thanks to his
captors. It was covered in the local TV news, but the Army Times wrote it up.
What this article doesn't mention is what got the local TV news interested. After his
visit to JBML he rode his bike over the pass to Yakima (a considerable feat for a man his age
even with some electric assistance from that bike) to visit one of the hops/Timothy hay farms
where he spent a fall working as a prisoner. Same family still owns it and they remembered
him.
I have read these stories and am pleased that we acted honorably. But my only personal
connection had a different flavor. My mother was an army nurse at a hospital that received
wounded from Europe. She remembered the German prisoners as being arrogant. They seemed to
think that no one could beat the Germans. Her family lived in an area of German farmers. They
all spoke some German. That may have made a difference in her interactions.
Dad (Hugh Hanley) flew as a bombardier with the 461st out of Italy. On December 17th his
plane (theFlying Finger) was taken down over the Czech Republic. Four of the crew were killed
and six bailed out. I grew up listening to stories about the conditions at Stalag Luft I...
sawdust bread and cabbage soup, incredible cold, body lice and boredom. They dug a tunnel and
the Germans knew it but let them keep themselves busy. It was filled in when they got to the
fence. They took the prunes sent by the Red Cross and one of the farm boys made a batch of
hooch. They all got drunk and hung over but it was something to do. Dad's anniversary is
coming up and the family will remember and honor it. Before I retired from teaching, I made
copies of his bluebook and shared it with my students. He was only 21 when he was shot down
and this amazed my kids in high school. I hope they will remember. We must keep the memory
alive.
There were quite a few Italian prisoners of war along with the Germans in Ogden, Utah
during the war....One of them ended up as my great uncle and was sworn in as a citizen the
same year I graduated high school.
The "slave labour" conditions in the UK referred to by JohninMK may have been the usual
case of "pot luck" regarding the camps or off-site workplaces assigned to groups. The famous
Manchester City goalkeeper "Bert" Trautmann
is reported to have declined repatriation in 1948, having settled in the industrial NW of
England.
My paper round in our village just outside Glasgow involved a daily "dice with death" or
at minimum serious injury from the horrendously over-sprung steel gate into the property
occupied by the family of a schoolmate; her dad had been a POW locally and remained. He
always drove a VW, but otherwise appeared well-integrated.
EscapeeS Gaertner and Rossmeisl were wise to to stay in the States. Unlike von Werra who
successfuly escaped from Canada, returned to Germany and was KIA just nine months after
escaping. The Brits made a film about him:
We only had a couple German POWs in Hawaii, probably more internees. But we did have
several thousand Italian POWs, who contributed some art as well as building a Catholic chapel
which also got some use by the small Catholic community in Honolulu.
The USA in WW2 was the least bad place to be a pow in, by far.
Rheinwiesenlager were quite different though.
Being a pov of the Soviets was potluck. Some camps were fairly humane, other werent.
Still, discounting those taken at Stalingrad (who, if they were troops, surrendered as
walking corpses) your odds of surviving Soviet captivity as a German were around 8 to 9 in
10, with hunger being the main killer. This compared very favorably to survival rates of
Soviets taken by Germans, let alone Chinese taken by Japanese. It should be added though that
the USSR had a major famine in 1945 to 1947.
I have a recollection that Patton offered the opinion that we should have instead been
fighting the Russian communists, at least he reached this conclusion after seeing the
behavior of the Soviets inmediately following the end of the war in Europe. He considered
them dangerously untrustworthy, and disinclined to permit the eastern Europeans to exercise
their own judgment about their national futures. He was right about that, anyway.
By Kit Klarenberg , an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence
services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg Western journalists, rights groups
and governments are concerned about the head of a foreign NGO being asked to leave Russia.
However, serious discussion of the organization's background, and funding sources, is
completely absent.
Last week, it was announced that Moscow had revoked the residency of Vanessa Kogan, a US
national who heads the NGO Stichting Justice Initiative (SJI) in Russia. If her appeal against
the decision isn't successful, she'll be forced to leave the country, where she has lived for
over a decade, and has two children who are Russian nationals.
Authorities had been mounting pressure on the organization for some time -- one of its
branches was deemed a foreign agent in 2019, and the group's offices in Dagestan, Moscow, and
Ingushetia have been raided by officials in recent months.
Condemnation from Western media and rights groups was immediate, with the issue framed as
just the latest example of an ongoing autocratic crackdown on rights activists in Russia. The
censures were intriguing for what they both did and didn't say.
Perhaps predictably, references to its almost entirely foreign-borne history, composition,
finances -- which includes support from George Soros' Open Society Foundation (OSF) -- and ties
to dubious Washington-based regime change entities were entirely absent.
Curiouser and
curiouser
Mainstream outlets such as the UK's Guardian newspaper universally referred to Kogan and SJI
as "prominent" and/or "well-known" , a somewhat peculiar characterizations given
neither she nor the organization received virtually any media attention whatsoever in its
nigh-on 20 years of operation, prior to her residency being revoked. Perhaps she and SJI are
only familiar to the small community of Western journalists and activists in the Russian
capital.
In any event, several genuinely high-profile organizations and figures, such as Peter Stano,
European Commission lead spokesperson for external affairs, slammed Kogan's expulsion on
Twitter - SJI's own account on the social network is largely dormant, having accrued just 231
followers in its four-and-half years on the platform.
Conversely, the numerous mainstream articles on the move made virtually no reference to the
organization's funding sources -- The Guardian perhaps went furthest, at least hinting SJI
receives financial support "from abroad" .
A joint statement signed by six NGOs was similarly opaque on the former question, merely
noting SJI was "one of the most active in Russia in bringing cases" to the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and had secured over 250 judgements in favor of complainants.
Curiously, there was no mention of the intimate ties between SJI and two of the cosignatories,
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, an oversight one might think unethical.
The sextet moreover alleged SJI "has always been open and transparent about its work"
, a claim difficult to square with the paucity of information on its official website.
A section on the organization's finances sparingly notes it "raises funds from
institutional and government donors" . Financial statements are provided, but only from
2010 - 2017, and aren't at all informative, merely noting SJI's yearly income, and what it was
spent on. Still, they indicate the vast bulk of its budget is goes on salaries, and grants have
accounted for up to 99 percent of the organization's yearly funding.
The organization's annual reports are somewhat more illuminating, although they're only
available from 2006 - 2011, and the final instalment isn't even publicly listed. They reveal
SJI has at least previously been funded by a number of controversial Western 'philanthropic'
organizations, including Soros' aforementioned OSF.
This vehicle, which bankrolls civil society groups the world over to the tune of many
millions, has been embroiled in countless controversies since its establishment in 1993.
Mounting suspicion of OSF internationally may at least partially explain why SJI has become
ever-increasingly unwilling to divulge who and what is bankrolling it over time. Recent years
have seen numerous governments investigate and curtail the foundation's activities, if not
outright ban it from operating on their soil - among them Russia, after Moscow ruled the
organization represented a threat to national security in November 2015.
SJI's fiscal opacity is assisted by being based in the Netherlands - as its name implies,
it's a 'Stichting', or foundation. While not registered as a charity, it's characterised as
being "without commercial enterprise" , so isn't required to file accounts under Dutch
law.
'Stichtings' are openly advertised as ideal ways for wealthy individuals and corporations to
minimize tax liabilities and discretely distribute funds internationally.
Murky,
incestuous web
The organization's 2011 annual report reveals SJI was established in 2001 by a trio of
Dutchmen, Diederik Lohman, the director of Human Rights Watch's health division, Jan ter Laak,
a theologian, and Egbert Wesselink, a senior advisor at PAX, a Netherlands-based NGO.
Further underlining SJI's foreign nature, its governing board boasts only one Russian
member, Alexandra Koulaeva. Previously an activist with Moscow-based civil rights group
Memorial, she has since relocated to Paris to work for the International Federation for Human
Rights (FIDH).
FIDH likewise receives OSF funding, along with financial support from the European Union,
Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and a variety of Western governments. Wesselink
also sits on the board -- PAX has the same correspondence address as SJI, a post office box in
Utrecht, and also gets OSF funding.
The rest of the board is comprised of Ole Solvang, of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Tanya
Mazur, director of Amnesty International Ukraine, and Viviana Krstecevic, of the Center for
Justice and International Law (CEJIL).
The Council is bankrolled by numerous European states, while CEJIL has a variety of
international donors, among them OSF, and the US National Endowment for Democracy
(NED).
When covert becomes overt
The connection between NED and SJI is supremely striking for more reasons than one. Firstly,
NED was banned in Russia July 2015 on the same grounds as OSF -- the move was widely lambasted
at the time, but any consideration of the organization's shadowy history and activities, and
the role they played in motivating Moscow's decision, was conspicuously missing.
NED was founded in November 1983 - then-Central Intelligence Agency Director William Casey
and senior CIA covert operations specialist Walter Raymond Jr. were instrumental in its
creation.
They sought to construct a mechanism to support groups inside foreign countries that would
engage in propaganda and political action the CIA had historically organized and paid for in
secret. In 1991, senior NED official Allen Weinstein acknowledged "a lot of what we do today
was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA" .
The specifics of CEJIL's activities on behalf of NED, for which it has reaped hundreds of
thousands of dollars over decades, may be relevant to assessing SJI's own work.
In September 2003, the organization granted CEJIL US$83,000 to train citizens in launching
legal action against Caracas via the Inter-American Commission and Inter-American Court of
Human Rights, a little-known yet extremely powerful Washington and Costa Rica-based legal nexus
that claims jurisdiction over the entirety of the Americas, with the agreement of the
Organization of American States.
The grant led to a dramatic increase in frivolous claims brought against the Venezuelan
government by opposition activists, all of which circumvented the country's legal system and
undermined its sovereignty, granting power of judgment to a potentially sympathetic foreign
body.
SJI board member Viviana Krsticevic's official biography on CEJIL's website notes she has
litigated cases before both the Inter-American Commission and Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, strongly suggesting she was involved in these very NED-funded anti-Chavez efforts.
SJI says its purpose is to provide legal support to residents of the North Caucasus who seek
justice for alleged human rights abuses through international bodies such as the ECHR.
When Chechnya declared independence from Russia in 1991, the region became a haven for
criminals, kidnappers, and Islamist warlords, and over the course of two extremely brutal wars,
December 1994 – August 1996, August 1999 - May 2000), enforced disappearances,
extra-judicial killings, torture and unfair trial became routine.
Such crimes continue intermittently to this day, and few would surely argue with the moral
necessity of bringing those responsible to justice and securing redress for those affected.
Nonetheless, the risk of at least some cases being without foundation and/or politically
motivated is significant, a prospect demonstrably magnified when there is a financial incentive
for individuals to bring cases, and organizations specifically seek out individuals to
represent in such legal actions.
For example, in February 2017 award winning British lawyer Phil Shiner, who'd played a
leading role in bringing legal action against British troops for their maltreatment of Iraqis
following the 2003 invasion, was struck off the solicitors' register. It had been revealed he
paid middlemen to seek out claimants, and made "unsolicited direct approaches" to
potential clients.
Could SJI have helped facilitate potentially vexatious claims against Russia in the ECHR?
Krsticevic's position on the organization's board suggests this is a possibility, and the
organization's 2010 annual report makes clear the organization specifically sought out young
Russian lawyers and trained them to bring cases to the Court, and boasts of how financial
rewards paid to out its claimants had almost doubled over the past decade, to an average of
€60,000 - 70,000.
At the very least, the same document makes clear "forcing structural change in Russian
law and policy" was a key objective of its founders from the beginning.
As such, SJI is just one example of how Western powers quietly and surreptitiously influence
politics and policy in "enemy" states via NGOs, under the aegis of democracy and human
rights promotion. While the aims of the foreign funded organizations in question may be benign,
the goals of those bankrolling them are often far from benevolent, and all too frequently left
unexamined.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
francismd 1 day ago 12 Dec, 2020 09:11 AM
what surprises me is Russia allowing NGOs to operate in their country. NGO is a trojan horse.
do you actually believe that these NGOs have good intentions. There is no such thing as free.
DoubleKnot 1 day ago 12 Dec, 2020 09:02 AM
,...Her expulsion is just Russia's auto-immune system in function.
shadow1369 1 day ago 12 Dec, 2020 07:43 AM
If corporate media is rattled that is proof absolute that Kogan was doing their dirty work.
Maybe she should not be expelled, but rather prosecuted for sedition. NATO routinely uses
fake 'journalists' and NGOs to undermine any country which stands against US tyranny.
Ohhho 1 day ago 12 Dec, 2020 12:10 PM
A memo for the Russian government: if the Western MSM condemns your actions then you did
the right thing. If it prizes whatever you did: repent and reverse!
gswew 1 day ago 12 Dec, 2020 09:55 AM
huh? you evicted 1 person but the NGO is still open? why???? Close down all of them!!!!
Jeff_P 1 day ago 12 Dec, 2020 12:22 PM
I'm stunned that other countries allow foreign "NGO's" to operate in their countries. Many
are naught but moles operating to undermine the countries in which they operate. Especially
if that CIA front operation NED is in any way involved.
AnnaMR 1 day ago 12 Dec, 2020 11:36 AM
Oh, poor "prominent" Kogan. How about the sadistic imprisonment/torture of the political
prisoner and great journalist Julian Assange? As for Ms. Alexandra Koulaeva, a former
"activist with Moscow-based civil rights group," who relocated to Paris to "work for the
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)," does she have a shred of decency to tell a
word or two to her FIDH' bosses about the imprisonment of Julian Assange? No? Then Ms.
Alexandra Koulaeva is a presstitute, a regular opportunistic hypocrite with no brains and no
soul.
Srinivas Injeti 15 hours ago 13 Dec, 2020 05:12 AM
99% of these NGO do anti-national activities in the garb of social and welfare activities.
They are also used for spying and creating unrest and sponsoring terrorist and subversive
activities. They are used to create uprisings against the ruling parties which do not bow
down to the diktat of the US and its western stooges. It is better to ban all these NGOs and
their affiliations.
NonDucorDuco 15 hours ago 13 Dec, 2020 05:07 AM
What else could one expect from the Dutch, known for being huge hypocrites with double
standards. They have their mouth full of Human Rights, but are one of the EU countries known
for the highest rate of discrimination against immigrants and treating their own nationals in
the Caribbean part of their kingdom as 3rd class citizens. The Dutch politicians volunteered
to become a loyal sheepdog for the US regime, misusing their Caribbean territorial waters to
provide cover for the destabilizing covert US regime OPS against neighboring Venezuela ~
against the will of the Caribbean natives whom have strong family ties with Venezuela.
Another example is the biased report on the downing of the NH-17 flight, which was clearly a
False Flag OPS.
Jewel Gyn 16 hours ago 13 Dec, 2020 05:07 AM
US is so full of crap and double standards you can't take it seriously. Ditto all these
state-sponsored rights group. They acted immediately when their interests are threatened but
vanish and lay low when it don't suit their narratives.
Money quote: "First thing to do when 'unrest rears its ugly head' is shut down external
communications and kick out any of the Five Eyes operating an embassy in your country. It
happnens so often."
The most unfortunate aspect of these large scale disruption and regime change operations
exploit actual grievances and truly indigenous civil society reform movements, thereby
compromising even the most authentic efforts by the people. Not only that but this casts
serious doubt on both authenticity and goals of all kind of demonstrations and civil
unrest, even in more developed countries, including ostensibly First World.
Take the HK demonstrations for example - how much of it was real, genuine unrest caused
by this or that more heavy handed China policy? truth is we don't know because by
definition, the exploitation of such protest movements - almost always led by supposedly
disaffected youth - includes a very sophisticated propaganda handbook that seeks to
effectively "erase" the controlling hands behind the scenes.
Or, even the BLM movement - a lot that happened with these protests seem to jive with
the instruction manuals per the ARK. Notice how these could be turned on and off - in this
or that city, made to appear organic, when in fact those invisible hands from behind
directed much of the action.
Another aspect that is very noticeable for both the HK and BLM movements is the way they
were directed at some very specific issue that most people would have a hard time
disagreeing with - on its face. Be it political "freedom", new "rules", new "taxes" and/or
police brutality - there are numerous commonalities - too many to dismiss as mere
coincidences.
At the same time, much care seems to have been taken to not allow these protests to be
directed at the actual ruling class, the 1%, the elites, big finance and the
corporatocracy. I always thought it was kind of funny the way these BLM protesters somehow
were not there when Bernie sanders ran his campaign, even though Bernie had their
grievances near the top of his list on the official platform (police brutality, uneven
criminal justice system and prison reform were huge issues for him). Yes, there were plenty
of black youths who voted with the Sanders movement in the primary (the one that was
basically a fraudulent one, due to outright vote flipping, as was exposed by several
credible analysts). But the BLM protests only came into being following the one GF killing
and were directed mostly against police in large cities, and, of course against anything
the federal government could try and do.
Now that Biden is all but declared as 'elect", those protests have died down (except for
a few flare-up points like Portland, where they seem to have taken permanent residence).
Funny that....must be that the "defund the police" was successful and black people no
longer suffer from unequal law enforcement.....so all is well now.....
Sometimes I thought something like this happened in Libya. Libyan army cleared this
town, that city, next town, moving east to west, then just before Benghazi, we get our
consent manufacturing message that Gaddafi said there would be a slaughter in Benghazi. So
NATO just had to attack, to save Benghazi.
After Libya was smashed, turns out a whole gang of British "diplomats & SAS" were in
Benghazi.
thanks b! informative... this ARK is not noahs or boris's... who is behind this grand
scheme?? it seems the idea of keeping lebannon and syria in a state of tension is the
goal.. whose purpose does this serve? it seems like an agenda written in tel aviv, or is it
washington?? who is behind all this?? it seems clear enough that the goal is to coddle
israel... take this money and make sure israel continues to dominate in the middle east and
all other countries are destabilized basket cases... these are sick people behind all
this.. that much is very clear... who would spend money like this??
the really shocking thing is the UK gov't is in on it, but don't want it to appear this
way.. the people in the UK sure are a weird lot.. i think they are weirder then the people
in the USA!
ARK (Analysis Research Knowledge) has a website and its founder, former British diplomat
Alistair Harris has a LinkedIn account you can look up on Google or whatever search engine
you normally use. The company is based in Dubai.
Among ARK's various activities in Syria was managing the Facebook page and probably
other PR for the White Helmets. The propaganda surrounding Bana Alabed and other Syrian
children seems to be of a type similar to White Helmets propaganda - designed to appeal to
people's emotions, particularly women's emotions - so there is a possibility all this
rubbish was being generated by the same organisation.
In the end the target audience for all this propaganda is us, as our support is needed
to justify an eventual US or NATO invasion of Syria and Lebanon.
First thing to do when 'unrest rears its ugly head' is shut down external communications
and kick out any of the Five Eyes operating an emmbasy in your country. It happnens so
often. Kick Out the Five Eyes (I live in one of them). Media Communications (the industry I
work in) is the publicly acceptable term for Information Program, Propaganda, Information
Warfare. It's all the same thing, with Event Management being the sister of and information
program.
I've worked in both areas; external media communications programs and event
coordination and management , often dovetailing the two and switching between roles in
order to 'maximise stakeholder value' for the benefit of the client. Who is the
client..? If the client isn't obvious then Follow the money. It is always the person
paying the bill. Follow the money people... follow the money and you will understand the
objectives of even the most obtuse communications programs.
As an aside, with all the hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons being pumped into
the MENA, 'no one in Government' is able to 'shut down the wars. It's a joke, Government
can track your spending down to the last cent and hit you up with a fine for 'incorrect tax
return' but they 'can't follow the hundreds of billions of dollars' in weapons that gets
flown around the world. Follow the money people. Follow the money and you'll catch the
culprit.
The announcement drew praise from many professional climate activists and groups, perhaps
assuming that Kerry was taking his lead from Bernie Sanders, who has for years been saying
the same thing. Executive Director of the Sunrise Movement, Varshini Prakash said his
statement was an "encouraging move," while 350.org's Bill McKibben, predicted Kerry would
be an excellent climate czar. Yet, as media critic Adam Johnson argued, Kerry's
proclamation should deeply concern progressive activists and will likely lead to expanding
the already bloated military budget.
Kerry is a founding member of the Washington think tank, the American Security Project
(ASP), whose board is a who's who of retired generals, admirals and senators. The ASP also
hailed the appointment of their man, explaining, in a little-read report, exactly what
treating the climate as a national security threat entails. And it is nothing like what
Sanders advocates.
For the ASP, climate change constitutes an "accelerant of instability" and a "threat
multiplier" that will "affect the operating environment," and notes that Kerry will have
three priorities in his role as President Biden's right-hand man. What were those three
priorities? Making sure people in the Global South could eat and have access to safe
drinking water? Reparations? Disaster relief or response teams? Cutting back on fossil fuel
use? Indeed not. For the ASP, the primary objectives were:
A huge rebuilding of the United States' military bases,
Countering China in the Pacific,
Preparing for a war with Russia in the newly-melted Arctic.
"... Last but not least, Exhibit D is the assertion that the "Democratic National Committee's computers were raided by Russian military intelligence to disrupt the 2016 election." That is another assertion, based on allegations listed in indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller. As a federal judge helpfully reminded Mueller in another 'Russiagate' case, which the government later dropped, allegations made in indictments aren't statements of fact. ..."
"... If the phrase "consistent with" jumps out at you here, that's no accident. Notice there is no actual evidence offered for any of these claims, only an insinuation that these alleged attacks would be "consistent" with what the US spies, anonymous sources and mainstream media think might be Russian objectives. That's exactly the claim made by the infamous January 2017 "intelligence community assessment," which the media falsely attributed to "17 intelligence agencies" instead of a hand-picked team involved in spying on the Trump campaign at the time. ..."
"... Now, the Post editors may be privileged people, living comfortably off of Jeff Bezos's Amazon fortune even as their country collapses under pandemic lockdowns. However, it would be a mistake to write off this editorial as a mere product of their vivid and feverish imaginations. After four years of Russiagate hysteria that even the Trump administration has internalized, this kind of rhetoric is actually dangerous . ..."
Democrat Joe Biden, anointed by the US mainstream media and Silicon Valley as the next
president, "must call out Putin's secret war against the United States" when he assumes
office, the Post's editorial board argued this week.
But this "secret war" exists only in their feverish imagination. Each and every one
of the things they list as examples of it consists of assertions based on insinuation at best,
or has otherwise been debunked as outright fake news.
Exhibit A is the "mysterious attacks" that supposedly "targeted" US diplomats
and spies in Cuba, China, Australia and Taiwan. This 'Havana Syndrome' was blamed on Russia last
week in a coordinated media campaign, but the "scientific" paper it was based on
carefully avoids actual attribution, saying only that the vague symptoms were
"consistent" with a posited microwave weapon.
This is an evolution of the original story, which claimed that Russia had used "sonic
weapons," not microwave ones. Even the New York Times later admitted
that the headaches, sleep deprivation and other problems were more likely caused by the loud
chirping of Cuban crickets.
Exhibit B is another doozy, the infamous "Russian bounties" story. The New York Times
claimed in June that
some money captured from local mobsters in Afghanistan was somehow proof that Russia was paying
the Taliban to kill US soldiers – again, not on the basis of actual evidence, but on
conjecture that this was "consistent" with what the CIA and US military said were
Russian objectives.
Thing is, neither the US
intelligence community nor the Pentagon were
ever able to confirm the story, having investigated it for months. It just so happened that it
was brought up just as the DC establishment sought to torpedo President Donald Trump's plan to
pull out of Afghanistan and end the 20-year war that has long since forgotten its
purpose.
Exhibit C is the "looting of valuable hacking tools" from the cybersecurity firm
FireEye, announced earlier this
week. FireEye itself never named the culprit, with its CEO Kevin Mandia only saying it was
"consistent with a nation-state cyber-espionage effort."
That didn't stop the Post from claiming that "spies with Russia's foreign intelligence
service" are "believed" to have hacked FireEye, citing "people familiar with the
matter." Well there you go, anonymous and unverifiable sources asserted it, therefore it
must be true!
Last but not least, Exhibit D is the assertion that the "Democratic National Committee's
computers were raided by Russian military intelligence to disrupt the 2016 election." That
is another assertion, based on allegations listed in indictments by special counsel Robert
Mueller. As a federal judge helpfully reminded Mueller in another 'Russiagate' case, which the
government later dropped, allegations made in indictments aren't statements of
fact.Another nail
in Russiagate coffin? Federal judge destroys key Mueller report claim
If the phrase "consistent with" jumps out at you here, that's no accident. Notice
there is no actual evidence offered for any of these claims, only an insinuation that these
alleged attacks would be "consistent" with what the US spies, anonymous sources and
mainstream media think might be Russian objectives. That's exactly the claim
made by the infamous January 2017
"intelligence community assessment," which the media falsely attributed to "17
intelligence agencies" instead of a hand-picked team involved in spying on the Trump campaign at the
time.
Keep in mind that these are the same spies and media that never saw the demise of the Soviet
Union coming, and have been predicting Russia's impending collapse any day now – for the
past 20 years. So much for their actual knowledge of Russian goals or thinking.
Speaking of 'Russiagate,' the Post has been on the leading edge of that conspiracy theory
from the start. It won Pulitzers for pushing it on the
American public. It also played a key role in smearing Trump's first national security adviser,
Gen. Michael Flynn, so he would be fired – and later cheered his railroading by Mueller.
At least they're consistent , so to speak.
Now, the Post editors may be privileged people, living comfortably off of Jeff Bezos's
Amazon fortune even as their country collapses under pandemic lockdowns. However, it would be a
mistake to write off this editorial as a mere product of their vivid and feverish imaginations.
After four years of Russiagate hysteria that even the Trump administration has internalized,
this kind of rhetoric is actually dangerous
.
That's because the Post is literally in bed with what Trump called the Washington
"swamp," the entrenched US political establishment. What they print is what that
establishment thinks and wants Americans to believe. With Joe Biden in the White House, the
objectives of that establishment and the official US government would be, to use their own
phrase, consistent .
Which is why the Post's "secret war" fantasy is, shall we say, highly likely
to become an actual shooting war with Moscow. As the US and Russia have enough nuclear weapons
between themselves to destroy the world several times over, that can't possibly be good for
Amazon's bottom line. Someone ought to tell Bezos.
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Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for
Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
ByFyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs,
chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and research director
of the Valdai International Discussion Club. This Monday marked 50 years since one of the
20th century's most iconic moments, when German Chancellor Willy Brandt fell to his knees in
Warsaw, emotionally apologizing for the horrors the Nazis had unleashed on Eastern Europe.
It was one of the milestones of the Neue Ostpolitik – Bonn's policy aimed at
normalizing relations with the USSR and its East European satellites. On the day of this
anniversary, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas wrote the following: "Unlike Brandt, we no
longer have to go via Moscow to talk to our eastern neighbors nowadays. Many partners in
Eastern and Central Europe now view Russia very critically – and German foreign policy
must take our neighbors' concerns seriously. In addition to offers of dialogue, clear German
positions vis-à-vis Moscow are therefore important for maintaining trust in Eastern
Europe."
A clear testimony to the fact that, compared to other Eastern European states, Russia is now
of secondary importance to Berlin. This is perhaps the first time it's been stated so
explicitly.
A day later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made several important statements about
relations between Russia and the EU, including the EU's locomotive, Germany. At the annual
meeting of the Russian International Affairs Council, Lavrov pointed out that "apparently,
the European Union has given up any attempts to become one of the centers in the emerging
multipolar world order and is now simply taking its cues from the US. Germany's policy on a
number of issues tells us that this is the course Berlin has chosen, as it reaffirms its
intention to preserve Germany's undisputed leadership within the EU. France's position is
somewhat different. The prevailing notion is that the European Union is now giving up any
ambitions of becoming a center of power in a multipolar world. And if France itself decides to
compete for this role well, we'll see how it goes."
Lavrov also mentioned the concept of a "sham multiculturalism that the Germans and the
French concocted," which they "are promoting, presenting the EU's policies and
initiatives to the world as beyond reproach, a shining example for everyone to see."
Right after that, Russia's top diplomat headed to a meeting with members of the Alternative
for Germany parliamentary party. Lavrov sent a clear message, basically saying that this visit
was his response to the political steps taken by official Berlin. "As for us, we don't have
any objections when German politicians communicate with the Russian opposition, and we never
get in the way of such contacts. Interestingly, Berlin officials prefer meetings with
opposition activists who work outside the system and do not represent parliamentary parties
" Obviously, a nod to the red carpet welcome that Alexey Navalny, a comparatively marginal
opposition figure back home, received in Germany.
While the meeting with a right-wing German party was more of a symbolic gesture, the Foreign
Minister's statement about the EU giving up its independent voice and Germany being the main
driver in this process reflected Moscow's official stance. The Kremlin has decided that it no
longer has any special relations with Berlin.
There is little hope that this connection will be restored in the foreseeable future, since
Angela Merkel's potential successors are even less likely to promote these special ties. The
Navalny case was just the last straw, with the Kremlin astonished by the irrational nature of
Berlin's actions.
Viewed from Russia, it seemed absolutely unnecessary to go against the pragmatic interests
that both countries seemed to have shared in the past. However, the Moscow-Berlin axis, once
viewed as something special, began to deteriorate a long time ago. Now it's over, along with
Russia's dreams about continental Europe changing its allegiances in the new world order and
moving away from its Transatlantic identity towards a more independent role.
And Germany has become the main obstacle for this hypothetical emancipation. That's why
France was mentioned, although the remark was also somewhat sarcastic.
Two months ago, Sergey Lavrov said that Russia was prepared to suspend its dialogue with the
EU, because it wasn't yielding any results. But he was talking about European institutions, not
the continent itself. Now relations with separate European countries are being revised, based
on their stance towards Russia and their role within the European Union. This concludes a very
important phase in Russia's foreign policy that began after the collapse of the Soviet Union
(or, to some degree, even before that) and signifies a transition to a different, probably a
lot less Eurocentric, approach.
The dialogue between Russia and the West, with Germany being a major participant, has now
reached a dead end – there is nothing of substance left to discuss. All the talk about
common values, which has been a focal point ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has
accomplished nothing. Back then it was believed that the whole of Europe, including Russia, was
a space of shared values that rested on the foundation of Western liberalism.
Since the 1990s, Russia has been publicly accused of departing from these values, which was
interpreted as evidence that Russia is, overall, unprepared for meaningful cooperation with the
rest of Europe. There are various assessments of the changes Russian politics has undergone in
this period, but it is apparent that it has moved away from the ideological commitments of 30
years ago. And Russia will not go back to them: not just because its own evolution as a state
has made this impossible, but because the old value system is growing obsolete and is no longer
perceived as universal.
The world has entered a new era, where pluralism of morals and values is becoming the new
normal, no matter how the European Union feels about it. International relations can no longer
be based on countries demanding their partners to conform to a certain set of values.
In this respect, Russia would gladly return to the time when internal political mechanisms
of individual states were not brought up as talking points in negotiations with their foreign
partners. Ideally, Russia would want to go back to the start of the Ostpolitik era – the
first half of the 1970s, before the Helsinki Accords and its "third basket" provisions,
which made respecting human rights and freedoms an integral part of all international
discussions. Back then, it was unthinkable for an expensive and strategically important
project, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to be jeopardized because of the personal history
of a single political figure – no matter how well regarded he is by Western
leaders.
For 30 years after the end of the Cold War, relations between Russia and the West have been
determined (to a lesser and lesser extent with every passing year) by the principles
established during the confrontation period – principles that were to be transformed into
a new form of international cooperation. However, this project has been abandoned, as have been
all attempts to adapt international institutions created in the second half of the 20th century
to the realities of the 21st century.
Stability and cooperation in the late Cold War period were dictated primarily by the need to
strengthen global security and prevent open confrontation. This was perceived as an absolute
priority. Today, Russia and the West no longer attach such importance to their relations
(although the perception persisted for a time, on both sides, even after the Cold War).
The EU is now busy dealing with its own issues. The United States also has problems to tend
to at home, on top of its efforts to contain China. Thus, Russia needs to redefine its
priorities and work out a proper new model of international relations – one that would
have Asia at the center and China as Russia's new key partner.
Simplified, the model of Russian-German relations in 2020 looks like this: Germany, as the
de-facto leader of the EU, no longer views promoting the 'European model' eastward as a
priority. And Russia, which had long viewed its relationship with Western Europe as
intrinsically valuable, has ceased to do so and is seeking closer cooperation with the nations
of Asia.
So, the specific circumstances that brought about the current crisis are just the trigger,
not the underlying causes of the change. Russia and the West are growing increasingly apart in
terms of their priorities. This is happening for objective reasons, but is also compounded by
subjective perceptions.
All of this does not mean, however, that the trend cannot be reversed. Russia, as the
largest country in Eurasia and a bearer of European culture, and Germany, as the strongest
European economy and a country that will have to redefine its identity in the coming years,
will have need of each other again, some day. But this cannot happen until a new world order is
fully formed – one that has little in common with the ways of the last century. The
notion of Ostpolitik was an integral part of the old model, and as one faded away into the
past, the other followed.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Russian collusion disappeared quicker than BLM after the election.
ominous 1 hour ago
one is returning soon
High Vigilante 16 minutes ago
Demsheviks: "There was never Russia collusion, and we have always been in peace with
Eastasia"
LevelHeadedMan 26 minutes ago
Russia narrative was a scapegoat for the real cause. The Democrats lost the working class.
They became the party of the coastal suburbanite liberal middle class. And now they are the
party of fraud. lay_arrow
Francis Marximus 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
I guess all the countries that have a higher GDP then Russia the US has in their pockets.
Hence...Russia has to be the fall guy.
The media and Democrats need simple minded people, people who are easily fooled and people
with no conscience to exist
ominous 1 hour ago
why would Russia interfere?
we're doing a bang-up job ******* things up on our own.
divide_by_zero 1 hour ago
Putin should announce his candidate has won, just to **** either as Soros will run our gov
otherwise
NotGonnaTakeItAnymore 1 hour ago
Let's all recall that genius of the senate from CT, Chris Murphy, who took every
opportunity to stand before anyone who would listen and had a camera, as repeatedly stating
that Russia was involved with Trump and with Hunter's laptop.
And now he's remarkably quiet.
Hey Chris, can you show me the Russians now??? You are so going to lose you next election.
We are sick of your games.
Baba Yaga 1 34 minutes ago
The American election is a farce in itself. Puppeteers from the Deep State have pushed
Biden's candidacy by all means. The American people are just extras in these elections,
nothing depends on them. This is the American way of democracy.
with extra foam 32 minutes ago remove link
That moment of clarity when you realize that modern America is no different than Soviet
Russia.
Bobby Farrell Can Dance 23 minutes ago (Edited)
With much worse propaganda and a bigger budget. Meaning the fall will be harder.
monty42 14 minutes ago
Worse in some ways. The devil that poses as an angel of light is actually more
dangerous.
Ms No 1 hour ago (Edited)
I have to pat the CIA on the back. This has dual purpose.
Both China and Maduro are accused of meddling in this election. They got Russia last time.
Amidst it all, thinking people are demoralized by the assholes who actually believe any of
that absurdity. It's a hideous and cruel weapon.
Well played.
youshallnotkill 1 hour ago
According to Rudy is was Chavez, don't cha know. Guy apparently just faked his death ...
/s
ouluoulu 24 minutes ago remove link
I am watching the death throes of the news business, newspapers, television and magazines.
Blogs, newsletters and individuals releasing their own videos will finally kill it off.
Investigative reporting is nonexistent, replaced by fake news that answers to the "Big
Club" that George Carlin referred to when he said "It's a big club and you ain't in it, you
and I are not in it."
Bobby Farrell Can Dance 18 minutes ago
Western MSM is all paid shilling, fully compromised by 5 Eyes + Mossad intel agency
staffers. The last place I would want to learn about the way the world works, but the first
place I would look to see their projections.
The United States' election victory of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has yet to
be officially confirmed. That requires the 500-plus Electoral College comprising the 50 federal
states to cast the final vote when the constitutional body meets on December 14. Biden holds a
commanding lead of over 300 delegates in the Electoral College, more than 70 above Donald
Trump's quota and decisively more than the 270 threshold required for election to the White
House.
Nonetheless, already one thing is indisputably clear. Biden's nominal victory from the
popular vote tallies is glaring proof that Russia did not interfere in the American
presidential ballot. Not in 2020. And not, we may discern, in 2016, nor in any other election.
Yet the silence in US media over this obvious conclusion is deafening.
Four years of frenetic and unsubstantiated allegations of "Russian interference" have
disappeared overnight, it seems. Poof! Gone! As if by a magic conjuring trick. Now you see it,
now you don't, so to speak.
The New York Times has declared the recent
presidential contest a "great election.. a resounding success free of fraud" . The Department
of Homeland Security pronounced the election to be the "most secure in American history." Other
US media outlets have jettisoned supposed political neutrality and can barely contain their
elation at Biden's electoral victory.
But hold on a moment.
In the months and weeks leading up to the November election, there was a fever pitch in US
media among politicians, national security chiefs, pundits and anonymous intelligence sources
that Russia was allegedly stepping up "interference efforts" to get Trump re-elected.
Those evidence-free claims were predicated on the equally absurd assertion that Trump was a
Manchurian candidate for the Kremlin. That "Russiagate" fable was first spun in 2016 and for
the past four years elaborated into a tangled web to "explain" how a maverick former reality TV
star had been elected to the White House.
Suddenly, however, the Democrats and supportive US media are now asserting that the voting
process was impeccable and unblemished by any malfeasance. Of course they would say that in
order to bolster legitimacy of Biden's win against the Republican White House incumbent Donald
Trump. But the thundering takeaway which the US political class and media are bizarrely
ignoring is that Russia did not interfere not in the 2020 race nor in any other election.
Russia has always categorically said it is not meddling in US politics and its electoral
process. Turns out that Russia is de facto vindicated in its protestations against American
slander.
The "Russiagate" nonsense was hatched by Democrats, their supportive media and intelligence
agencies because they could not come to terms with the reality of why Trump beat the then
establishment-ordained candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Could it have been because Clinton
and the Democrat party was repudiated by popular sentiment due to perceived corruption and
overseas wars? No, another "explanation" had to be found. And the US political establishment
came up with the "Russian interference" narrative.
No matter that the Mueller investigation found after 22 months of probing and hundreds of
millions of taxpayer-dollars spent that there was no evidence of "Russia collusion" with the
Trump campaign. Nevertheless, Mueller and the Democrats, their media and intelligence backers,
persisted in the spurious notion that Russia meddled in the 2016 election and, allegedly, was
continuing to meddle, purportedly with even more sophisticated, nefarious techniques.
How can US politicians, intelligence officials and media credibly claim that Russia
interfered in 2016 and in mid-term congressional elections in 2018, but now in 2020 it
evidently did not? The most logical explanation is simply that Russia never did.
Four years of hysterical American accusations against Russia have transpired to just that:
bogus hysteria . US politicians, media and so-called intelligence gurus should be held to
account for fabricating what is perhaps the biggest hoax ever played on the American
public.
Though, one can be sure that they won't be held accountable in a formal way. Venal power
doesn't work like that. And the US political system has built-in layers of self-protection for
the political class never to be prosecuted. But in an informal no less real way, the system is
being held to account by the wider public who are increasingly holding it in contempt and
distrust. The political class and their plaything media are losing the moral authority to
govern. This goes beyond mere Trump Derangement Syndrome. The systematic lying and deception
over alleged Russian interference perpetrated on such a grand scale has fatally damaged the
credibility of American institutions. Not just in the US, but around the world too.
Equally lamentable is the corrosive, damaging effect that the bogus hysteria has had on
bilateral US-Russia relations and international tensions. Relations are at a dangerous all time
low comparable to the depth of the Cold War. This has in turn sabotaged diplomatic efforts to
strengthen arms controls and global security. The anti-Russia hysteria has led to the US
abandonment of key nuclear weapons treaties, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty
and soon the New START.
The Russophobia that has been whipped up as a political weapon against Trump over the past
four years is not something that can be easily put aside. It has engendered deep-seated
hostility against Russia. During the presidential debates, Joe Biden vowed that the would take
a tough stand against Russia for "interfering" in US politics. The incoming administration is
being mentally held hostage by its own Russophobia which was cultivated on entirely false
grounds.
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It is disturbing how the US nation has been dragged into an obsession about alleged Russian
malign activities, an obsession which turns out to be a mirage. Not for the first time either.
Recall the Cold War Red Scares and McCarthyite witch-hunts which poisoned American society.
The implications are daunting. How can bilateral relations with Russia be restored? How can
an intelligent dialogue be conducted with a nation whose leaders are so self-deluded and
irrational?
Moreover, this is a nation whose leaders presume to have the prerogative to use overwhelming
military force whenever they deem so. It is not unlike the driver of a juggernaut vehicle on a
precipice who is hurtling along while out of his brain on misconceptions.
SHARON TENNISON. Interview with her here : worth your time.
She's been tirelessly working to improve American-Russian relations for three decades: ordinary
people, face-to-face. Probably the greatest thing she has achieved is that Putin –
whom she met way back then
– certainly knows what she is doing and I'm sure that he feels he has had enough of
Americans, he thinks of her and tries again.
SKRIPALMANIA. Yulia phoned home, on
a burner it seems ; living apart, she's OK, dad has a tracheostomy tube; dad never wrote to
Putin asking to come back and did not give interviews to Urban .
WESTERN VALUES™. The country that judges other countries' elections just had an
election. Somebody won. One day a court will tell us who. Lots of evidence of fraud:
here ,
here ,
here and
here . And who would contract out their elections to machines that can be hacked by anyone ? (Note the
date and source of the video – three years later, in CNN-land, the machines have become
100% solid.)
The Russian government is set to expel a prominent human-rights activist, with former
president Dmitry Medvedev claiming there's a co-ordinated campaign by international
organizations to stoke unrest in the world's largest state.
Vanessa Kogan, the director of the Stichting Justice Initiative project, told Britain's
Guardian newspaper that Russian authorities had notified her of the revocation of her residency
permit. She will now have two weeks to leave the country, where she has lived for more than ten
years. She also has two children with a Russian national.
The Stichting Justice Initiative is an NGO which, it says, provides legal support to
Russians in cases of perceived human rights abuses. It has been less open about its funding in
recent years, but in 2010 and 2011, it was bankrolled by the Dutch government and the Hungarian
billionaire George Soros. via his 'Open Society' pressure group, which has been banned in
Russia and declared "undesirable."
Kogan's work has previously focused on the North Caucasus region, where her group has
represented people alleging victimization at the hands of authorities. Its activity in the
majority Muslim area has reportedly brought tensions with local leaders, such as Ramzan
Kadyrov, the head of the Republic of Chechnya.
Now the Deputy Chairman of Russia's Security Council, Medvedev, who has also served as
Russia's prime minister, told reporters on Thursday that well-funded foreign groups were using
networks in Russia to "exacerbate the internal political situation in certain regions,
including through Russian non-profit groups they associate with."
He went on to add that these NGOs "depend on internet media, and use various far-fetched
reasons for rewriting the events of our national history." He called this a "large-scale
information campaign, being conducted to discredit the leadership of some specific territories
and Federal Subjects."
In November, the country's State Duma debated new legislation that would expand the
definition of foreign agents, enabling the label to be applied not only to NGOs and media
organizations, but also to ordinary citizensIn 2018, the United States imprisoned a Russian
citizen, Maria Butina, claiming that she was a foreign agent operating on behalf of Moscow.
Authorities allege that she had infiltrated conservative-leaning organizations to promote
better ties between Washington and the Kremlin. She served five months in prison, some of it in
solitary confinement, before being deported back to Russia.
Zeta029 43 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:01 PM
This is a most dangerous situation. Being unable to openly defeat Russia on a battlefield
(not that they didnt try, most recently in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria), the Empire is
focusing on certain NGO and people like Navalny to weaken the leadership of Russian
Federation. This is the undisputed truth and so these measures should be swift and harsh, for
National Security sake.
cangoroo Zeta029 16 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:28 PM
And those NGOs are funded with "printed money" in the Empire. Now Australia has joined the
money-printing party of their big-brother US; at the rate of $5billion a week. Money-printing
means PIRATING money from the holders of their money, including foreign CentralBnks like
China's. It was SEA-PIRACY on which the Empire Britannia was built during the reign of QE1 in
the 16th century. Genes, I guess.
Count_Cash Zeta029 18 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:26 PM
It's a multifaceted interference in Russia. The biggest play is economic , the next play is
internal friction based on wealth disparity, the third is to create perception that
westerners have better rights. The medium is external media, internal media, external courts,
attacks on internal courts and political institutions - But there is one thing the western
strategists haven't figured - nuclear weapons and their deterrent is aimed at preventing not
only military attacks but also other attacks that attempt to politically and economically
dominate Russia. While the west think all this activity has no cost, as was shown in the
places you reference, there can be a military cost for the western games of interference and
pushed far enough it could be a nuclear one. Nuclear Weapons their not just for countering
military threats!
TheFishh 40 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:04 PM
Funded by Soros and Dutch government? There you have it. I wonder what Netherlands and the US
would do, if some organizations operating there were getting money from Moscow. They'd lock
up everyone involved in it. They wouldn't just be told to go back to Russia.
Nonenity TheFishh 16 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:28 PM
They ought to be in OP and making their reports on the war crimes and human rights abuses
there - ongoing since before 1948...
Madbovineuk 1 hour ago 3 Dec, 2020 12:58 PM
Expel all NGOs from Russia especially those with American ties
WhoWantsAIDS Madbovineuk 13 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:31 PM
As an American if Putin wants to send Soros workers or sympathizers home in a box he would be
doing the world a favor. 💯🔮
Count_Cash Madbovineuk 25 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:19 PM
Yes just boot her and the rest out. They are just trouble makers, if they were straight up
they would be running to Iraq or Afghanistan to help people abused by the US.
Timothy-Allen Albertson 1 hour ago 3 Dec, 2020 12:56 PM
Soros, the nazi, needs to be hanged for Crimes Against Humanity. Too bad the Russian
Federation did not imprison this Soros agitator for a long term at hard labor.
She should work all her life, and still I dont think she would repay the harm she did.
Badgecub 1 hour ago 3 Dec, 2020 01:25 PM
Kogan, if you are worried about human rights abuses go to the UK and help Julian Assage
Nonenity Badgecub 18 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:26 PM
And all of those many, many US folks in prison for long periods, mostly for minor offences,
because it was their third time stealing a slice of pizza. You don't hear/read/see it on the
MSM, but these prisoners are all but slave labor and usually for multinational companies like
S...bucks... Indeed in at least two states they are slave labor because they do not even get
the cents (well under a dollar) per hour that prisoners in most states do. And should the
prisoners refuse to do this labor, they often end up in solitary confinement - well known to
be psychological torture...And there are political prisoners as well (not called that, of
course, given who and where they are)...not to mention Guantanamo and the various Black Sites
around the world and controlled by the CIA.... Stephen Kinzer's book on The Poisoner in
Chief...a good read about the post war decades and the human rights abuses by the
exceptionalist nation...
TheFishh Badgecub 35 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:09 PM
Yes. And these sorts of contradictions is what gives away these so-called western human
rights organizations as a bunch of nefarious fakes.
DoubleKnot 1 hour ago 3 Dec, 2020 01:14 PM
NGO - Non-Gentile Organization
TheFishh DoubleKnot 37 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:07 PM
BING!
Marko Podganjek 15 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:29 PM
I thought that such organizations and people were expelled from Russia long ago. Because on
west they want to imprison people that were just on trip in Russia. Not to say if somebody
would get money from Russia. The relations and approaches here has to be comparable on both
sides.
Smanz 20 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:24 PM
Anything linked to Soros generally only exists to create chaos and ruin the country it is in.
dunkie56 8 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:36 PM
i will say it again...throw the West and it's agents provocateurs out of Russia...all Western
companies must leave forthwith and restrict who comes into Russia and tighten the borders!
Preferably raise up the iron curtain once again!
SrJustice 5 minutes ago 3 Dec, 2020 02:39 PM
Politicians in the US think that improving relations with other countries is a bad thing
because they need enemies, enemies are better than friends to have for Washington, very
twisted minds. They just want to scare their people so they can suck more tax money and spend
on the weapons manufacturers, where most of those politician invest their money.
According to the regulator, the direct pipeline from Russia to Germany impedes competition
on European Union energy markets and "violates the interests of consumers." The fine
amounts to 10 percent of Gazprom's annual revenues – the maximum allowed penalty. Other
companies participating in the construction of Nord Stream 2 have been fined $100 million.
UOKiK gave Gazprom and its partners 30 days to terminate financing agreements and
"restore" competition.
"The construction of Nord Stream 2 is a clear violation of market regulations," UOKiK
head Tomasz Chróstny said in Warsaw on Wednesday, as cited by Bloomberg. Gas prices for
consumers must be "the result of fair competition, and, once Nord Stream 2 is operational,
it's likely that gas prices will increase and there'll be a risk of interruption to
supplies," he said.
Warsaw has long been opposing the expansion of the gas link directly connecting Russia with
Germany, Europe's biggest market for the fuel, arguing it would deepen Europe's dependence on
Russian energy. Meanwhile, many European nations have stressed that they want to diversify
their energy sources, and Nord Stream 2 could be one of the ways to achieve that.
In 2019, Poland's President Andrzej Duda met US President Donald Trump to discuss the
possibility of halting the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 project. Warsaw also inked
several contracts with American companies to replace Russian supplies. The intention was to
make Poland the future center for the re-export of US liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the
region, according to US Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher.
The US administration has repeatedly criticized the Nord Stream 2 project, aiming to derail
it in order to boost sales of American LNG to Europe.
The construction of the project's two pipelines, which will extend from the Russian coast to
Germany and on to other European countries through the Baltic Sea, is nearing completion. It
will have the capacity to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year, and Berlin has
insisted it will help Germany meet its growing energy demand as it phases out coal and nuclear
power.
or Donald Trump, truth is a matter of convenience, with facts entirely optional and plenty
of space allowed for make-believe. Yet in American public life, our current president is far
from being the sole purveyor of fictions and falsehoods. The very institutions that citizens
count on to distinguish between fact and fable engage in their own forms of mythmaking. While
they may steer clear of telling outright lies, they dispense no small amount of drivel,
concealing actual truth behind a veil of illusion.
Allow me to offer an illustrative example in the form of a recent column by the
Washington Post's David Von Drehle, a seasoned journalist now installed in that paper's
stable of political commentators and called upon twice weekly to reflect on the fate of
humankind.
The title of Von Drehle's essay poses a question: "Joe Biden says America is back. Back to
what?" Von Drehle then proceeds to spell out his own answer to that what. Yet in doing
so, he packages his views in a specific historical context. It's that context that is
instructive.
Let us acknowledge that the Biden team is no more likely to take its cues from some
garden-variety pundit than from members of the outgoing administration. Van Drehle's policy
recommendations -- that Biden should "end the mollycoddling" of Saudi Arabia, insist that China
"play by the rules," and knit "the Americas into a hemisphere of happiness" -- carry about as
much weight with the incoming administration as do Mike Pompeo's opinions, i.e. next to none
whatsoever.
Yet this is not to say that Von Drehle's column is just so much hot air. From his perch at
the Post, he is a small, but not inconsequential player in a grand project to which
members of the foreign policy establishment swear fealty. The aim of that project is to salvage
and rejuvenate claims of American Exceptionalism that Donald Trump mangled and trashed nearly
beyond recognition.
The establishment's preferred version of exceptionalism emphasizes not America as exemplar
-- that's for sissies -- but America as the instrument chosen by God or Providence to direct
history itself. Pumping new life into this hoary old notion requires persuading Americans today
that before Trump screwed things up, the United States had history well in hand, with the world
taking its cues from Washington.
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.426.0_en.html#goog_738456037 Ad ends in
15s
Von Drehle purports to believe that such a world actually existed. Furthermore, he believes
that a sufficiently savvy U.S. president can restore that world -- all that's required is
assertive American leadership. Nor is he alone in entertaining the prospect of going "back" to
that triumphal time, before Trump appeared on the scene and messed everything up. Indeed, take
Biden's rhetoric at face value and our next president may well share in this fantasy.
So of considerably greater significance than Von Drehle's policy prescriptions is the
historical wrapping in which they arrive. It's history with a specific and carefully selected
time horizon. For Von Drehle (and probably for Biden), the history that matters begins with the
end of World War II, a moment that ostensibly inaugurated "seven decades of bipartisan [foreign
policy] consensus." Providing a foundation for that consensus was a "win-win view of America's
role in the world." Generations of postwar leaders, according to Von Drehle, understood that
"the long-term interests of Americans were best served by the gradual expansion of peace and
prosperity worldwide." The result was "an expansive, internationalist approach" to basic
policy. This, in sum, is the past that Von Drehle is selling as a roadmap to a happy
future.
Now such assertions may not qualify as bald-faced lies in a Trumpian sense, but taken
together they amount to a fairy tale. The postwar bipartisan consensus was never more than
partial and tentative at best. When put to the test -- with Vietnam as the most vivid example
-- it gave way. Nor did the Cold War and the accompanying nuclear arms race reflect a win-win
view of America's role in the world. The Cold War was a zero-sum game, pitting us against them
-- "better dead than Red," remember?
As for the United States promoting the gradual expansion of peace and prosperity worldwide,
that claim is difficult to square with Washington's marriages of convenience with sundry
dictators, involvement in numerous coups and assassination plots, and the U.S. penchant for
killing people in faraway places, unmatched by any other nation on the planet. Since 9/11 in
particular, war and disorder rather than peace and prosperity have been America's principal
exports. All of this predated Trump.
Von Drehle is eager for the United States to resume "its rightful place in the world order"
as "the friend of freedom and the scourge of tyrants." Forget just for a second that the United
States befriended a long list of tyrants: Batista, Somoza, Marcos, Noriega, the Shah of Iran,
Mubarak of Egypt, and, until 1990, Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Of greater relevance to the present
moment is this question: who or what assigns nations their rightful place in the world order?
This is not a matter upon which columnists in the employ of the Washington Post are
inclined to reflect, preferring to assume that history's decision is irreversible: we are
Numero Uno. Period. Full stop. Been that way forever.
Yet this is a form of madness, as utterly detached from reality as Trump's insistence that
he won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Von Drehle is peddling tripe. He pays no price for doing so. In some respects, doing so
defines the essence of his job. In a couple of days, he will produce another column, further
embellishing the nation's achievements as friend of freedom and scourge of tyrants, as will his
various counterparts at the Post, the Times, the Wall Street Journal , and
other prestige outlets.
They will collaborate in minimizing the moral ambiguity that permeates America's past. They
will shrug off crimes or lock them away in a box labeled "Sorry. Didn't Mean To." They will
inhibit learning and bury truth.
And they will get away with it.
Andrew Bacevich is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and TAC's
writer-at-large.
I'm not sure that "they" can continue to "get away with it." The US financial situation
is not good. The US government is dysfunctional, and US society as a whole, the combination
of capital and people, is no longer particularly competitive. No matter what Biden, et al,
think they are going to do with respect to leading the world, it's not clear that the world
will pay any attention, or that the the US can even afford it.
It's a tragic, in the classic sense, situation, as almost everything that has weakened the
US empire has been self inflicted.
All true. To see a better reflection of America, maybe one should read Serghei Lavrov's
interviews and press conferences:
https://thesaker.is/foreign...
or see how the Chinese are trolling Australia in the aftermath of the scandal of the
Aussie special forces killing (with intent) scores of civilians (probably far less than the
US troops) in Afghanistan - just as a fast track on how Americans are regarded outside
their border...
While Mr. Von Drehle sees and praises Dorian Gray, the world at large watches with
fascination another patch of horror coming up on his portrait...
I totally agree with Bacevich. There is really nothing that generates global more
resentment than this kind of American hubris, American arrogance:
The establishment's preferred version of exceptionalism emphasizes not America as
exemplar -- that's for sissies -- but America as the instrument chosen by God or Providence
to direct history itself.
"Yet this is a form of madness, as utterly detached from reality as Trump's insistence
that he won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Von Drehle is peddling tripe. He pays no price for doing so. In some respects, doing so
defines the essence of his job. In a couple of days, he will produce another column..."
As will Andrew J. And you can be sure Bacevich will use any topic at hand to slip in as
many backhands against President Trump as he can muster. Once a RINO, always a RINO. But
despite all the snide slurs against the President here & elsewhere, Bacevich's
preferred candidate, stately Joe Biden may soon dignify the Oval Office (maybe); & then
Andrew can spend the next four years defending him, just like Von Drehle.
America HAS NO memory, particularly regarding the heinous aspects of its past. Who
remembers the Indian removals, Chinese and Japanese exclusion acts, or the Philippine
insurrection?
As success and comfort displace esteem and integrity and corruption turns pervasive the
virtuous order of society is overturned: independent, principled, talented spirits are
typically encountered only well away of the mainstreams of media while middling
obsequiousness and venality rise above their betters in pubic view.
Tripe, deception and corrupton are what one can expect from corporate governance no
matter which wing s dominant. We haven't seen the
worst of it yet, though we are getting there faster than we thought.
I agree w/Bacevich. I love how R's and D's pretend they are different.
'The America First policy is gone' scream the Laura Ingraham's as she (and the other
Republican Hawks) lament a possible decrease in hostility with China and Iran. The
Democrats pronounce, 'America is back, now we are really going to get tough with Russia and
do regime change in Venezuela right!'
Here is the new boss, same as the new boss. We will continue to waste our treasure and
energy harming other countries and neglect ourselves until we are spent.
Editor's note : US President-elect Joe Biden nominated Neera Tanden, a close ally of
Hillary Clinton and president of neoliberal DC think tank the Center for American Progress, on
November 29 to serve as director of his administration's Office of Management and Budget.
Tanden is notorious on Twitter for her aggressive attacks on the left.
In response to the nomination, The Grayzone is reprinting this
June 20, 2016 report by Ben Norton.
"Unless we take the oil from Libya, I have no interest in Libya," Donald Trump declared in
an April 2011 interview on CNN's "Newsroom."
The U.S. government was considering military intervention in the oil-rich North African
nation at the time. Trump said he would only participate if Washington exploited Libya's
natural resources in return.
"Libya is only good as far I'm concerned for one thing -- this country takes the oil. If
we're not taking the oil, no interest," he added.
NATO claimed its U.S.-backed bombing campaign was meant to protect Libyans who were
protesting the regime of longtime dictator Muammar Qadhafi. Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations, used NATO's own materials to show that this was false.
"In truth, the Libyan intervention was about regime change from the very start," Zenko
wrote in an exposé in Foreign Policy in March.
Trump was not the only figure to propose taking Libya's oil in return for bombing it,
however. Neera Tanden, the president of the pro-Clinton think tank the Center for American
Progress, proposed this same policy a few months after Trump.
"We have a giant deficit. They have a lot of oil," Tanden wrote in an October 2011
email
titled "Should Libya pay us back?"
"Most Americans would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit. If we want
to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil rich countries partially pay us
back doesn't seem crazy to me," she added in the message, which was obtained and first
published by The Intercept .
Liberal hawkishness
Tanden is a close ally of Hillary Clinton, and is frequently named as a likely
chief-of-staff in a Hillary Clinton White House. The Center for American Progress, which Tanden
leads, was founded by John Podesta, a key figure in the Clinton machine.
Podesta is the chairman of
Hillary's 2016 presidential campaign, and he previously served as chief of staff under
President Bill Clinton. With his brother Tony, John also co-founded the Podesta Group, a public
affairs firm that has
lobbied for Saudi Arabia , among other countries.
Tanden has expressed hawkish views, although in a statement to Salon she strongly opposed
being described as hawkish. The New York Times has described Hillary Clinton as
more hawkish than her Republican rivals , although it still endorsed her for president.
The Center for American Progress president
invited hard-line right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in
Washington, D.C. in November, after he had spent months aggressively trying to jeopardize the
Iran nuclear deal.
Tanden does not comment on international affairs much, but her tweets provide some insight
into her hawkish views, which do not reflect the official policy of the Center for American
Progress.
In September 2013, when the Obama administration was preparing to bomb Syria, she tweeted support,
writing, "On Syria, while I don't want to be the world's policeman, an unpoliced world is
dangerous. The US may be the only adult in the room left."
Just over a week later, the administration
backed off of its plans, in response to enormous backlash -- and in fear that it would end
up with another Libya on its hands.
During the lead-up to the war in Libya, Tanden expressed support for military intervention.
She suggested that Americans should
be "chanting" for Qadhafi's ouster.
Days after the NATO operation was launched, she wrote , "To liberal friends
worried re Libya, is there better reason 4 use of US power than 2 protect innocent civilians
from slaughter by a madman?"
Like many liberal figures who supported the NATO bombing of Libya, she
stopped talking about the country between 2011 and 2014, while it was roiled by violent
chaos and extremism.
These tweets came before the October email in which Tanden suggested taking Libya's oil in
return for bombing it. Trump made the same proposal several months before, in April.
After this article was published, Tanden stressed in a statement to Salon that her views do
not reflect those of the Center for American Progress, which did not take a position on
Libya.
She claimed being labeled "a hawk is a ridiculous caricature," adding, "I opposed the Iraq
war from the beginning." Tanden noted that the Center for American Progress "was among the
first think tanks to lay out concrete plans for ending the war in Iraq." She also said that she
does not support putting U.S. troops in Syria.
"CAP is a think tank," Tanden stressed, referring to the organization by its acronym. "We
have internal discussions and dialogues all the time on a variety of issues. We encourage the
deliberation of ideas to spur conversation, push thinking and spark debate. We do this in
meetings, on phone calls and yes, over e-mail. One internal e-mail exchange among colleagues --
which was leaked to another organization -- or a few tweets does not constitute a published,
official policy position."
Salon never once stated that Tanden's views reflect the Center for American Progress'
official policy, but Tanden accused Salon of implying this.
Leftist critics have long lambasted the Democratic Party's militaristic foreign policy,
arguing it is not much different than the GOP's. This exploitative idea proposed by both Trump
and Tanden lends further credence to the argument that, when it comes to the U.S. empire, the
Democratic and Republican parties are much more similar than their adherents make them out to
be.
A strange mix
At the time of his April 2011 CNN interview, Trump was considering running as a Republican
in the 2012 election. His nationalistic rhetoric then was very consistent to that of today.
Trump lamented that the U.S. was "just not respected" and had become "a laughing stock
throughout the world." He hoped that he could reverse this supposed trend, just as he now
promises to "make America great again."
Trump's proposal on Libya was consistent with his views on Iraq. He
declared at the American Conservative Union's 40th Conservative Political Action
Conference, in 2013, that the U.S. should "take" $1.5 trillion worth of Iraq's oil to pay for
the illegal war.
In his presidential campaign today, Trump has made similar proposals. His foreign policy is
a strange mix of skeptical non-interventionism and hawkishness.
In the 2011 CNN interview, Trump expressed skepticism about the rebels in Libya. "They make
the rebels sound like they're from 'Gone With the Wind,' very glamorous," Trump said. "I hear
they're controlled by Iran. I hear they're controlled by al-Qaeda."
The rebels had very little to do with Iran. Iran did express support for the opposition to
Qadhafi's dictatorship, but it
staunchly opposed Western military intervention, which it warned was hypocritical,
neocolonial in nature and motivated by Libya's large oil reserves.
By no means were all of the rebels extremists, but there were al-Qaeda-linked elements in
the opposition to Qadhafi. Human rights groups documented atrocities committed by extremist
rebels, including
ethnic cleansing of black Libyans .
After the NATO war toppled Qadhafi, the country was thrown into chaos. Rivaled forces,
including extremist groups such as Ansar al-Sharia and eventually ISIS, seized control of
swaths of the country, and weapons from Qadhafi's enormous cache ended up in the hands of
extremist groups throughout the region. To this day, large parts of Libya are not under the
control of the internationally recognized government.
Disastrous Libya war
Hillary Clinton played the
leading role in rallying up U.S. support for the NATO war. Reports have since shown that
the Pentagon was skeptical of U.S. involvement at the time, but, under the leadership of
Secretary of State Clinton, the Obama administration portrayed it as a humanitarian
mission.
President Obama insisted at the beginning of the intervention, "Broadening our military
mission to include regime change would be a mistake." The State Department likewise said
"President Obama has been equally firm that our military operation has a narrowly defined
mission that does not include regime change."
Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates later told The New York Times, "I can't recall any
specific decision that said, 'Well, let's just take him out,'" referring to Qadhafi.
Micah Zenko, the Council on Foreign Relations scholar, showed this to be false. "This is
scarcely believable," Zenko rejoined in his detailed report
. "Given that decapitation strikes against Qaddafi were employed early and often, there almost
certainly was a decision by the civilian heads of government of the NATO coalition to 'take him
out' from the very beginning of the intervention."
"The threat posed by the Libyan regime's military and paramilitary forces to
civilian-populated areas was diminished by NATO airstrikes and rebel ground movements within
the first 10 days," he explained. "Afterward, NATO began providing direct close-air support for
advancing rebel forces by attacking government troops that were actually in retreat and had
abandoned their vehicles." The military intervention continued for more than seven months.
Rebel forces went on to brutally murder Qadhafi, sodomizing him with a bayonet. When
then-Sec. Clinton heard that he had been killed, she rejoiced in front
of TV cameras, joking, "We came, we saw, he died!"
In April, Obama singled out U.S. support for the NATO war in Libya as the worst decision of his
presidency.
Zenko warned that the "intervention in Libya shows that the slippery slope of allegedly
limited interventions is most steep when there's a significant gap between what policymakers
say their objectives are and the orders they issue for the battlefield."
"Unfortunately, duplicity of this sort is a common practice in the U.S. military," he
added.
Interestingly, Trump himself cautioned in an interview on Fox News' "Fox
& Friends" in March 2011 that U.S. intervention in Syria would be a "slippery slope."
"It is a slippery slope and more and more, you realize that we're over there fighting wars
to open up these governments and they would have opened up themselves," Trump said, expressing
skepticism about U.S. military involvement very early on in the war.
Clinton called for the exact opposite in Syria. She would go on to oppose diplomacy and
insist the U.S. should support the "hard men with the guns."
DNC hack
Trump's unusual mix of anti-interventionist and exploitative foreign policy views are
highlighted in the Democratic National Committee's alleged opposition research.
A hacker broke into the computer network of the DNC and leaked its opposition research on
Trump. A 210-page
document that appears to be this report highlights Trump's past remarks on Libya, Syria,
Iraq and more.
Also revealed in the report is that Trump bragged that he "screwed" Muammar Qadhafi with an
unfair business deal.
U.S. media outlets immediately blamed the DNC hack on the Russian government. Soon after,
however, they quietly backed away from the hasty conclusions they made based on what
progressive media watchdog Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting pointed out
was incredibly flimsy evidence.
Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The
Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor
Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @ BenjaminNorton .
P resident-elect Joe Biden's pick to run the Office of Management and Budget has a history
of defending British ex-spy Christopher Steele's
discredited anti-Trump dossier.
Years of controversial claims about the Trump-Russia controversy, particularly about the
dossier funded in part by Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, presents one of several obstacles
for Neera Tanden, a longtime Democratic operative, to achieve Senate confirmation next
year.
A significant question that remains is how the two Senate runoff races in Georgia shake out
in January, with control of the upper chamber hanging in the balance. Tanden is sure to meet
stiff opposition from Republicans, who will be led by Sen. Mitch McConnell, whom Tanden
derisively tweeted in August 2019,
"Stacey Abrams just called McConnell 'Moscow Mitch.' Love it."
In selecting Tanden on
Monday, Biden described the president
of the left-wing Center for American Progress as "a leading architect and advocate of policies
designed to support working families." Tanden worked on Bill Clinton's successful run in 1992
and Barack Obama's successful presidential run in 2008. She was also an adviser on Hillary
Clinton's successful Democratic primary effort in 2016 and the failed general election run that
November.
Not mentioned in her Biden transition team biography was the role Tanden played in promoting
unsubstantiated claims throughout the Trump-Russia controversy.
Tanden launched the
"Moscow Project" in 2017, and after Buzzfeed published Steele's dossier in January 2017,
Tanden's think tank released a
statement saying, "The intelligence dossier presents profoundly disturbing allegations;
ones that should shake every American to the core." Tanden went on to defend the Steele dossier
repeatedly on Twitter, attacking those who critiqued the FBI for relying on its claims to
obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority against former Trump campaign associate
Carter Page and implying that critics of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation were doing
Russia's bidding.
"Make Chris Steele the next James Bond," Tanden tweeted in January
2017.
In a tweet about Rep. Devin Nunes's FISA memo in February 2018, which criticized the FBI's
surveillance of Page and its use of the dossier, the Washington Examiner's Byron York
noted that "no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court without the Steele
dossier information." Tanden responded by saying, "Even
if this is true, hasn't the dossier been mostly proven to be true? It's amazing how comfortable
the likes of Byron York are happy to run interference for Russians intervening in our
elections." Tanden followed up with another tweet claiming that the
"dossier has been mostly established as right."
Tanden's "Moscow Project" also
released a flawed critique of the Republican FISA memo, with Tanden defending the FBI's
surveillance. In addition, Tanden tweeted in April 2018 that
the dossier was "started with funding by a GOP megadonor."
Although the conservative Free Beacon had hired the
opposition research firm Fusion GPS, it said in October 2017 that it "had no knowledge of or
connection to the Steele dossier." It later emerged that Steele was not commissioned by Fusion
GPS (and did not begin compiling his dossier) until Clinton campaign lawyer
Marc Elias hired Fusion.
"What parts of the dossier have been disproven?" Tanden tweeted in January 2019.
"I will wait."
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's December 2019 report and subsequent
declassifications undermined Steele's claims in the dossier. Horowitz said the Trump-Russia
investigation concealed exculpatory information from the FISA court, and he
criticized the Justice Department and FBI for at least 17 "significant errors and
omissions"
related to the FISA warrants against Page and for the bureau's reliance on Steele.
Declassified footnotes show the FBI knew Steele's dossier may have been compromised by
Russian disinformation . Horowitz said FBI interviews with Steele's main source, U.S.-based
and Russian-trained lawyer Igor Danchenko, "raised significant questions about the reliability
of the Steele election reporting."
FBI Director Christopher Wray called the FISA findings "utterly unacceptable" this
year and concurred with the DOJ's conclusions that at least two of the four FISA warrants
against Page amounted to illegal surveillance.
Nearly all the FISA signatories -- Deputy Attorney General
Sally Yates , Deputy Attorney General
Rod Rosenstein , fired FBI Director
James Comey , and fired FBI Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe -- indicated under oath they wouldn't have signed off on the surveillance if
they knew then what they know now, and a declassified FBI spreadsheet showed the
lack of corroboration for Steele's claims.
Other Russia-related claims Tanden has made could present sticking points during her
confirmation process.
She tweeted on Oct. 31, 2016,
that President Trump was a Russian "puppet" in part because there was a "Trump server connected
to Russian bank" and tweeted again in December
2016 that Trump may have gotten "talking points from the server at Trump Tower connected to
Russia."
The
claim that a Russian Alfa Bank server was secretly communicating with a server at Trump
Tower, also pushed by Steele, emerged in 2016, but Horowitz noted the FBI "concluded by early
February 2017 that there were no such links," and the Senate Intelligence Committee's August
report
did not find "covert communications between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel." Jake
Sullivan, Biden's pick for national security adviser, also pushed the refuted Alfa
Bank claim in 2016.
The week after Trump's victory, following reports that Russian cyberactors had targeted a
number of state election systems, Tanden mused, "Why would hackers hack in unless they could
change results?" The next day, she pushed back against
criticism she received, tweeting, "Funny, I don't remember saying Russian hackers stole
Hillary's victory." There is
no evidence that Russian hackers changed any votes in 2016.
"Mueller found Russian interference in the election. He also found Trump coordinated with
Russia. These are facts," Tanden tweeted in October.
Although Mueller's investigation concluded in 2019 that the Russian government
interfered in a "sweeping and systematic fashion," the report "did not establish that
members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its
election interference activities."
After the report's release, Tanden tweeted that
"Mueller has failed the country" and "Adam Schiff > Robert Mueller." Earlier this year,
Schiff released dozens of House Intelligence Committee witness interviews that showed Obama's
top national security officials
testified they hadn't seen direct evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
Self-proclaimed President-elect Joe Biden has chosen a budget director, Neera Tanden, who
once argued the US should ease funding shortages for left-wing social programs by making
countries like Libya pay for being bombed. Biden's transition team on Monday announced its
nominations for the six people selected to fill key economic roles in the incoming
administration, led by former Federal Reserve Bank Chair Janet Yellen as treasury secretary.
Tanden, a Hillary Clinton loyalist who currently heads the Center for American Progress, will
be director of the Office of Management and Budget if Biden's media-declared election victory
withstands legal challenges from President Donald Trump.
This crisis-tested team will help lift America out of our current economic downturn and
build back better -- creating an economy that gives every single American a fair shot and an
equal chance to get ahead. https://t.co/F6JMBHUgVx
-- Biden-Harris Presidential
Transition (@Transition46) November
30, 2020
However, critics have already recalled an example of her unusual budgeting philosophy. In a
2011 email that was made public by WikiLeaks, Tanden said Libya should be made to pay for the
bombing campaign that helped to topple Muammar Gaddafi's government, which would help balance
the US domestic budget.
"We have a giant deficit, they have a lot of oil," Tanden said. "Most Americans
would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit."
If we want to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil-rich countries
partially pay us back doesn't seem crazy to me.
Szilard Demeter, a ministerial commissioner and head of the Petofi Literary
Museum in Budapest, used highly provocative language to describe Hungarian-American financier
George Soros and his purported influence over EU policy.
"Europe is George Soros' gas chamber," the government-appointed cultural commissioner
wrote in an op-ed.
"Poison gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, which is deadly to the
European way of life."
He went on to
characterize Soros as "the liberal Fuhrer," insisting that the businessman's
"liber-aryan army deifies him more than did Hitler's own."
bristolwind shadow1369 19 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 02:07 PM
Now look at the US of Zimbabwe, banana republic with Mugabe level stolen election, fascist
brown shirts (BLM, ANTIFA) beating people on the streets, burning places of worship and
private business, eliminating Trump black supporters execution style. Plutocrats,
authoritarian to the core, control Uniparty, MSM and social media forbidding any dissent.
And, as even not much trusted, Gingerich said : IT IS VERBOTEN to mention one person name
(Soros) even on treasonous fox news!! In the future USA will be longing to have fair and
transparent election as people of Belarus or Venezuela. At this point Russia and Hungary are
beacons of free world. Simple because they throw out former Nazi quislin
J_P_Franklin 23 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 10:36 AM
"Europe is George Soros' gas chamber," the government-appointed cultural commissioner wrote
in an op-ed. " Poison gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society , which is
deadly to the European way of life."
Cryptoid
Cyaxares_425bc 21 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 12:37 PM
What RT DID NOT mention, is that as a teenager during World War II, Soros aided the Gestapo in
Budapest, by pointing out the homes & apartments of wealthy jews. And then he helped
inventory the loot - as well as load the furniture, paintings, carpets, and heirlooms onto
trucks. On CBS's program "60 minutes" he states that these 'were the best years of his life'.
Ohhho 22 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 11:49 AM
George Soros (aka Georgy Schwartz) is just a tool: he keeps the funds that the British-American
elites channeled from he British budget into his "private" account in that famous "British
Pound speculation"! Now for years he is financing all kind of covert and not so covert
operations by MI6 and CIA without any control or supervision from the state: nice!
EnkisDaughter 22 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 11:32 AM
Gyorgy Schwartz (his real name) and his father (Theodore Schwartz ) made money by selling their
own people (Soros is Jewish by birth) to the Nazis; these people then went to the concentration
camps. The Hungarians were allies of the Nazis and the Schwartz family certainly made money
from them.
CA_Sue 16 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 04:57 PM
I think the Hungarian commissioner had every right to say what he did. Soros hides behind his
NGO's and other organizations and has funded mayhem and horrible violence in America. If Poland
and Hungary want to protect their culture, so be it, it's THEIRS to protect.
Bianca882008 21 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 11:57 AM
And how creepy is it that EU conditions its COVID aid! So if these two countries do not pass
legislation on transgender rights, and few other gender-choice related issues, they are
deprived if aid in the middle of pandemic! That is militant liberalism. This is not about
rights, it is about SUPREMACY. It is to prove that liberal agenda can shove anything down a
nation's throat -- when a country is weak and needs money. It is about bringing to power those
that will champion the new "values". And kick out of power the conservatives, the nationalist
old guard. There us a method to this militant Soros madness. Perfect name -- liber-aryans!
veneziano49454 20 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 01:23 PM
I think that Hungary People has many reasons. Mr Open Society has ruined the World and again he
is ruining the USA. He is behind the Dominion Voting through his UK friend CEO of Smartmatic
Software. He is continuing to ruine the Italy after the Italian currency speculation in the
1992. We Italians hate him. He is continuing to invade the Italy by immigrants. Through the ONG
paid from Open Society. And now warning american people. Because he is thinking to a Monetary
war against the USD. He want create a Global Currency. The Great Reset begin with fraud against
the USA President. This is an obstacle to eliminate.
HandyGlock17 20 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 12:52 PM
Bravo Hungary, you are putting principles OVER filthy profit. You love your nation, people, and
culture more than dirty money. You put all other countries who are ruled by traitors to shame.
rolvik 22 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 11:29 AM
"Poison gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, which is deadly to the
European way of life." this is 100% correct. EU puppets should arrest that criminal terrorist
soros . only Hungary and Poland dare to speak. "Israeli Embassy in Budapest expressed similar
outrage." is soros citizen of Israel?? of not, what should Israel have to have with soros??
beside they are complete terrorist criminal country, adn they are last to give anybody morale
lessons . "There is no place for connecting the worst crime in human history, or its
perpetrators, to any contemporary debate, no matter how essential," the Israeli diplomatic
mission wrote in a tweet. that is biggest lie in history, and even if that lie is true it is
definitely not biggest crime. and soros crime is way bigger then Hitler's. terrorist soros
sponsor genocide of whole European continent, and criminals including Israel support that
mumbojumbo272 22 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 11:25 AM
Open society, two nice words hiding horrible goals . Just like dissecting humanbeings in the
whomb of women under terms like: pro-choice and other terms eluding the true facts .
Robin Olsen 21 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 12:36 PM
The Jewish response is indeed curious seeing as though Soros built his fortune by stealing the
'left behind' wealth of deported Jews during WW2 while hiding out posing as a Nazi. One could
almost define that as a act of genocidal treason right? But Hungry and Poland are funny...big
problem with E.U and Soros but no problems accepting thousands of Soros supporting American
troops to fight off 'the Russian bogey man' . Flip flopping around like a Tuna caught out of
the water.
Dirk45 18 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 03:58 PM
Mr Demeter is referring to the deliberate liberal policy of promoting mass immigration from the
Third World, and thereafter using incessant indoctrination and legal coercion to promote mass
integration. The aim of Mr Soros , the EU, and Western governments can only be to destroy the
racial and consequently cultural identity of the entire native population of Europe. Relating
this to the extermination of millions of Jews is therefore entirely appropriate, and should in
no way be considered as somehow devaluing or depreciating it. To contrast the two situations is
pointless. The fate suffered by millions of Jews in Nazi camps was immediate and brutal; the
fate suffered by hundreds of millions of Europeans spread across an entire continent from the
Urals to the Atlantic is less so, but the intention of the perpetrators in both cases is
identical.
SheepNotHuman 12 hours ago 30 Nov, 2020 01:06 AM
George Soros runs America through his many fake politicians, DA, Judges, NGO's funded by him.
Actually he represents the Rothchild house for the Royals Global Cartel. No surprise that
Israel cover for him being the Rothchild is father of Israel. They are the destroyers of
humanity who use the MSM that they own to manufacture consent in your mind. Lone wolf, hear
your calling and do your duty for humanity.
Morsi_X 1 day ago 29 Nov, 2020 12:10 PM
Poison gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, which is deadly to the
European way of life." multiculturalism and over population is a hindering within the United
States and stopping these younger progressives from getting some of their socialist policies
through because they can't look around and grasp that socialism doesn't work with an eternal
population that is approaching (or maybe already there) 350 million then onto 400 million with
a bunch of multi cultural people, like Armenians which never seen an American flag in their
lives, along with a bunch of other non-indigenous and non-founding immigrants but they
constantly yelling in the street and can't even pass a civics class.
sukmiwangyak 23 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 01:44 PM
Soros is far more evil than Hiltler, it's not even close by a long shot. For Israel to defend
Soros is like Judas running a trust fund. I always wondered why didn't Israel take action
against Soros who confessed he helped to Nazi's to catch Jews, then he would steal their
wealth; he said " it was his best memory's" ! Hitler wasn't as bad as the Bushes, or the
Clintons, he knew the Jews was like wild animals that's the reason he tried to give them to the
USA or other states, but they choice to turn their backs on them. Even if we hung Soros today,
he still would've gotten away with so much. Just like Hillary he is both Mossad & CIA,
protected by the Jesuits. We need to first condemn the color revolutions which is paid for with
the " Open Society Foundation " Secondly we need to close all secrete foundations and make them
accountable to the Rule of Law. Thirdly lets exterminate people like Soros's, Rockefeller's,
Rothschild's, Clinton's, Biden's, Bush's from this world for mankind's sake. Lastly we need
more people like Szilard Demeter.
Lloyd Hart 16 hours ago 29 Nov, 2020 08:55 PM
Soros was a member of the SS during the war & still is. He only pretends to be liberal but
his immigrant policies have more to do with breaking unions with cheap migrant and insecure
labour. So he is still a nazi in my book. Crushing uncooperative poorer nation's currencies is
his institutional nazism.
Human Rights are not intrinsic. They are a post-war invention (1948) by the UN, something
created so everybody could sleep better at night (or be invaded, if you're a fan of post-Cold
War History).
Natural rights are just as much the figment of some people's imagination as human
rights.
None of these have any existence or any objective, scientific, physical basis, they are just
intellectual notions, like money, gods and other fancy ideas. The majority of people might
agree on them from time to time, but they surely aren't eternal, and any system based on
these has a limited lifespan.
@ CJ 70 Natural rights are just as much the figment of some people's imagination as human
rights.
No. We all have the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Those rights are codified by the UN in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights .
...included...
Article I - All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of
brotherhood.
Article 2 - Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this
Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other
status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political,
jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person
belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation
of sovereignty.
Article 3 - Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person...
here
With President Donald Trump all but conceding to the transition team that will take over
after January next year, interest now shifts to President-elect Joe Biden's choices for
cabinet. On the national security front, the imperial-military lobby will have reasons to be
satisfied. If Trump promised to rein in, if not put the brakes on the US imperium, Biden
promises a cocktail of energising stimulants.
While campaigning for the Democratic nomination, Biden tried to give a different impression.
Biden the militarist was gone. "It time to end the Forever Wars, which have cost us untold
blood and treasure," he stated
in July 2019. Pinching a leaf or two out of Trump's own playbook, he insisted on bringing "the
vast majority of our troops home – from the wars on Afghanistan and the Middle East".
Missions would be more narrowly focused on Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Support would also be withdrawn
from the unpardonable Saudi-led war in Yemen. "So I will make it my mission – to restore
American leadership – and elevate diplomacy as our principal tool of foreign policy."
This was an unconvincing display of the leopard desperately trying to change its striking
spots. During the Obama administration, the Vice-President found war sweet, despite subsequent
attempts to distance himself from collective cabinet responsibility. These included the current
war in Yemen, the assault on Libya that crippled the country and turned it into a terrorist
wonderland, and that "forever war" in Afghanistan. In 2016, Biden claimed to be the sage in the
administration, warning President Barack Obama against the Libyan intervention. An impression
of combative wisdom was offered. He had "argued strongly" in the White House "against going to
Libya," a position at odds with the hawkish Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who insisted
on something a bit more than going to Libya. After the demise of Muammar Gaddafi, what then?
"Doesn't the country disintegrate? What happens then? Doesn't it become a place where it
becomes a – petri dish for the growth of extremism?" So many questions, so few
answers.
The Iraq War is another stubborn stain on Biden's garments. His approval of the invasion of
Iraq has been feebly justified as benign ignorance. As he explained
to NPR in September last year, he had received "a commitment from President [George W.] Bush he
was not going to go to war in Iraq." Bush looked him "in the eye at the Oval Office; he said he
needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam
Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program." Then came the invasion: "we had a shock
and awe". For Iraqis, it was a bit more than shock and awe.
With the warring efforts of the US in Iraq turning sour, Biden entertained
a proposal reminiscent of Europe's old imperial planners: the establishment of "three
largely autonomous regions" for each of Iraq's ethnic and confessional groups, governed by
Baghdad in the execrable policy of "unity through autonomy". Not exactly an enlightened
suggestion but consistent with previous conventions of dismemberment that have marked Middle
Eastern politics.
In considering Biden's record on Iraq, Spencer Ackerman of The Daily Beast was
clear in describing an erratic, bumbling and egregious performance. "Reviewing Biden's
record on Iraq is like rewinding footage of a car crash to identify the fateful decisions that
arrayed people at the bloody intersection."
Now, we forward ourselves to November 2020. The
Trump administration has given a good cover to the incoming Democratic administration.
Considered putatively wicked, all that follows the orange ogre will be good. In introducing
some of his key appointments, Biden's crusted choices stood to attention like storm
troopers-elect, an effect helped by face masks, solemn lighting and their sense of wonder.
"America is back,"
declared Biden. A collective global shudder could be felt. The Beltway establishment,
mocked by Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes as "the Blob," had returned.
In the cast are such figures from the past as former Deputy Secretary of State and former
Deputy National Security Adviser, Tony Blinken. He will serve as Secretary of State. National
Security adviser: former Hillary Clinton aide and senior adviser Jake Sullivan. Director of
National Intelligence: Avril Haines ("a reliable expert leading our intelligence community,"
remarked CNN's unflinching militarist Samantha Vinograd of CNN, herself another former
Obama stable hand from the National Security Council). Secretary of Defence: most probably
Michèle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defence for Policy.
Blinken, it should be remembered, was the one who encouraged Biden to embrace the
antediluvian, near criminal project of partitioning Iraq. This does not worry The Guardian,
which praises his "urbane bilingual charm" which will be indispensable in "soothing the
frayed nerves of western allies, reassuring them that the US is back as a conventional team
player." He is a "born internationalist" who likes soccer and played a weekly game with US
officials, diplomats and journalists before joining the Obama administration.
Johannes Lang, writing
in the Harvard Political Review, is a touch sharper, noting that Blinken "is a committed
internationalist with a penchant for interventionism." The two often go together. As Blinken
recently told
The New York Times (members of the UN General Assembly, take note), "Whether we like it or not,
the world simply does not organize itself."
Flournoy and Blinken have been spending time during the Trump years drawing sustenance
through their co-founded outfit WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm promising to bring "the
Situation Room to the Board Room." Revolving door rhetoric is used unabashedly: We knew power;
we can show you how to exploit it. Having served in a presidential administration, these
individuals are keen to use "scenario
development and table-top exercises to test ideas or enhance preparedness for a future
contingency". The consultants are willing to give their clients "higher confidence in their
business decisions," as Flournoy puts it, in times of "historic levels of turmoil and
uncertainty around the world".
The Flournoy set have also been the beneficiaries of the US defence funding complex,
fronting think tanks that have received generous largesse. In a
report for the Center for International Policy, Ben Freeman notes that, "Think tanks very
considerably in terms of their objectives and organization, but many think tanks in Washington
D.C. share a common trait: they receive substantial financial support from the US government
and private businesses that work for the US government, most notably defense contractors."
Flournoy's own Center for a New American Security now
ranks second to the RAND Corporation in the cash it gets from defence contractors and US
government sources.
Biden's Department of Defense agency review team, tasked with informing what is hoped will
be a "smooth transfer of power," has its fair complement of those from entities either part of
the weapons industry or beneficiaries of it. According to
In These Times , they make up at least eight of the 23 people in that team. Think tanks
with Biden advisory personnel include the militarily minded Center for Strategic and
International Studies, which boasts funding from Raytheon, Northrop Grumman Corporation,
Lockheed Martin Corporation and General Dynamics Corporation.
America – at least a version of it – is back, well and truly. The stench of wars
continuous, and interventions compulsive, is upon us.
Earlier this year, our friend and colleague
Stephen Cohen passed away. His contributions to the field of Russian, East European, and
Eurasian Studies will be felt for years to come. Professor Cohen was a historian, but his
legacy extends far beyond his scholarly work. Every year, the Stephen Cohen
Fellowship -- established on Professor Cohen's initiative and supported by Katrina vanden Heuvel
and the Kat Foundation -- funds the graduate education for master's students in the Department
of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU. Professor Cohen has also helped enable doctoral
students to conduct dissertation research in Russia through the Cohen-Tucker Fellowship .
As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States, we give thanks to Stephen
Cohen for not only his work in the REEES field but for the generosity he, Katrina vanden
Heuvel, and the Kat Foundation have shown to budding Russia scholars. We honor him today by
publishing the testimonials of some of current and former students who have benefitted from
Cohen Fellowships.
Natasha Bluth (Cohen Fellowship)
The Stephen Cohen Fellowship enabled me to continue my studies of the former Soviet Union,
not only easing the financial burden of graduate school, but also providing the opportunity to
merge journalistic training with area studies, engage with a wide range of scholars and
regional specialists, and conduct field research in Ukraine. The support and encouragement
Stephen Cohen offered at our annual fellowship alumni dinners also inspired me to pursue a PhD
in sociology in order to explore post-Soviet civil society, nationalism, and gender from a
social-scientific perspective.
Michael Coates (Cohen-Tucker Fellowship)
During the 2018-19 academic year, I held a Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Fellowship, which I
used to fund over a year of archival research in Russia on the history of the Great Soviet
Encyclopedia. The fellowship allowed me to visit more than a dozen archives in Moscow and Saint
Petersburg, and to copy thousands of pages of original documents. Had I not been able to carry
out this archival work, I would not have been able to write my dissertation. The travel that
the Fellowship enabled was also personally significant to me, because I had never been to
Russia before I arrived in Moscow for my research year, even though I had already been studying
the country and its language for several years. It is one thing to read books about a
particular place, but actually experiencing life there first-hand is quite another, and has
been essential to the development of my understanding of the region. I am extremely grateful to
Prof. Cohen and Ms. vanden Heuvel for their generosity in funding the next generation of Russia
specialists.
Stephen F. Cohen performed a great service in the last four years as he relentlessly
refuted the great Russiagate hoax which not only distorted our political life but seriously
wounded US-Russia relations for years to come. That hoax is a threat to world peace and Prof.
Cohen from the very first saw through it. Both in his writings for The Nation and his near
weekly conversations with John Batchelor of ABC radio rebutted it clearly, eloquently and at
times with good humor. How very much he is missed.
t is an undeniable fact that the republic has entered one of the most dangerous crises of
its short existence. This is not only due to the disputed election results of November 3
rd , but also to a multitude of other factors beyond American borders, including the
global financial crisis which a certain pandemic has unleashed upon the world, and slide
towards a major world war between great powers that has accelerated chaotically in recent
years.
As unpopular as it might be to state in polite society, as of this writing it is still
impossible to state with 100% certainty that Joe Biden will in fact be inaugurated on January
20, 2021. The simple reason for this is that verifiable evidence of vast partisan vote fraud
tied to the highest echelons of British Intelligence have mounted with every passing day with
Dominion voting systems most recently accused of
erasing 2.7 million Trump votes across the nation , and giving 220 000 pro-Trump votes to
Biden in Pennsylvania (along with hundreds of other vote counting anomalies and technology
glitches across all major swing states).
These and other major signs of mass vote fraud have giving rise to reasonable questions of
the validity of the official results which will be taken to the courts as Gen. Michael Flynn's
Attorney Sidney Powell eloquently laid out recently.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SFCXPw1t17o?feature=oembed TRUMP, BIDEN AND THE ONCOMING
MELTDOWN
By now most people reading this are aware (or should be aware) that the trans Atlantic
financial system has been set to melt down under a $1.5 quadrillion derivatives time bomb being
held together by a mix of wishful thinking, hyperinflationary money printing and vast unpayable
securitized debts waiting to default. It should also come as no surprise that the Great Reset
Agenda designed to coordinate the "post-COVID world order" has nothing to do with any actual
pandemic, and everything to do with imposing a new bankers' dictatorship onto the nations of
the earth.
Both Trump and Biden profess to support American leadership to the world going into this
storm, but both men operate on very much opposing paradigms of what this means, and what
foreign policy tradition should be activated.
Where Biden has championed the idea that "America should lead the world" in opposition to
the dangerous rise in "authoritarianism, nationalism and illiberalism" giving the reigns of
foreign policy over to a team packed with hawkish representatives of the Military
Industrial Complex, Trump has done something different.
On November 9 the incumbent president fired Mark Esper
(possibly to subvert a planned coup) and instated General Christopher Miller to the position of
Defense Secretary who has called for a total end to the 19 year Afghan war
stating :
we are not a people of perpetual war. It is the antithesis of everything for which we
stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end."
Having vocalized his desires to return the USA to its traditional protectionist,
non-interventionist agenda repeatedly over four years, Trump famously characterized the battle
at hand as one of "patriots against the globalists."
And yet, despite these facts, many apparently intelligent people have celebrated that the
"bad orange man" has finally been ousted and normality may once again occur.
Hogwash.
In an
April 2020 Foreign Policy article , Joe Biden called for the re-assertion of American
leadership of the world order stating that "for over 70 years, the United States under
democratic and republican presidents, played a leading role in writing the rules" of the
world order. Predicting the two possible scenarios that will befall the world should the USA
continue to "abdicate our leadership" as Trump has done, Biden says that either: 1)
Someone else takes America's place as global hegemon that doesn't "advance our interests and
values or 2) "No one will and chaos will ensue".
But wait a minute!
Shouldn't there be a third option in Biden's crystal ball? What about the option of a world
defined by sovereign nations working in win-win cooperation and mutual self interest? Sadly,
from a zero-sum mind that can only think in "balance of power" terms, this third scenario
cannot exist.
The paradox for such little minds, however, is that the very essence of America's emerging
from WWII in a leading position that Biden praises is entirely premised on the understanding
that the world is more than a zero-sum system.
THE FORGOTTEN MULTI-POLAR TRADITIONS OF
THE USA
From the drafting of the UN Charter in 1941, the formulation of the Bretton Woods system in
1944, to the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, there is no doubt that there is very
little that America has not directly influenced.
While this leadership is undeniable and often objectively destructive as sin, it is too
easily forgotten that the UN Charter, as outlined by Franklin Roosevelt was premised on the
belief that America must never become an empire but merely help those in need by providing the
means of industrial development. This was essentially understood as the internationalization of
the New Deal which included social safety nets, bank regulation, productive work guarantees and
infrastructure projects to all other nations aspiring independence across Africa, Asia and the
Americas or struggling the heal from the destructive effects of the war.
FDR's vision for the IMF/World Bank mandates were never to reconquer poor nations under a
new system of debt slavery and conditionalities, but to extend productive credit for long term
megaprojects that were in the common aims of mankind and which
angered Churchill immensely.
Most importantly, this vision was premised on the need for a trust-based U.S.-Russia-China
alliance that never would have permitted the emergence of a bipolar Cold War.
Working alongside such anti-imperial co-thinkers as Republican leader Wendell Willkie, Vice
President Henry Wallace, economist Harry Dexter White, confidante Harry Hopkins, Asst.
Secretary of State Sumner Welles and Attorney General Robert Jackson (to name a few), this
small but powerful group of patriots representing both parties, worked vigorously to ensure not
only that the Wall Street/City of London Frankenstein Monster of Nazism would be put down but
that Churchill's vision of a restored British Imperial system would not succeed.
THE TRUE
SPIRIT OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Unlike the earlier "League of Nations" which intended to destroy all national sovereignty in
the wake of WWI, the United Nations was always meant to become a platform for dialogue, and
economic multilateral trust-building much more in harmony with the multipolar alliance now
sweeping the world (and scaring the hell out of the thing that controls Joe Biden).
To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective
measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of
acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in
conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of
international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal
rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen
universal peace;
To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic,
social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human
rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or
religion; and
To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common
ends.
These principles were expanded even further to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on
December 10, 1948 which re-iterated the founding principles of America's Declaration of
Independence- extending those unalienable rights to all mankind as FDR envisioned stating in its
preamble :
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all
members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have
outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy
freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest
aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort,
to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule
of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between
nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights
of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in
larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United
Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental
freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance
for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as
a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every
individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall
strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by
progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective
recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the
peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
These were the ideas that were meant to give life to the "Four Freedoms" first enunciated by President
Roosvelt in 1941 and re-asserted by his anti-imperial Vice President Henry Wallace in
1942.
Now admittedly this positive American foreign policy outlook which launched the post-war age
is a far cry from anything the world has come to recognize in the USA since the emergence of
the Cold War and especially since the murder of John F Kennedy who had done much to resist
America's full takeover by this newly revised British Empire (which some have chosen in recent
years to label "the deep state").
Much like the US Constitution itself, these principles largely remained ink on parchment as
a new age of Cold Warriors, Rhodes Scholars and Fabians directed from
British Intelligence created NATO , divided the world among the lighter skinned haves and
darker skinned have nots while unleashing a system of endless wars onto the earth under a new
Pax Americana.
Today a small window is still open for a renewal of the forgotten traditions of the American
republican traditions that were upheld by such leaders as John Quincy Adams, Lincoln, Grant,
Garfield, McKinley, Harding, FDR and JFK. President Trump has clearly taken a stand in
opposition to the reconquest of the republic by the deep state and it remains to be seen if the
American people have the fortitude to do everything in their power to organize themselves in
defense of the republic and civilization more generally.
"OR"
There are also middle ways: my ideal would be a real United Nations without dominant bullies,
capable of reigning in globalist MNCs, governments or religions.
Population numbers will have to weight in much more for voting power and no SC privileges for
amassing nuclear bombs.
Melvin Logan , Nov 23, 2020 1:08 PM
This essay includes McKinley as a defender of "Republican traditions," and of course it's
hard to argue against that position, seeing as how McKinley was a tool of the Big City
corrupt political system. That he fraudulently used the sinking of the "Maine" to declare war
on Spain, and then put down an insurgent revolt by natives of the Philippines by allowing
U.S.soldiers to garott them, is simply in the tradition of Republicans. We agree.
Paul Vonharnish , Nov 23, 2020 1:02 AM Reply to
Doctortrinate
Excellent scripting in the court scene. I remember seeing this film when it was first
released. Made goose bumps
The public has been drummed down to the point where they refuse to question what props up the
fake wigs on the court jesters
yes, It was an eclectic time examination post experimentation perhaps .and there was room
for it, uncrowded by the weight of obligation – keeping it at distance was comfortable
even held the sense that the destructive order was being outrun, until..the reconditioning
ascent of a harpy and it's handbag,
The cess-pit beneath our seeming foundation, is become a source for self-righteous
vengeance – coming into our very private chambers after we seemed to 'save face' or
raise it over and against the hateful in conquest.
The presumption to be free of the evil that one has set ones face against is the
generating of the 'cess-pit' as something to be eradicated, lidded over, cancelled, such as
to preserve the 'order' that runs above its denial.
Self-revulsion as a concept, can be opined about, but human self-hatred is a hell indeed
if not a final fact.
The revealing of us to ourselves can be the dis-illusioning of what we thought to be and
truly believed but was never true – even though lived.
or the tarrying in such illusion as the exploiting of its underlying themes of 'getting' for
a self set apart from the life it represents.
richard , Nov 22, 2020 9:02 PM
"THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Unlike the earlier "League of Nations" which intended to destroy all national sovereignty in
the wake of WWI, the United Nations was always meant to become a platform for dialogue, and
economic multilateral trust-building much more in harmony with the multipolar alliance now
sweeping the world "
Oh really? hear are some U.N. quotes:
"To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their
individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism, and religious dogmas."
– Brock Adams, Director UN Health Organization
"A world government can intervene militarily in the internal affairs of any nation when it
disapproves of their activities." – Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary General
"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order
[referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if
they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond [i.e., an "extraterrestrial"
invasion], whether real or *promulgated* [emphasis mine], that threatened our very existence.
It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one
thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this *scenario*, individual rights
will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the
World Government."
Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991
"No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship
Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation."
David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations
"The UN is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial
and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit
and power.
"The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the World Money powers,
triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market
.The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control
of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal
Reserve Bank."
Curtis Dall, FDR's son-in-law as quoted in his book, My Exploited Father-in-Law
"The planning of UN can be traced to the 'secret steering committee' established by
Secretary [of State Cordell] Hull in January 1943. All of the members of this secret
committee, with the exception of Hull, a Tennessee politician, were members of the Council on
Foreign Relations. They saw Hull regularly to plan, select, and guide the labors of the
[State] Department's Advisory Committee. It was, in effect, the coordinating agency for all
the State Department's postwar planning."
Professors Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, writing in their study of the CFR, "Imperial
Brain Trust: The CFR and United States Foreign Policy." (Monthly Review Press, 1977).
"The most powerful clique in these (CFR) groups have one objective in common: they want to
bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the U.S. They
want to end national boundaries and racial and ethnic loyalties supposedly to increase
business and ensure world peace. What they strive for would inevitably lead to dictatorship
and loss of freedoms by the people. The CFR was founded for "the purpose of promoting
disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an
all-powerful one-world government." Harpers, July l958
Paul Vonharnish , Nov 23, 2020 12:47 AM Reply to
richard
Hello richard: Excellent listing of verifiable quotes. Thanks!
The establishment of the United Nations has done more to dis-unite the world than any
other singular effort. Yet civilians are still looking for some daddy authority to straighten
out the sticky fuzz they found in their navels
I don't know, I think the US going around the world for the last 100+ years bombing anyone
who threatened their capitalist hegemony can pick up a pretty good share of the blame for an
unstable world
paul , Nov 22, 2020 6:02 PM
Neither will win. As always, the only real winners will be a certain Levantine minority.
Heads they win, tails you lose.
The great mock battle to choose Israel Puppet 46 will play out over the next few weeks as
pure theatre, with Creepy Joe picking up Trumpo's somewhat tarnished crown in due course. For
all the difference it makes. Creepy Joe will be marginally even more of a puppet than
Trumpo.
The court challenges are going nowhere. Some have already been dropped or dismissed, and the
rest soon will be, irrespective of vote rigging and ballot stuffing on an epic scale.
Likewise, there will be no attempt to reverse the current outcome at the electoral college
next month. Nothing's going to happen. Nada. Zilch. It's all pure kabuki.
Clowns and court jesters like Alex Jones or Giuliani will caper about making an exhibition of
themselves, peddling their vitamin supplements and lining their pockets.
Trump will squeeze whatever cash he can from his gullible base to pay off his campaign debts.
But none of this is serious. Trumpo has gone AWOL. He is not holding any public events. The
lawsuits have been dropped. He is not putting any of his own money into them. The electoral
college delegates will not go rogue to keep him in power. Georgia is gone. He is not going to
flip Michigan or Pennsylvania.
Trumpo deserved to lose, whether he actually did or not. He abandoned his base the minute he
was elected, and served out his time as a Zio Shill.
He built a grand total of 4 miles of his Big Beautiful Wall. Some of it has already fallen
down. That only leaves 1,996 miles for the Beaner Illegal Immigrant Hordes to walk through.
Obomber deported far more illegal immigrants than Trumpo, 1.1 million v. 800,000. His idea of
draining The Swamp was to appoint Bolton, Abrams, Pompeo, Haspel, and half of Goldman Sachs
to all the senior posts in his administration. The same goes for Bringing The Troops Home.
None will actually be withdrawn from Afghanistan, despite the latest announcement. Like
Rebuilding The Infrastructure.
Trumpo is a con man, a Bunko Artist. He achieved nothing. Because he never intended to. He
never even tried. He was just another Mitt Romney.
Trumpism will just provide him with a meal ticket for some time to come. He needs to find
another $400 million from somewhere to pay off his debts. The GOP will go full on Zionism,
Globalism, Faggots, Trannies, Globo Homo, Open Borders, Amnesties.
One of Trumpo's last of many favours for Israel is to pardon the traitor and Israeli spy
Jonathan Pollard. He will soon be on his way home to a hero's welcome in Kosherstan.
Biden's new administration will be virtually 100% kosher, apart from a few token black/ gay/
trannie/ vagina/ shabbos goys.
Chief of staff, Attorney General, Treasury, all Chosen Folk.
Trumpo was never more than a Zionist puppet, just like Wilders, Orban, Salvini, AFD, Duterte.
All 100% Faux Right Controlled Opposition created by the Chosen Folk.
Thanks Paul, for that excellent description of Trump and what we can expect from Biden
until he leaves/dies and we have Kamala. The policies will remain virtually unchanged as the
President is irrelevant.
Researcher , Nov 22, 2020 5:58 PM
Bankers have been running the world for centuries, not empires, not presidents, not
parties, not nations.
They provide nation states with two (or more) parties with seemingly oppositional values,
but who are controlled behind the scenes by the same banking cabal. Trump is working with the
cabal, just as closely as his predecessors, Obama, Bush, Clinton etc., to create the illusion
of opposition, the illusion of difference, the illusion of choice and the illusion of
hope.
Just as the election was obviously stolen, so too it was planned to create internal
conflict and violence. Both parties play the game of electioneering to obfuscate the theft of
civil rights and assets from the populace without opposition. The media enhances the process
of obfuscation. The voters are too busy fighting amongst themselves to see the outright theft
of their real assets.
There are no individuals or groups who attain positions of power in any government or
nation who oppose the banking cartel that rules the world, owns and controls all the largest
corporations, security state apparatus, the militaries and defense sectors of all
nations.
There are no heroes coming to anyone's rescue. No white hats, no black hats. They are all
agents of the cryptocracy, because the goal has always been the enslavement of humanity, and
that goal was attained long ago and has never wavered.
The New World Order was achieved with the formation of the United Nations as a front for
the cryptocracy (banking cartel) to further its objectives through the cooperation of
governments individuality and collectively controlling their populations.
Whether our enslavement was achieved using a kindler, gentler slavery called "capitalism",
based on the consumption of poorly made goods exploiting cheap labor by corporate entities
majority owned and controlled by the cryptocracy, in faux democracies, using the fake two
party system, or whether slavery was achieved by force through communism where an appearance
of state ownership obfuscated cryptocracy ownership and control, so wages could be lowered
and people more tightly controlled, both political systems were a sham. Both systems were
always controlled by the same cryptocracy; the banking cartel.
The cryptocracy ruled the capitalist West and the communist Eastern bloc with ease.
Researcher , Nov 22, 2020 6:06 PM Reply to
Researcher
Just as all political parties are false enemies who work together behind the scenes, so
too is the enmity between nation states and the supposedly opposed political and nation state
blocs and alliances.
Opposition is created as a facade and pretext to facilitate immensely profitable
skirmishes, occupations, hot wars, cold wars and civil conflicts. These methods of
manufactured conflict accomplish control and ownership for the cryptocracy of large tracts of
land with rare earth minerals and energy reserves as well as the labor and industry of large
and small populations plus access to the taxes and wealth of all nation states.
These faux oppositional forces whether they be internal or external, create an illusion of
a divided, hostile and fractured world for the unknowing and distracted public, who have had
their history altered and rewritten, indoctrinated with propaganda in a Prussian model of
education as 'learning by rote' instead of learning through exploration, reason, logic,
invention and experimentation. As such, 'educated' populations have become another tool of
the controllers where they are largely ignorant of the inextricable links between politics,
energy, economies, the monetary system, wars, governments, crime, industry and human
enslavement.
The false appearance of separation of these issues into compartmentalized subjects,
compartmentalized thinking, are further enhanced and driven through sound bites using the
cryptocracy owned corporate media.
Binary choices, compartmentalized issues, and supposed random events are sold to humanity
to corral thinking, coerce conformity, limit options and choices within illusory paradigms
where full spectrum dominance is fulfilled. Subsequently, all resources on earth including
populations can be easily exploited for the purpose of profiteering, while simultaneously
inflicting unnecessary misery and suffering through the leverage of usury and forced taxes
within the monetary system.
Researcher , Nov 22, 2020 6:10 PM Reply to
Researcher
The banking cartel (BIS, IMF, World Bank) own the major energy corporations, green and
carbon based and that is why there has been a decades long push for carbon control and
capture, using climate change pseudo science and propaganda as a way to control and limit our
individual, national and collective energy consumption and output.
Since energy is the real currency that runs the world, and energy is also the way which we
as humans and living creatures survive, innovate, create and function – as electrical
and energetic beings – the cryptocracy believe that all energy, including our physical
and neuronal bodily functions be wholly controlled by them, and them only. The cryptocracy
already control our external energy and power systems and grids, and all oil, coal, gas,
wind, hydro, nuclear, solar and hydrogen, which fuel human and economic activity.
The cryptocracy are not content to let us decide our own fates, occupations, business
dealings, economies, health or lives using our inherent freedom as thinking, sentient and
independent beings who are born free. They seek to further enslave our every thought,
function and action through the technocracy and the biometric control and data grid they have
built around us for the last century.
In the beginning of the 20th century, the banking cartel through their control of the
chemical industry, extended their model of human slavery to include profiteering from
destroying people's health, by controlling genetic and epigenetic expression through
increased toxic exposure to external radiation, a poisoned and altered food chain, deficient
soil, a poisoned fluoridated water supply, increased exposure to carcinogens, endocrine
disruptive chemicals and unnecessary vaccines that wrought irreversible, long term negative
effects.
The medical industrial complex and vaccine industry sought to claim credit for the
eradication of diseases that had already been quelled through proper sanitation, plumbing,
better nutrition and improved living conditions.
The control grid of populations through the economic system, military industrial complex,
monetary system, faux governments, and the medical industrial complex has merged into a
totalitarian model of complete control of all human behavior, health and bodily functions
using faux pandemics, where governments coordinate terror operations against the
citizenry.
The bankers are transitioning away from the current monetary, economic Ponzi scheme using
the US petro dollar fractional reserve banking system, which could only function for a
limited time, in a debt expansionary environment, underpinned by constant economic expansion
and population growth.
Researcher , Nov 22, 2020 6:13 PM Reply to
Researcher
A number of factors including increased standards of living, women entering the workforce,
contraception and immunocontraception and cultural changes have inhibited population growth
in developed nations, so that expansionary model has reached its 'limits of growth'.
Governments have been hiding the lack of population growth using immigration. They've been
hiding the contracting economic activity in developed nations by creating fake financial
products and accounting frauds, banking fraud, rigged market indices and markets. The
cryptocracy knowing this economic model would eventually collapse at their discretion,
created unseen enemies to unite us against, be it a fictional virus, or fictional global
warming, the result being a coordinated, top-down authoritarian monitoring, control of
populations, economies and individuals.
The bankers, governments and industrialists are forcing humanity to transition to a
technocracy controlled economy based on humans as capital, the collection, collation and
control of all organic and non organic resources on earth including our biometric data and
behavioral obedience, while they simultaneously enforce a liquidation of assets phase.
We are their assets and we are being liquidated.
At the end of every transitory economic cycle or created currency or financial crisis, the
banking cartel and their minions facilitate a global catastrophe, whether that's a planned
war between nations, civil unrest or a manufactured terror event. This serves as a cover for
the harm that their planned economic transition (and failure) creates. These planned failures
of economic systems created by the cryptocracy provide additional profits for the banking
cartel where real assets are stripped from citizens in the form of savings, land, property,
assets, businesses and redistributed by force, upwards to the oligarchs and cryptocracy.
That is the purpose of the lockdown and the faux pandemic. A continued and further
redistribution of the global wealth of the majority of citizens to the 0.01% so that bankers,
industrialists and governments who already control our food and energy supply, can force the
majority into compliance with the vaccine program. The vaccine program creates a legal and
cost efficient liquidation of the majority of humanity and the biometric enslavement of the
remaining youth who manage to survive, while transitioning to the new economic model of a
global digital currency based on physical human enslavement, human data management, with
central command control using Artificial Intelligence.
Jean Wilson , Nov 22, 2020 8:07 PM Reply to
Researcher
Thank you Researcher. Brilliant writing!
Lost in a dark wood , Nov 22, 2020 4:41 PM
No wonder the CIA hates Trump!
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/361227-us-begins-bombing-taliban-opium-plants-in-afghanistan
US begins bombing Taliban CIA opium plants in Afghanistan
11/20/17
The U.S. military has begun bombing opium production plants in Afghanistan as part of a new
strategy targeting Taliban revenue, a top general said Monday. "Last night, we conducted
strikes in northern Helmand [Province] to hit the Taliban where it hurts, in their narcotics
financing," said Gen. John Nicholson, commander of the NATO-led Operation Resolute Support in
the country.
--
What has happened to people? If the U.S. says it is bombing an opium production plant,
that means they're lying. First thing I think of is who did the U.S./CIA/Trump want killed
and why? But you interpret it as Trump trying to stop the opium business of the CIA?
And then you follow it with Trump, after four years of bombing Afghanistan, is somehow
being pressured by Germany to continue bombing Afghanistan?
Frankly, I don't think we have any idea what the CIA thinks of Trump.
Researcher , Nov 22, 2020 7:32 PM Reply to
wardropper
They must think he's the greatest actor on earth, since apparently some who understand the
bankers are in league with and controlling governments, the UN, WHO and the WEF against
humanity, yet they also believe that Trump is standing up for the Constitution against the
banking cartel, the military and the vaccine industry.
Except he isn't and hasn't.
By declaring a fake emergency and continuing that emergency, while creating OPERATION WARP
SPEED, he handed the country over to the military, PhRMA and FEMA.
He has no intention of handing it back to the citizens and he's had every means and every
opportunity.
I think a great majority of people are simply in denial on the left and the right because
they don't want to believe they've spent their entire lives being conned by bankers,
politicians and oligarchs using cheap tricks, third rate acting, fake science and obvious
monetary fraud and gangster governments.
The veil of their human enslavement has been lifted off their faces and they still refuse
to see the obvious truth.
Instead they hide behind masks, false enemies and the lies they tell themselves. It'd be
sad if it wasn't so pathetic.
wardropper , Nov 22, 2020 7:58 PM Reply to
Researcher
I agree with all that, but the CIA is not renowned for advertising what it 'thinks'
Moneycircus , Nov 22, 2020 11:08 PM Reply to
wardropper
The CIA does not 'think'. It was set up by Wall Street and the bankers as the muscle of
Wall Street and the bankers
Trumpo deserves to be put on trial and executed after a suitably fair trial if only for
his actions in Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Palestine and elsewhere. For the murder of General
Soleimani and 30 others, for all the children who have died in those countries as a result of
US economic terrorism and actual terrorism on his watch. It doesn't matter if he failed to
control others who were allowed to pursue their own agenda. A commander who loses control of
his troops is fully liable when they run amok.
Their is very little to be said in his favour. We have come very close to war on a colossal
scale on several occasions over the past two years as a result of his actions. The fact that
this did not come to pass and disaster was avoided in no way goes to his credit. This should
be attributed to the Grace of God or my lucky rabbit's foot. And the fact that Russia, China,
and even Iran and North Korea have incomparably better and more responsible leadership than
we do.
Western leadership, Obama, Clinton, Trump, Sarkozy, Macron, Merkel, May, Cameron, Johnson, is
the worst in its history. Arrogant, venal, corrupt, irredeemably ignorant, delusional and
ideologically driven.
So can anything positive at all about Trump's legacy?
Biden may be even worse.
Clinton, rabid and deranged, and even more dishonest, certainly would have been.
But we deserve something better than the choice between a dogshit sandwich or a catshit
sandwich.
Trump has at least exposed the MSM for what it is, and forced the deep state to take off the
mask of sham democracy and reveal its true ugly face.
But it's not much of a legacy for four years.
John Goss , Nov 22, 2020 1:08 PM
The Second World War was the turning point here in the UK and in the US, When the war
finished there was a Labour Party which was actually a Labour Party. For some years before
that the US Democratic Party had been and was a Democratic Party, When paper ballots
mitigated against fraud Franklin D, Roosevelt was elected for an amazing 4 terms. He died
days before the end of the war having introduced welfare reforms that endeared him to
people.
It has been pretty much downhill since then, ending up with Keir Starmer at the head of
the Labour Party and Joe Biden at the head of the Democratic Party. Need I write more?
el Gallinazo , Nov 22, 2020 3:19 PM Reply to
John Goss
Problem>reaction>solution. The Great Depression in the USA was triggered by
the banksters being instructed to create a vast credit bubble in the 20's with their
fractional reserve system (being able to lend 9 fake dollars for every one they actually
owned) and then instructed to withdraw credit very rapidly, creating a cascade of defaults..
That is a historical fact easily researched.
This article's view of recent history is among the most superficial I have ever read. I do
not believe in democracy being an Agorist, because democracy is a trick of the predator
class. When I see a government which does not enforce its rules through the barrel of a gun
and cages, I may be tempted to re-evalute my views. Still waiting however. That said, the one
thing that I agree with in this article is that Trump won the election handily based on legal
and valid votes and the apparent Biden win was based on huge fraud. One should never
underestimate Sydney Powell, even with her sweet Georgia Plantation accent. She may be the
first competent snd trustworthy hire Trump has ever made in the last four years, and one may
ask why this is. On one level, the fraud was designed to put Biden in the White House. On a
deeper level, it was designed to rip the country apart. I would recommend that the American
people rushing to the giant box stores (which are permitted to stay open while the various
governors' blatantly illegal EO's have shut down their mom and pop competitors) to buy toilet
paper for the coming Darkest Winter of the fake scamdemic, would be wise to load up also on
beer and popcorn so they can watch this shitshow on their giant plasma TV's from the
sofa.
Melvin Logan , Nov 23, 2020 1:34 PM Reply to
el Gallinazo
The notion of "fraud" in the election is a charade. Research the Dominion voting system
and you will discover that Ms. Powell, despite the high regard she has attained, is blowing
smoke. Her entire case against Dominion from Chavez to German vote counting is a fat joke. On
her, and on us. Why is she doing this? We will find out in due time.
hroughout his campaign, Joe Biden railed against Donald Trump's 'America First' foreign policy,
claiming it weakened the United States and left the world in disarray.
He pledged to reverse this decline and recover the damage Trump did to America's reputation.
While Donald Trump called to make America Great Again, Biden seeks to Make the American Empire
Great Again.
Among the president-elect's pledges is to end the so-called forever wars – the
decades-long imperial projects in Afghanistan and Iraq that began under the Bush
administration.
Yet Biden – a fervent supporter of those wars – will task ending them to the
most neoconservative elements of the Democratic party and ideologues of permanent war.
Michele Flournoy and Tony Blinken sit atop Biden's thousands-strong foreign policy brain
trust and have played central roles in every U.S. war going back to the Clinton
administration.
In the Trump era, they've cashed in, founding Westexec Advisors – a corporate
consulting firm that has become home for Obama administration officials awaiting a return to
government.
Flournoy is Biden's leading pick for secretary of defense and Blinken is expected to be
national security advisor.
Biden's foxes guard the henhouse
Since the 1990s, Flournoy and Blinken have steadily risen through the ranks of the
military-industrial complex, shuffling back and forth between the Pentagon and hawkish
think-tanks funded by the U.S. government, weapons companies, and oil giants.
Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrinellial Defense
Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military's doctrine of permanent war – what
it called "full spectrum dominance."
Flournoy called for "unilateral use of military power" to ensure "uninhibited access to key
markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources."
As Bush administration officials lied to the world about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD's,
Flournoy remarked that "In some cases, preemptive strikes against an adversary's [weapons of
mass destruction] capabilities may be the best or only option we have to avert a catastrophic
attack against the United States."
Tony Blinken was a top advisor to then-Senate foreign relations committee chair Joe Biden,
who played a key role in shoring up support among the Democrat-controlled Senate for Bush's
illegal invasion of Iraq.
As Iraq was plunged into chaos and bloodshed, Flournoy was among the authors of a paper
titled "Progressive Internationalism" that called for a "smarter and better" style of permanent
war. The paper chastised the anti-war left and stated that "Democrats will maintain the world's
most capable and technologically advanced military, and we will not flinch from using it to
defend our interests anywhere in the world."
With Bush winning a second term, Flournoy advocated for more troop deployments from the
sidelines.
In 2005, Flournoy signed onto a letter
from the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century, asking Congress to
"increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps (by) at least 25,000
troops each year over the next several years."
In 2007, she leveraged her Pentagon experience and contacts to found what would become one
of the premier Washington think tanks advocating endless war across the globe: the Center for a
New American Security (CNAS).
CNAS is funded by the U.S. government, arms manufacturers, oil giants, Silicon Valley tech
giants, billionaire-funded foundations, and big banks.
Flournoy joined the Obama administration and was appointed as under secretary of defense for
policy, the position considered the "brains" of the Pentagon.
She was keenly aware that the public was wary of more quagmires. In the 2010 Quadrennial
Defense Review, she crafted a new concept of warfare that would expand the permanent war state
while giving the appearance of a drawdown.
Flournoy wrote that "unmanned systems hold great promise" – a reference to the CIA's
drone assassination program.
This was the Obama-era military doctrine of hybrid war. It called for the U.S. to be able to
simultaneously wage war on numerous fronts through secret warfare, clandestine weapons
transfers to proxies, drone strikes, and cyber-attacks – all buttressed with propaganda
campaigns targeting the American public through the internet and corporate news
media.
Architects of America's Hybrid wars
Flournoy continued to champion the endless wars that began in the Bush-era and was a key
architect of Obama's disastrous troop surge in Afghanistan. As U.S. soldiers returned in body
bags and insurgent attacks and suicide bombings increased some 65% from 2009 and 2010, she
deceived the Senate Armed Services Committee, claiming that the U.S. was beginning to turn the
tide against the Taliban.
Even with her lie that the U.S. and Afghan government were starting to beat the Taliban
back, Flournoy assured the senate that the U.S. would have to remain in Afghanistan long into
the future.
Ten years later – as the Afghan death toll passed 150,000 – Flournoy continued
to argue against a U.S. withdrawal.
That's the person Joe Biden has tasked with ending the forever war in Afghanistan. But in
Biden's own words, he'll "bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan" implying
some number of American troops will remain, and the forever war will be just that. Michele
Flournoy explained that even if a political settlement were reached, the U.S. would maintain a
presence.
In 2011, the Obama-era doctrine of smart and sophisticated warfare was unveiled in the NATO
regime-change war on Libya.
Moammar Gaddafi – the former adversary who sought warm relations with the U.S. and had
given up his nuclear weapons program – was deposed and sodomized with a bayonet.
Flournoy, Hillary Clinton's State Department, and corporate media were in lockstep as they
waged an extensive propaganda campaign to deceive the U.S. public that Gadaffi's soldiers were
on a Viagra-fueled rape and murder spree that demanded a U.S. intervention.
All of this was based on a report from Al Jazeera – the media outlet owned by
the Qatari monarchy that was arming extremist militias to overthrow the government.
Yet an investigation by the United Nations called the rape claims "hysteria." Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch found no credible evidence of even a single rape.
Even after Libya was descended into strife and the deception of Gadaffi's forces committing
rape was debunked, Michele Flournoy stood by her support for the war.
Tony Blinken, then Obama's deputy national security advisor, also pushed for regime change
in Libya. He became Obama's point man on Syria, pushed to arm the so-called "moderate rebels"
that fought alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS, and designed the red line strategy to trigger a
full-on U.S. intervention. Syria, he told the public, wasn't anything like the other wars the
U.S. had waging for more than a decade.
Despite Blinken's promises that it would be a short affair, the war on Syria is now in its
ninth year. An estimated half a million people have been killed as a result and the country is
facing famine,
Largely thanks to the policy of using "wheat to apply pressure" – a recommendation of
Flournoy and Blinken's CNAS think tank.
When the Trump administration launched airstrikes on Syria based on mere accusations of a
chemical attack, Tony Blinken praised the bombing, claiming Assad had used the weapon of mass
destruction sarin. Yet there was no evidence for this claim, something even then-secretary of
Defense James Mattis admitted.
While jihadist mercenaries armed with U..S-supplied weapons took over large swaths of Syria,
Tony Blinken played a central role in a coup d'etat in Ukraine that saw a pro-Russia government
overthrown in a U.S.-orchestrated color revolution with neo-fascist elements agitating on the
ground.
At the time, he was ambivalent about sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, instead opting for
economic pressure.
Since then, fascist militias have been incorporated into Ukraine's armed forces. And Tony
Blinken urged Trump to send them deadly weapons – something Obama had declined to do.
Trump obliged.
The Third Offset
While the U.S. fuelled wars in Syria and Ukraine, the Pentagon announced a major shift
called the Third Offset strategy – a reference to the cold war era strategies the U.S.
used to maintain its military supremacy over the Soviet Union.
The Third Offset strategy
shifted the focus from counterinsurgency and the war on terror to great power competition
against China and Russia, seeking to ensure that the U.S. could win a war against China in
Asia. It called for a technological revolution in warfighting capabilities, development of
futuristic and autonomous weapons, swarms of undersea and airborne drones, hypersonic weapons,
cyber warfare, machine-enhanced soldiers, and artificial intelligence making unimaginably
complex battlefield decisions at speeds incomprehensible to the human mind. All of this would
be predicated on the Pentagon deepening its relationship with Silicon Valley giants that it
birthed decades before: Google and Facebook.
The author of the Third Offset, former undersecretary of defense Robert Work, is a partner
of Flournoy and Blinken's at WestExec Advisors. And Flournoy has been a leading proponent of
this dangerous new escalation.
In June, Flournoy published a lengthy commentary laying out her strategy called "Sharpening
the U.S. Military's Edge: Critical Steps for the Next Administration".
She warned that the United States is losing its military technological advantage and
reversing that must be the Pentagon's priority. Without it, Flournoy warned that the U.S. might
not be able to defeat China in Asia.
While Flournoy has called for ramping up U.S. military presence and exercises with allied
forces in the region, she went so far as to call for the U.S. to increase its destructive
capabilities so much that it could launch a blitzkrieg style-attack that would wipe out the
entire Chinese navy and all civilian merchant ships in the South China Sea. Not only a blatant
war crime but a direct attack on a nuclear power that would spell the third world war.
At the same time, Biden has announced he'll take an even more aggressive and confrontational
stance against Russia, a position Flournoy shares.
As for ending the forever wars, Tony Blinken says not so fast.
The end of forever
wars?
So Biden will end the forever wars, but not really end them. Secret wars that the
public doesn't even know the U.S. is involved in – those are here to stay.
In fact, leaving teams of special forces in place throughout the Middle East is part and
parcel of the Pentagon's shift away from counterinsurgency and towards great power
competition.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy explains that "Long-term strategic competitions with
China and Russia are the principal priorities" and the U.S. will "consolidate gains in Iraq and
Afghanistan while moving to a more resource-sustainable approach."
As for the catastrophic war on Yemen, Biden has said he'll end U.S. support, but in 2019,
Michele Flournoy argued against ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Biden pledged he will rejoin the Iran deal as a starting point for new negotiations.
However, Trump's withdrawal from the deal discredited the Iranian reformists who seek
engagement with the west and empowered the principlists who see the JCPOA as a deal with the
devil.
In Latin America, Biden will revive the so-called anti-corruption campaigns that were used
as a cover to oust the popular social democrat Brazilian president Lula da Silva.
His Venezuela policy will be almost identical to Trump's – sanctions and regime
change.
In Central America, Biden has proposed a 4 billion dollar package to support corrupt
right-wing governments and neoliberal privatization projects that create even more
destabilization and send vulnerable masses fleeing north to the United States.
Behind their rhetoric, Biden, Flournoy, and Blinken will seek nothing less than global
supremacy, escalating a new and even more dangerous arms race that risks the destruction of
humanity. That's what Joe Biden calls "decency" and "normalcy."
Feature photo | Graphic by Antonio Cabrera for MintPress News
Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker. He has produced widely distributed video reports
and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. Dan is a correspondent at RT America and
tweets at @ DanCohen3000
.
This is nothing new, the war machine keeps going and going. I actually found an individual
that has the same outlook on stopping the behavior of the United States as I do.
International lawyer Christopher Black in this interview had the following to say.
Question: What in your view needs to change in order to make U.S. foreign conduct abide by
international law and therefore enhance the prospects for world peace?
Christopher Black: It will require a revolution in the United States to do that, an
overthrow of the economic powers that control the machinery of the state, but there is no
prospect of that happening. There is really no effective opposition to these policies in
the U.S. The peace movement is weak and fragmented, dominated by the "cruise missile
liberals". The voices of reason have no power, no real influence among the masses of the
people which are dominated by a sophisticated propaganda machine known as the "media".
Censorship is increasing and the few critical voices that exist are being silenced.
It will take, in my view, a military defeat of the United States in order to bring
about the conditions necessary for the required changes. And, perhaps that will happen,
as China has stated time and again, that if Washington decides to take direct control of
their island of Taiwan and the Americans interfere or if they are attacked in the South
China Sea, they will defeat the U.S. But such a war would have world consequences and would
cause realignments of power not only in the USA, if we all survive it.
Biden is a tent revival for the aptly named "cruise missile liberals" and some of the more
shadowy neo-conservative forces in retreat and determined to bring democracy building home
after their colonial expeditions extinguished it at home, hastening the rise of America's own
Saddam in Trump. Biden's own instincts may be decisive, however, and he was against war in
Libya while also in favor of splitting Iraq. The dementia rumors are nonsense; Biden is a
canny and often mendacious operator, and while I think Trump is a fascist and quite possibly
a Russian mafia sub-boss, Biden may well be the restoration of more homegrown, American mafia
rule. An argument that Giuliani has made in so many words, standing as he does on the Russian
side and yelling into the shifting parapolitical winds.
It's not really that complicated for China. They have no interest in or need to strike the
American mainland. That would only be necessary if they were seeking global hegemony like the
US, which they are not. Their strategic nuclear capabilities are strictly deterrence. All
China has to do is survive the coming conflict arising from the Thucydides Trap that the US
and China are caught in with minimal damage to their industrial capacity, infrastructure, and
population.
That I specified "survive" and not "win" is not a mistake. The default
outcome if nothing is done is that China ascends to uncontested sole global economic
superpower status. That is not necessarily their intention but rather the natural outcome of
China continuing the development of their domestic human capital and quality of life for 1.4
billion people. China doesn't have to take the fight to the US to end up on top, and the US
has no choice but to somehow turn back the economic clock in China to keep its position as
global imperial hegemon. Color revolution attempts, trade war, and bioweapon attacks have all
failed the empire miserably, so all the US has left is to go kinetic.
The "US aircraft carrier force projection model" is effectively nullified by China,
but those assets are still protected by America's delusional reality exclusion zone:
"Destroying our carriers is unthinkable! No one would ever dare do that!" . That
defense will prove inadequate against China's variety of "carrier killer"
missiles.
As for America's stealth aircraft, China's defenses will likely be a surprise to many in
the American empire. Furthermore, America's only stealth aircraft with sufficient range to
reach China's mainland on anything other than a one way suicide mission would be the B-2
bomber, of which America only has 21. Those 21 will not last long in a kinetic conflict.
Quite a few will likely simply be destroyed on the runway in Diego Garcia while the survivors
will get to find out how well China's nifty new quantum radar works. The F-22 and F-35 would
require refueling to get from carrier stand-off distance to the mainland and refueling again
to get back, with America's aerial tankers needing to loiter within range of China's air
defenses... not a good battle plan for the empire. Those stealth aircraft will not shift the
advantage in the empire's favor, and attrition will be much higher than expected among
them.
It must be repeated that China doesn't need to destroy the United States. They are not
playing the board game "Risk" after all. China just needs to defeat the American
empire's military force projection capabilities in their own neighborhood, and China already
has that capacity right now. Every day that elapses shifts the advantage further into China's
favor, so the empire needs to act while they still have the ability to do so. Trump's
unwillingness to do more than bark loudly and his resistance to going kinetic is why the
imperial elites had to fraud the elections so openly to get a more compliant figurehead into
office ASAP. That the empire couldn't wait another four years means that we will see
"interesting times" (yeah, even more interesting than the preceding twelve months!)
real soon now.
"A cornered dog will bite, even if it is obvious that it cannot win."
So will I, so what?
"It was never China's nor Iran's intention to "corner" the empire. That is simply the
situation that America finds itself in now that its economy is in "late capitalism" decline.
It is really not even anyone's fault, not even Trump or Reagan or any of the other usual
suspects."
I agree, but again, so what? I'm not concerned with who is morally correct, I'm mainly
concerned with whether there is going to be a big war and what happens if there is, that's
not a moral question. I've been waiting around 40 years to watch our collapse, and I still
think there is enough that is/was good here to be worth hoping for a soft landing. That's
probably better for the rest of the planet too, but it's arguable.
Neither Iran of China is cornered, they are well-prepared, well-supported by "partners",
and on their home turf. WE are not ready. We are vunerable. But we are not cornered either,
nobody is going to come over here and interfere while we fight among ourselves.
Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 25 2020 13:10 utc | 109
What scares me about Blinken and Sullivan is the career trajectory. Both had completely
unearned and unreasonable success every step of their lives. There is never any explanation
for this manner of success but family connections. Neither has done anything of note other
than to occupy positions of power.
Sullivan is all of 43 years old, has been a mover and shaker since his twenties. Any who
have never read Halberstam's Best and Brightest might look at that now. We are in for a shit
show. Biden is not going to do anything but take his meds and take a lot of naps. Already he
is not to be seen. The crew named so far will steamroller Kamala, she is no more than a
figurehead.
Likely she won't even stay in the room when it gets serious. Best possible outcome is that
kids who have never done anything but suck up won't know what to do when they are left in
charge with no adult supervision. Or there will be shadowy figures in background who steady
the rudder.
Yes, it is not a moral question, it is an economic one. Wars have never been about
morality.
That said, China has for a number of years now been preparing for a minimally damaging
escape from the Thucydides Trap, and by "minimally damaging" I mean for the US as
well. As I said above the Chinese are not at all interested in hurting the US.
The plan is to "spring" the Thucydides Trap in the South China Sea and hopefully
confine most of the damage to that area. If successful then the empire gets its soft landing
(albeit with significant amounts of military materiel and personnel sacrificed) and humanity
moves beyond the Trap.
@ PB 75
visible costs of vassaldom . . costs of American presence....decreasing the national
security. . .participating in sanctions
Yes, plus a primary reason . . .Cost of buying US military junk like F-35. Foreign military
sales is a mainstay of the US economy.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 25 2020 3:43 utc | 83
When you add the numbers, "military junk" has notable prestige -- with matching prices,
but the total loot of American companies is probably many times larger. For example, Trump
waged a series of trade wars to perpetuate negligible taxation of "technology giants" like
Google or Amazon. "Intellectual property" was a stumbling block in the trade war with China,
with dire consequences for soy growing farmers in USA (and a boon to their colleagues in
South America). Then there is pharma. It seems that the really big companies are comfortable
being in relative shadow behind arms makers, and discourse on security threats and needs
--because Russian use trolls to interfere with elections, we (all countries that cherish what
is good and precious) need new generations of nukes, planes, ships and toilet seats. However
illogical, it is more noble sounding than preventing the likes of Apple from more than
nominal taxation.
"... Because people are a lot more likely to click, read and share information which validates their pre-existing opinions and follow people who do the same, social media is notorious for the way it creates tightly insulated echo chambers which masturbate our confirmation bias and hide any information which might cause us cognitive dissonance by contradicting it. Whole media careers were built on this phenomenon during the years of Russiagate hysteria, and we see it play out in spheres from imperialism to Covid-19 commentary to economic policy. ..."
"... Someone benefits from this dynamic, and it isn't you. As we've discussed previously, we know from WikiLeaks documents that powerful people actively seek to build ideological echo chambers for the purpose of propaganda and indoctrination, and there is surely a lot more study going into the subject than we've seen been shown. Splitting the public up into two oppositional factions who barely interact and can't even communicate with each other because they don't share a common reality keeps the populace impotent, ignorant, and powerless to stop the unfolding of the agendas of the powerful. ..."
"... It's just people manipulating you away from your natural, healthy inclination toward peace. Get out of your echo chamber, look at the raw information instead of the narratives, and stop letting the sociopaths manipulate you. ..."
"... Hate is the only thing that holds the American Empire together. Without its Two Minutes of Hate, America will break up apart into a million pieces. ..."
This complete schism from reality, where you've got an incoming administration stacked with
Beltway insiders who want to attack Chinese interests running alongside an alternate imaginary
universe in which Biden is a subservient CCP lackey, is only made possible with the existence
of media echo chambers. It's the same exact dynamic that made it possible for liberals to spend
four years shrieking conspiracy theories about the executive branch of the US government being
run by a literal Russian agent even as Trump advanced mountains of world-threatening cold war
escalations against Moscow in the real world.
You see this dynamic at work in conventional media, where
plutocrat-controlled outlets like Breitbart are still frantically
pushing the Russiagate sequel narrative that Hunter Biden's activities in China mean that
his father is a CCP asset. You also see it in social media, where, as explained by journalist
Jonathan Cook in an article about the
documentary The Social Dilemma , "as we get herded into our echo chambers of
self-reinforcing information, we lose more and more sense of the real world and of each
other."
"We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only
criterion is how to maximise our attention for advertisers' products to generate greater
profits for the internet giants," writes Cook.
Because people are a lot more likely to click, read and share information which validates
their pre-existing opinions and follow people who do the same, social media is notorious for
the way it creates
tightly insulated echo chambers which masturbate our confirmation bias and hide any information
which might cause us cognitive dissonance by contradicting it. Whole media careers were built
on this phenomenon during the years of Russiagate hysteria, and we see it play out in spheres
from imperialism to Covid-19 commentary to economic policy.
Someone benefits from this dynamic, and it isn't you. As we've
discussed previously, we know from WikiLeaks documents that powerful people actively
seek to build ideological echo chambers for the purpose of propaganda and indoctrination, and
there is surely a lot more study going into the subject than we've seen been shown. Splitting
the public up into two oppositional factions who barely interact and can't even communicate
with each other because they don't share a common reality keeps the populace impotent,
ignorant, and powerless to stop the unfolding of the agendas of the powerful.
You should not be afraid of your government being too nice to China. What you should worry
about is the US-centralized power alliance advancing a multifront new cold war conducted
simultaneously against two nuclear-armed nations for the first time ever in human history.
There are far, far too many small moving parts in such a cold war for things to happen in a
safely predictable manner, which means there are far, far too many
chances for something to go very, very wrong.
Whenever someone tells you that a US president is going to be "soft" on a nation the
US government has marked as an enemy, you are being played. Always, always, always, always.
It's just people manipulating you away from your natural, healthy inclination toward peace. Get
out of your echo chamber, look at the raw information instead of the narratives, and stop
letting the sociopaths manipulate you.
By Caitlin Johnstone , an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her
website is here and you can follow
her on Twitter @caitoz
USA-MA BIN LADEN / NOVEMBER 25, 2020
America desperately needs its Two Minutes of Hate against other countries like a meth
addict needs his next hit.
For Democrats and their ilk, Hate Russia was their unifying and mobilizing ideology.
For Republicans and their ilk, Hate China is their unifying and mobilizing ideology.
Hate is the only thing that holds the American Empire together. Without its Two Minutes of Hate, America will break up apart into a million pieces.
Deep down, Americans know that – and that is why they so readily engage in these
spittle-flecked campaigns.
Welcome to the Orwellian world of America where the same American Empire that bombs,
invades, sanctions, regime changes, encircles, or colonizes multiple nations around the world
whines like a triggered little snowflake that poor innocent war criminal America is being
"threatened"!
Truly pathetic.
CHRISTIAN J. CHUBA / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
There are many good websites (in addition to this one of course). I'd always tell someone,
just look to see what speaks to you my list some are 'out there' I'll summarize.
https://www.antiwar.com/ –
Kind of like a drudgereport for decent people on world events. They go through the effort of
summarizing AP and other official news outlet stories rather than mindlessly link to them.
Just hearing the same stories minus the slavish propaganda will deprogram many people.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/ – M.E., Yemen, if
your friend is very sensitive to anything that insinuates that Israel is not the celestial
city he might be offended.
https://southfront.org/ – Ah
.. on our State Dept list of Russian disinfo. Discuss military conflicts, sympathetic to the
countries at the receiving end of our attention.
http://thesaker.is/ – Saker was an
intel guy from the 'other side' during the Cold War, values decency, Orthodox Christian, only
site that regularly publishes speeches from Nasrallah, does military analysis, arrogant but I
always feel like I learned something.
http://www.moonofalabama.org
– anonymous analyst, German Intel guy, writes very well. I put him last because he has
been on a pro-Trump binge lately. I think they are secret lovers. Given what he normally
writes about I have no idea what he sees in him.
Caitlin, when it comes to the real enemy of the Neocons and Neoliberals, Russia is the
real enemy, not China. You have to understand GLOBALIZATION. China is Part of the
Globalization project that started over 30 years ago. It's a complex parasitic relationship.
The Globalist elites in the US are working towards the "Great Reset" using the Coronavirus
pseudemic that started in China and use it as an excuse to move towards a society that will
resemble the totalitarian, repressive communist one like in China. A lot of our big
corporations are still doing great business there. However they are not in Russia. Russia was
kicked out of the G8 years ago, because they were not going to go along with the
Globalization project and the New World Order enslavement project of the G7 (without Russia
now). Trump was bad enough as a president, but he was not really part of the "Globalist
Club". I assure you Mr BIDEN is totally compromised by the NWO evil Globalists comprised of
the MIS, Transnational corporations & International Finance, and will try to act "tough"
with China, but this will be just a distraction. The US Shadow Government elites control him
totally, something they could not always do with Idiot Trump. Here's an example how they
worked with our "enemy" Communist China:
Gates, Fauci, CCP, Big Pharma, international Bankers, they have all colluded with the WHO
to create the Coronavirus "pseudemic".
(the NIH, under the direction of Dr. Fauci, sent $3.7 million to the Wuhan lab in 2014, and
then showered the Chinese scientists at this lab with another $3.7 million in 2019 to keep
their work going, the work of developing a bat virus that could attack people. Two
back-to-back 5-year projects that took $7.4 million out of taxpayer pockets and out of the
United States).
WHO is a globalist institution and so are the actors that are colluding with it.
How Joe Biden was 'recruited' to become agent of Chinese Communist party
While Joe was cutting deals with China, the Chinese Communist party was putting its hooks
into him:
You are wrong. You are a victim of the echo chamber dynamic described in this article.
China was temporarily courted to pull it away from the USSR and a bunch of plutocrats rode a
lot of wealth on that move, but it insists on its own sovereignty and an agenda to halt its
rise and roll back its power has long been in the works. Obama got the ball rolling on this
years ago. Biden will continue ramping up the same anti-China agendas as his predecessors
Trump and Obama, and I will document those escalations in this space. When that happens, you
need to make sure you re-evaluate your incorrect position based on the new evidence
presented. You should already be beginning that re-evaluation based on the information I just
gave you about his cabinet picks.
REALIST / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
Right. That's what the "Pivot to Asia" foreign policy during the Obomber administration
was all about. The US thought it was going to pick off as new allies all the countries
surrounding China and make them antagonists rather than partners with the Chinese and their
grand plans like the BRI. This was pretty much the same strategy that had been employed
against Russia and its former satellites and Soviet republics in Eastern Europe. Vietnam and
the Philippines were supposed to be the new Georgia and Ukraine set in the Orient.
~
Washington's oft repeated big trick is to dangle beaucoup bucks before the leaders of third
rate powers to get them to change allegiances and to play on age old resentments that small
regional powers often have against the local monolith like Russia or China. Ego-driven
lightweights like Poroshenko and Duterte are often susceptible to Yankee flattery that they
can wield some real power under the American umbrella.
~
So, Washington promises Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei etc that it will bring
"justice" and support their claims for sundry rocks in the South China Sea, especially the
ones fortified by China to ensure shipping lanes stay upon under potential aggression from
the Americans (who else would be a threat?)
~
That Washington would preach the usual bullshit about peace and harmony while actually
pursuing treachery and bloodshed is no surprise, however, one must snap to attention over the
ballsy evolution of its attitude of unconcern about who knows and understands this
disconnect. I don't doubt that Russia and China have always known that Washington is totally
untrustworthy. The Russians even coined a new term to describe this state of complete and
absolute American unreliability, which I don't remember because I don't speak their language.
But today, most of the American people also must know, they must know that America drafts
very real plans to eradicate the entire Chinese fleet off their own coast within a 72-hour
time frame all for pursuing nothing more than their own national interests. They know unless
they have been living under a rock for the entirety of the 21st century or have thoroughly
perfected the art of Orwellian Double Think.
It's competition for tribute. China has a long history of receiving tribute from all of
the world which it knew. This is Chinese world history. It's how Chinese rulers naturally see
the world. Russia is historically Byzantine (Greek) in it's diplomacy and somewhat
isolationist militarily, defending in depth, then counter-attacking decisively.
Our owners cannot get their new demotion worked out amongst themselves and plan to squeeze us
for blood and dominate the rest of the world, which is bigger and more complex than China and
Russia, and more flexible to adapt against the empire.
How much more hubris shall the world receive?
ANARCISSIE / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
I think the provocations against China, like those against Russia, have been largely
theatrical. There _was_ a plan to push the Russians out of the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Syria
in order to dominate the Black Sea and the Middle East, but the US had no intention of
applying serious military muscle to it (which could have led to a major war). The US actually
has no problems with Russia, and they have a common interest in keeping Muslims tamped down
in the Middle East. Likewise, the US will play at constructing a ring of hostile states
around China, but this is unlikely to succeed, and when it fails, the US plan is to retreat
to Australia and India, or possibly Africa if things go very badly. Again, the US has no
actual conflicts with China; the pseudo-war with China is 90% prolefeed. This was all laid
out pretty well by George Orwell in _1984_: 'We have always been at war with Eastasia,'
etc.
JP JUDE / NOVEMBER 24, 2020
I sort of agree with you, Ms Johnstone, but have you considered you might be in an echo
chamber? I say this because I read your article the same day I read about the new Asian trade
deal. It's huge with everyone, China to Australia in it. And, after I read about Xi wanting
to end global poverty; China has officially ended national poverty, and wants to end global
poverty. It kind of puts the altercations with India in a new light; they've long had a caste
system which is like class–which they're supposed to end but haven't, and reminds me of
the States being classless but not really. I think if you follow the money sotta speak, the
Americans have a real problem and a lot of the war propaganda is them trying to be relevant
to a world that has moved on. I don't know if it's anti-globalization but the thing about the
Americans going to war is the reality they're doing it for a buck. Weapons sales and all
that, just real war is now fought via technology. The Chinese, Russians even the Indians, can
fight that kind of war; the Americans can't as evidence by the proliferation of weapons and
number of friendly fire accidents demonstrates. They're all brawn in a more cerebral world. I
think the argument has changed.
In Washington foreign conflicts are to policymakers what lights are to moths. The desire
to take the U.S. into every political dispute, social collapse, civil war, foreign conflict,
and full-scale war seems to only get stronger as America's failures accumulate.
There may be no better example than the battle between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the
latter's claim to the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, contained within Azerbaijan but largely
populated by ethnic Armenians. Distant from the US and Europe, the struggle matters most to
nearby Georgia, Turkey, Iran, and Russia.
The impact on Americans is minor and indirect at best. Yet there is wailing and gnashing
of teeth in Washington that the US is "absent" from this fight. Send in the bombers! Or at
least the diplomats! Candidate Joe Biden predictably insisted that America should be leading
a peace effort "together with our European partners," without indicating what that would mean
in practice.
The roots of the conflict, like so many others, go back centuries. Control of largely
Muslim Azerbaijan and Christian Armenia passed among Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Russian
Empire. After the Russian Revolution the two were independent and fought over N-K's status,
before both were absorbed by the Soviet Union. Nagorno-Karabakh's ethnic Armenian population
began pressing for transfer to Armenia during the U.S.S.R.'s waning days. After the latter
collapsed in 1992 the two newly independent nations again fought, resulting in tens of
thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees, and Armenia grabbed the disputed
land as well as even larger adjacent territory filled with ethnic Azerbaijanis.
A ceasefire froze the bitter conflict, leaving the conquered territory under Armenian
control. Although Yerevan's gain was tenuous, unrecognized by the rest of the world and
dependent upon a geographic corridor between Armenia and N-K, the government, largely in
response to internal political pressures, grew steadily more aggressive and unwilling to
honor previous commitments. Violent clashes mixed with ineffective talks between the two
states.
With no prospect of resolution, despite long-standing diplomatic efforts through the
so-called Minsk Process, involving America and France, among others, Azerbaijani forces,
relying on Turkey, employing Syrian mercenaries, and utilizing Israeli-made drones, launched
an offensive in September. With Yerevan losing troops and territory, Moscow brokered a new
ceasefire, which required Armenia's withdrawal from areas conquered a quarter century ago.
The transportation corridor is to be policed by Russian peacekeeping forces; Turkish
officials will help monitor the ceasefire.
The result was jubilation in Baku and riots in Yerevan. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinyan, under political siege, declared: "This is not a victory, but there is no defeat
until you consider yourself defeated, we will never consider ourselves defeated and this
shall become a new start of an era of our national unity and rebirth." More accurate was
Azerbaijani President Ilham Alyev's assessment: "This [ceasefire] statement constitutes
Armenia's capitulation. This statement puts an end to the years-long occupation. This
statement is our Glorious Victory." With Pashinyan's authority in tatters and Alyev
triumphantly enjoying a surge in popular support, hostilities could easily explode again.
Why would any sane American want to get in the middle of this fight?
Demands that Washington "do something" ignore three important realities. The first is that
the conflict has nothing to do with the US and threatens no serious American interests. The
fighting is tragic, of course, as are similar battles around the world. However, this
volatile region is dominated by Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Iran previously supported Armenia,
Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan, and Russia has good relations with both, including a
defense treaty with Yerevan which Moscow deemed not to cover contested territory, meaning
N-K.
Which of these powers, all essentially American adversaries – despite Ankara's
continued membership in the transatlantic alliance – dominates which neighbor is a
matter of indifference to Washington. It simply doesn't matter, and certainly isn't worth
fighting over. Once US officials would have preferred Turkey over Iran and Russia, but
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken his nation in an Islamist and authoritarian
direction, warmed relations with Russia, the only serious target of NATO, and begun
aggressively expanding Turkish influence and control in Syria, Libya, and the eastern
Mediterranean. Ankara encouraged the current military round by enhancing Azerbaijani
capabilities.
Georgia also shares a border with both combatants but is only a bit player in the ongoing
drama. However, it has lobbyists in Washington whose mission is to get Tbilisi into NATO and
thus turn Georgia into another US defense dependent. Doing so would create a direct border
conflict with Russia, made much more dangerous by the volatility of Georgian politics. The
irresponsible and reckless President Mikheil Saakashvili triggered the brief yet disastrous
2008 war with Russia and remains active politically. Tbilisi's dubious role is another reason
for the US to avoid deeper involvement in the region's disputatious politics.
The second point is that there is nothing sensible America for do, despite cacophonous
demands otherwise. In October Washington Post columnist David Ignatius complained:
"The global power vacuum invites mischief. The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan has
escalated over 10 days of fighting. Armenian leaders initially hoped that US diplomacy could
produce a ceasefire; now they look to Moscow."
Translated, Yerevan wanted Washington to save Armenia from both its original aggression
and later intransigence. Like many other governments have desired in other conflicts. But how
was the US to restrain Azerbaijan, which was able to recover long-lost territory only by
resorting to force? America's regional policy has been a disaster. Washington already
demonstrated its impotence in Ankara as Erdogan charted an independent course. The US turned
a difficult relationship with Moscow into a mini-Cold War. The Trump administration foolishly
declared economic war on Iran, creating regional instability and precluding negotiation.
As for Azerbaijan, military intervention would risk war for no good reason. Economic
sanctions would punish Baku, but to what end? So far, the president's constant resort to
"maximum pressure" has failed to induce political surrender in Havana, Caracas, Damascus,
Pyongyang, or Moscow. Whatever the economic price, Aliyeh could ill afford to retreat and
anger an entire population currently celebrating his triumph. Anyway, the issue is not worth
another failed American attempt at global social engineering. Which means Washington had
nothing to offer but words.
Certainly the US should encourage a peaceful settlement and negotiation, but this is a
conflict for which there is no obvious diplomatic answer. It is easy to insist that Baku
should not have restarted hostilities, but the Alyev government struck because diplomacy had
frozen along with the dispute. And Baku's success dramatically reshaped the balance of power,
leaving Armenia in a far worse position than before. Creative mediation might help, but
Azerbaijan, on offense, showed no interest in such an effort. Nor has Washington demonstrated
the ability to reign in Baku's main backer, Turkey, anywhere else. Washington is filled with
magical thinking, the belief that the president merely need whisper his command and the
entire world will snap to attention. Alas, America long ago lost that ability, if it ever had
it.
Moreover, US officials share some blame: On the presumption that Azerbaijan was committed
to a peaceful settlement, Washington provided it with arms and aid to combat terrorism.
Unfortunately, weaponry, like money, is fungible. And that mistake cannot be unmade.
An equally mistaken belief in the Trump administration's commitment also might have helped
lead Armenia astray. Since taking power in the Velvet Revolution two years ago, Pashinyan
sought to move westward. However, in the present crisis neither America nor Europe did
anything to assist Yerevan – whose occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh remains illegal under
international law. Some US interest groups attempted to turn Armenia into a cause celebre of
religious persecution, but the Muslim-Christian clash is incidental to broader geopolitics
which little concerned the West.
The horrid genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire against ethnic Armenians a century ago
is constantly cited but remains irrelevant to today's conflict. Around three decades ago
Armenia invaded Azerbaijan to seize incontestably Azerbaijani land. Baku struck back for
reasons of nationalism, not religion. The essential irrelevance of religion is reflected in
Christian Russia's good relations with Muslim Azerbaijan, Jewish Israel arming Muslim
Azerbaijan, and Muslim Iran's long backing for Christian Armenia, though these ties ebbed in
the last couple years. The US should no more be a crusading Christian republic than a
crusading republic.
Finally, Russia demonstrated that other powers have an interest in peace and stability and
are able to act. That is a tough lesson for the denizens of Washington to learn, given their
irrational hatred of Russia. Vladimir Putin is no cuddly liberal but most American
policymakers make hypocrisy and sanctimony the foundations of their approach to Moscow. After
all, Putin has killed fewer innocent people than Trump administration's favorite dictator,
Mohammed bin Salman, whose aggression against Yemen has resulted in more than five years of
murder and mayhem and created the worst humanitarian disaster on the planet. Yet Washington
continues to sell Saudi Arabia more weapons and munitions with which to kill more Yemeni
civilians.
Moreover, though Moscow has behaved badly, in Georgia and Ukraine in particular, so has
the US in Russia's eyes. Washington misled Moscow over NATO expansion, dismantled longtime
Russian friend Serbia, pushed NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, embraced Tbilisi,
which fired on Russian troops guaranteeing security in neighboring secessionist territory,
encouraged a street putsch against an elected, Russophile government in Kiev, and sought to
push Moscow out of Syria, an ally of nearly 70 years. The expectation of American
policymakers that they can use military force to push the Monroe Doctrine up to Russia's
border without triggering a sharp response is unrealistic at best, deadly at worst.
Of course, the Russia-brokered accord was a clear diplomatic triumph and likely will
solidify Moscow's influence. However, with success has come responsibility, which could prove
costly to Moscow. The accord remains fragile and unstable, and might collapse.
By its nature the agreement is short-term and does not address the fundamental issue, the
status of N-K. Indeed, on its own terms either party, which would most likely be Azerbaijan
in this case, can order the withdrawal of Russian monitors in five years. However, the modus
vivendi might not last even that long. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev posited: "I hope
that today's ceasefire and our further plans to normalize relations with Armenia, if
perceived positively by the Armenian side, can create a new situation in the region, a
situation of cooperation, a situation of strengthening stability and security." With Yerevan
aflame after angry mobs took over the National Assembly building, severely beat that body's
speaker, trashed the prime minister's home, and forced him into hiding, "positive" probably
is not the right word to describe Armenians' perception of the settlement. In fact, those who
abandoned their homes in territory turned over to Azerbaijan adopted a scorched earth policy,
destroying everything.
Both sides probably view the latest agreement a bit like French Gen. Ferdinand Foch
presciently saw the Versailles Treaty: "This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years."
Only the N-K time frame might be much shorter. Nevertheless, no one else has offered any
better alternative. Unfortunately, zero-sum disputes over territory are among the most
difficult disputes to resolve. Either Armenia or Azerbaijan will control N-K. Either ethnic
Armenians or Azerbaijanis will live in N-K. Yes, the ideal would be people from both lands to
live together in a democratic state, joining hands around a bonfire to sing Kumbaya every
night. However, no one believes that is even a remote possibility.
With nothing meaningful to offer to solve the current firefight, it was best for
Washington to stay out. In fact, Armenia's old guard, pushed out of power by Pashinyan two
years ago in the Velvet Revolution, blame their nation's defeat on his government's
subsequent turn West, from which it received little support. Brokering the current defeat
would merely have reinforced anger against America.
Russia acted because it has far more at stake. Let it undertake the burden of seeking a
settlement. Let it accept the cost of enforcing a settlement. Let it bear the blame if the
system again crashes.
US policymakers have trouble imagining a world in which a sparrow falls to earth, to
borrow Biblical imagery, without the US responding. If the bird falls in Nagorno-Karabakh, at
least, Americans should allow someone else to pick it up. It is not Washington's purpose to
make every conflict on earth America's own.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire
.
Predictions are tricky matters in world affairs – and as it turns out, prescience
produces little in the way of public or personal vindication. There's scant satisfaction when
one's subjects tend towards the tragic. Take the (for now) paused 44-day war in the South
Caucasus. Back in an October
interview , I offered this (then) seemingly provocative prognosis:
"If this thing gets solved, or put back in the freezer, which is about the best we can
hope for right now, it will be Putin playing King Solomon and cutting the Nagorno-Karabakh
baby in half."
Think Moscow will merit plaudits from mainstream media? After all, four weeks ago, a
U.S.-brokered truce held a whole
few hours !
Snark aside, intellectual merriment loses luster when it amounts to dancing on thousands
of fresh graves filled with family members of the tens of thousands more newly
displaced . Only the implications of the ceasefire's terms – under which Armenian
troops withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh after a 26 years occupation and replaced by Russian
peacekeepers – are also disturbing. The outcome also set potentially long-lasting
precedents.
Make no mistake this was no small victory for the initiator – if not aggressor
– nation of Azerbaijan. That under the agreement , Azeri troops stay
in place within areas of Nagorno-Karabakh they seized in battle, has profound ramifications.
War worked. Furthermore, seven odd weeks of combat proved – once again – that it
often does, at least in certain contexts.
What are those (not-so) special situations, you ask? Easy: be in the esteemed and wealthy
Western camp. Kow-tow diplomatically and play ball economically – especially in energy
sales – with multinational corporations headquartered in North American and European
capitals. Thus, win powerful friends and influence prominent people and nearly anything is
permissible.
Anyway, both people and leaders in Baku – especially the mini-Stalinist Aliyev dynasty running the
family fiefdom – are thrilled with the outcome. Same goes for folks in Ankara, and
madcap Erdogan – the man who would be sultan – himself. Instructively, there's no
less enthusiasm in Tel Aviv – not just by Bibi Netanyahu's dominant rightist ethnocrats .
Because this much you can't make up: pro-Baku rallies and the
waving of Azeri flags in Israel!
Look, Ankara hates their Armenian late genocide victims for surviving to tell the
Turk-indicting tale. Besides, Erdogan is pursuing neo-Ottoman
adventurism region-wide, and more than happy to tap in into ethno-Turkic and co-religionist
solidarity to grease those grandiose wheels. Israel's self-styled Jewish and Democratic
hybrid state support for Shia Islamic majority Azerbaijan seems stranger – unless one's
in the know on the lengthy and sordid ties
between Bibi and Baku.
Not so among Armenians in Yerevan – where protesters stormed the parliament, physically
accosted the speaker and reportedly looted the prime minister's own office. Something tells
me we haven't heard the last of Armenia's army in Nagorno-Karabakh – given the soreness
and inherent instability of losing sides in long-standing and externally-escalated
ethno-religious conflicts.
And here's the troubling rub: if not quite smoking guns there's plenty of smoke
indicating that Turkey – and to a lesser but
significant extent, Israel – conspired with Azerbaijan's petty autocrats to conquer
(or reconquer) Nagorno-Karabakh. The preparatory collusion was years in the making, ramped up
mightily in the months before D-Day – yet unfolded largely under the U.S. and broader
international radar. Consider a cursory recitation of the salient sequence.
Ankara's support for its Azeri Turkic-brethren has grown gradually more overt for years.
So have its long-standing arms-sales to Baku. Then came a decisive pivot – according to
one report , a six-fold jump in weapon's transfers to Azerbaijan over the last year.
Then, this past summer, Turkish troops trained and did joint exercises with Azeri forces.
Consider it a pre-invasion capstone.
Finally – now here's a cute catalyst – Ankara
reportedly moved those implausibly-deniable Syrian mercenaries into Azerbaijan two weeks
before Baku's attack. Don't take my radical word for it, though. Consider the
conclusions of the decidedly establishment-friendly Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace's resident Caucasus expert. Fellow longtime NK-watcher Tom de Waal was as clear as he
was concise:
"It's pretty obvious that Azerbaijan has been preparing for this. Azerbaijan decided it
wanted to change the status quo and that the Armenian side had no interest in a war " and
"Clearly, the decisive factor in this conflict is Turkey's intervention on Azerbaijan's
side. They seem to be heavily coordinating the war effort."
All told, that indirect intervention, coordination, and the combat-
proven capabilities of allied arms sales bonanzas – especially Turkish Bayraktar
TB2 and Israeli kamikaze drones – were decisive. Thousands of Yerevan's troops were
killed, about a third of its tanks were destroyed, and at least 50,000 Armenians have fled in
the face of Azeri gains.
Then, in the eleventh hour breach – as if to force friendly peace terms from Russia
– Turkey
threatened to intervene outright. Just how did big, bad, unhinged and the 10-foot-tall
Putin of Democrat-delusions respond to Erdogan's provocation? Well, he essentially folded
– or settled – in the interest of temporary tranquility in Russia's restive
near-abroad. Recall that Moscow eschewed even much menacing – let alone actual
intervention – on behalf of its official Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
Armenian ally.
That this was all so represents nothing less than a paradigm-shifting precedent-setter. Or
at least a reminder of force's forever utility for some. Boost your batch of backers, gather
the tech-savvy arsenal that's thus available, and ready your patron-trained troops for war.
Invade only once the green-light comes from on-external-high, and the "rules-based"
international order that isn't – but is dominated (for now) by Washington
– will avert eyes long enough to enable Nuremberg's "
supreme crime " of armed aggression to work its magic.
So force pays if your government has coveted energy resources, the cash they produce, the
weapons they buy – plus powerful patrons willing to sell you the cutting edge stuff.
Just ask sundry Gulf Arab autocrats! (Though it rarely turns out as well for internal –
especially Shia dissidents or, you know, Yemeni kids).
To take it a step further, maybe your benefactor even tosses in some third-party
mercenaries, trains and advises your army just before game-time, and threatens outright
intervention if your little-bro-government doesn't get it's way. It also helps if your
patron's patron is still a hyper-hegemon that bullies – I mean, "leads" by principled
example – much of the wealthy world into silence or complicity, and looks the other way
long enough for facts on the ground to turn your way. Now there's a formula for force as
solution to frozen conflicts!
No doubt other parties paid attention. Heck, they want in on the violent game-changing
game! Believe you me, there are plenty of neo-fascists, adventurist American "allies," and
frenemies – all in need of a little citizen-distraction from Covid, corruption, and
economic collapse – who are all in for applying the new NK-formula. Ukrainian fascists,
Georgian Euro-aspirants, frightened and ever-opportunist Baltic bros or Taiwanese troops,
Egypt's military coup-artists, Arabian princely theocrats, and no doubt Israel's Bibi bunch
– yea, they all took careful Caucasus-notes.
So where does America's president-elect, Joe Biden, stand on the Russian-brokered truce,
you ask? About as you'd suspect from a fella inside the beltway cult of "collusion." Biden
picked partisan point-scoring over principled consistency. He "
slammed " Trump's supposed slow response to the NK-fighting and accused him of
"delegating the diplomacy to Moscow." In fact, his campaign's initial
statement singled out Moscow's ostensibly "cynical" arms sales to both conflict parties
and failed to name even once the war's Beetlejuice of bellicosity – Turkey.
Never known for nuance, the gut-player-elect failed to couch his rather bold critique with
admissions of US security assistance to both sides, acknowledge the Tel Aviv and Ankara
accelerants, nor the circumscribed options for any administration in an unfrozen conflict in
which Washington has no real "
dog in the fight ." Well, that's strange – seeing as the Russian-led settlement
pushed past achieving one of Biden's publicly
stated goals: to "make clear to Armenia that regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh cannot
be occupied indefinitely."
Well, so it goes with Russia-obsessed Democratic administrations beset with the
clinical -narcissism of American exceptionalism. No matter how distant the conflict, no
matter how far off the citizenry's obscurity-radar: the maelstrom must be about us .
See everything, everywhere , is apparently about US interests, anxieties, and
obsessions. Today's obsessive flavor of the moment – and for most of the century since
Bolshevik Red October – is Moscow.
Therein lies the problem, and what I've been boy-who-cried-wolfing about regarding the
real
risk regarding the coming Democratic administration. That is, after making everything
about Trump and Russia for four years, they might begin believing their own exaggerated
alarmism and follow through with legit escalation and acceleration of theater numero uno of a
dual-front, Eurasia-spanning Cold War encore. If Moscow and Beijing are forever branded bad
boys – in motive and machinations – then on shall continually churn the war
state, with all the pecuniary and professional benefits to both the outgoing Trump team and
incoming
Biden bunch alike.
Few Americans will notice, or bother to bother themselves about it – pandemic
preoccupied and social media distracted as they be – until the fruits of folly flash in
front of their eyes (pun intended).
Forget Condi Rice's farcical foreboding of a mushroom cloud as smoking gun . Even the Bushies'
bald-faced lies rarely reached past Saddam's singular nuclear blasts – Washington and
Moscow might end the world in an afternoon.
So permit me one final prediction: if they do, some staunch US"ally" learned-of the latest
Caucasus-conclusions will be the one to drag us down to oblivion.
Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army officer, senior fellow at theCenter for
International Policy(CIP), contributing editor atAntiwar.com, and director of the new Eisenhower Media
Network (EMN). His work has appeared in the NY Times, LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post,
The Hill, Salon, The American Conservative, Mother Jones, Scheer Post and Tom Dispatch,
among other publications. He served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught
history at West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq
War,Ghostriders of
Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the SurgeandPatriotic Dissent: America in
the Age of Endless War. Along with fellow vet Chris "Henri" Henriksen, he co-hosts
the podcast "Fortress on a
Hill." Follow him on Twitter@SkepticalVetand on hiswebsitefor media requests
and past publications.
Vicky left fake democracy promotion was always about expanding and sustaining controlled
from Washinton global neoliberal empire. It is a part and parcel of Full Spectrum Dominance
doctrine implementation. So it will lean to further drop of the standard of living on the
majority of US people.
Biden is a tent revival for the aptly named "cruise missile liberals" and some of the more
shadowy neo-conservative forces are in retreat and determined to bring democracy building
home after their colonial expeditions extinguished it
"... Hate is the only thing that holds the American Empire together. Without its Two Minutes of Hate, America will break up apart into a million pieces. ..."
America desperately needs its Two Minutes of Hate against other countries like a meth
addict needs his next hit.
For Democrats and their ilk, Hate Russia was their unifying and
mobilizing ideology. For Republicans and their ilk, Hate China is their unifying and
mobilizing ideology.
Hate is the only thing that holds the American Empire together. Without its Two
Minutes of Hate, America will break up apart into a million pieces.
You can't find better smarter neocons to pursue the Full Spectrum Dominance Doctrine to the
total decimation of the standard of living of ordinary Americans ;-)
Since the 1990s, Flournoy and Blinken have steadily risen through the ranks of the
military-industrial complex, shuffling back and forth between the Pentagon and hawkish
think-tanks funded by the U.S. government, weapons companies, and oil giants.
Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrinellial Defense
Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military's doctrine of permanent war – what
it called "full spectrum dominance."
Flournoy called for "unilateral use of military power" to ensure "uninhibited access to key
markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources."
... During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Biden declared, "In my judgment, President
Bush is right to be concerned about Saddam Hussein's relentless pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction"
As Iraq was plunged into chaos and bloodshed, Flournoy was among the authors of a paper
titled "Progressive Internationalism" that called for a "smarter and better" style of permanent
war. The paper chastised the anti-war left and stated that "Democrats will maintain the world's
most capable and technologically advanced military, and we will not flinch from using it to
defend our interests anywhere in the world."
... In 2005, Flournoy signed onto a letter
from the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century, asking Congress to
"increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps (by) at least 25,000
troops each year over the next several years."
Joe Biden's national security adviser pick defended the anti-Trump dossier in 2018 as
"perfectly appropriate."
Many news outlets have declared Biden the president-elect. Newsmax has yet to project a
winner, citing legal challenges in several key battleground states.
Jake Sullivan, who worked for Biden when he served as vice president in the Obama
administration and as a senior foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton during her
presidential race in 2016,
made the comments on a podcast interview with David Axelrod, the chief strategist for
Obama's presidential campaigns.
"I mean, I believe that it is perfectly appropriate and responsible if we get wind, or if
people associated with the campaign get wind, that there may be real questions about the
connections between Donald Trump, his organization, his campaign and Russia that that be
explored fully," he said at the time, The Daily
Caller reported.
Sullivan worked for Clinton when a law firm representing her campaign hired an opposition
research firm to investigate Trump's possible ties to Russia. The firm hired Christopher
Steele, the author behind the dossier alleging a "well-developed conspiracy of cooperation
between the Trump campaign and Russian government."
Special counsel Robert Mueller later found those claims to be unfounded during his probe
into Russian interference in the election, writing in his
report "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or
coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
ELECTION 2020: What President Biden Won't Touch November 24, 2020 Save
Considering the think-tank imperialists in the bunch Biden is naming to direct U.S. foreign
policy, Danny Sjursen expects little to change in the essence of the war-state.
Military aircraft streaming red, white and blue during the welcoming ceremony for President
Donald Trump, May 2017, King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (White House,
Andrea Hanks)
I n this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up
either as "Ding dong! The witch is dead!" or "We got robbed!" Both are problematic, not because
the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable or ethically equivalent, but because
each jingle is laden with a dubious assumption: that President Donald Trump's demise would
provide either decisive deliverance or prove an utter disaster.
While there were indeed areas where his ability to cause disastrous harm lent truth to such
a belief -- race relations, climate change, and the courts
come to mind -- in others, it was distinctly (to use a dangerous phrase) overkill. Nowhere was
that more true than with America's expeditionary version of militarism, its forever wars of
this century, and the venal system that continues to feed it.
For nearly two years, We the People were coached to believe that the 2020 election would
mean everything, that Nov. 3 would be democracy's ultimate judgment day. What if, however, when
it comes to issues of war, peace, and empire, " Decision 2020 " proves barely
meaningful?
After all, in the election campaign just past, Donald Trump's sweeping war-peace rhetoric
and Joe Biden's hedging aside, neither nuclear-code aspirant bothered
to broach the most uncomfortable questions about America's uniquely intrusive global role.
Neither dared dissent from normative notions about America's posture and policy "over there,"
nor challenge the essence of the war-state, a sacred cow if ever there was one.
U.S. presidential debate, Sept. 29, 2020.
That blessed bovine has enshrined permanent policies that seem beyond challenge: Uncle Sam's
right and duty to forward deploy troops just about anywhere on the planet; garrison the globe; carry out aerial
assassinations; and unilaterally implement starvation
sanctions . Likewise the systemic structures that implement and incentivize such
rogue-state behavior are never questioned, especially the existence of a sprawling
military-industrial complex that has infiltrated
every aspect of public life, while stealing money that might have improved America's
infrastructure or wellbeing. It has engorged
itself at the taxpayer's expense, while peddling American blood money -- and blood -- on absurd
foreign adventures and autocratic allies, even as it corrupted nearly every prominent public
paymaster and policymaker.
This election season, neither Democrats nor Republicans challenged the cultural components
justifying the great game, which is evidence of one thing: empires come home, folks, even if
the troops never seem to.
The Company He Keeps
As the election neared, it became impolite to play the canary in American militarism's coal
mine or risk raising Biden's record -- or probable prospects -- on minor matters like war and
peace. After all, his opponent was a monster, so noting the holes in Biden's block of Swiss
cheese presumably amounted to useful idiocy -- if not sinister collusion -- when it came to
Trump's reelection. Doing so was a surefire way to jettison professional opportunities and find
yourself permanently uninvited to the
coolest Beltway cocktail parties or interviews on cable TV.
George Orwell warned of the dangers of such "intellectual cowardice" more than 70 years ago
in a
proposed preface to his classic novel Animal Farm . "At any given moment," he wrote,
"there is an orthodoxy that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not
exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it Anyone who
challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."
And that's precisely what progressive paragon Cornel West warned against seven months ago
after his man, Sen. Bernie Sanders -- briefly, the Democratic frontrunner -- suddenly proved a
dead candidate walking. "Vote for Biden, but don't lie about who he really is," the stalwart
scholar suggested .
It seems just enough Americans did the former (phew!), but mainstream media makers and
consumers mostly forgot about the salient second part of his sentiment.
Cornel West speaking at a house party for Sen. Bernie Sanders in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 15,
2020. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
With the electoral outcome now apparent -- if not
yet accepted in Trump World -- perhaps such politeness (and the policing that goes with it)
will fade away, ushering in a renaissance of Fourth Estate oppositional truth-telling. In that
way -- in my dreams at least -- persistently energized progressives might send President Joe
Biden down dovish alternative avenues, perhaps even landing some appointments in an executive
branch that now
drives foreign policy (though, if I'm honest, I'm hardly hopeful on either count).
One look at Uncle Joe's inbound nieces and nephews brings to mind Aesop's fabled moral: "You are judged by the company you
keep."
Think-Tank Imperialists
One thing is already far too clear: Biden's shadow national security team will be a
distinctly status-quo squad. To know where future policymakers might head, it always helps to
know where they came from. And when it comes to Biden's foreign policy crew ,
including a striking number of
women and a fair number of Obama administration and
Clinton 2016 campaign retreads -- they were
mostly in Trump-era holding patterns in the connected worlds of strategic consulting and
hawkish think tanking.
In fact, the national security bio of the archetypal Biden bro (or
sis ) would go something like this: she (he) sprang from an Ivy League school, became a
congressional staffer, got appointed to a mid-tier role on Barack Obama's national security
council, consulted for WestExec
Advisors (an Obama alumni-founded outfit linking
tech firms and the Department of Defense), was a fellow at the Center for New American Security
(CNAS), had some defense contractor ties , and
married someone
who's also
in the game .
It helps as well to follow the money. In other words, how did the Biden
bunch make it and who pays the outfits that have been paying them in the Trump years? None of
this is a secret: their two most common think-tank homes -- CNAS and the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS) -- are the second- and sixth-highest recipients, respectively,
of U.S. government and defense-contractor
funding . The top donors to CNAS are Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Department of
Defense. Most CSIS largesse comes from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and
Raytheon.
How the inevitable conflicts of interest play out is hardly better concealed. To take just
one example, in 2016, Michèle Flournoy, CNAS co-founder, ex-Pentagon official, and "
odds-on favorite " to become Biden's secretary of defense,
exchanged emails with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ambassador in Washington. She pitched
a project whereby CNAS analysts would, well, analyze whether Washington should maintain
drone-sales restrictions in a non-binding multilateral " missile technology control "
agreement. The UAE's autocratic government then paid CNAS $250,000 to draft a report
that (you won't be surprised to learn) argued for amending the agreement to allow that country
to purchase American-manufactured drones.
Michèle Flournoy, at right, on front of WestExec Advisors homepage.
Which is just what Flournoy and company's supposed nemeses in the Trump administration then
did this very July past. Again, no surprise. American drones seem to have a way of ending
up in the hands of Gulf theocracies -- states with abhorrent
human rights records that use such planes to surveil and brutally bomb Yemeni civilians
.
If it's too much to claim that a future Defense Secretary Flournoy would be the UAE's
(wo)man in Washington, you at least have to wonder. Worse still, with those think-tank,
security-consulting, and defense-industry ties of hers, she's anything but alone among Biden's
top
prospects and nominees. Just consider a few other abridged resumes:
Tony Blinken, on left, with President Barack Obama, on WestExec Advisors homepage.
Tony Blinken , [named
secretary of state on Monday] a longtime foreign policy adviser, to serve as secretary of
State; frontrunner for national security adviser: CSIS; WestExec (which he co-founded with
Flournoy); and CNN analyst. Jake Sullivan , [named
national security adviser on Monday]: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
("peace," in this case, being
funded by 10 military agencies and defense contractors) and Macro Advisory Partners, a
strategic consultancy
run by former British spy chiefs. Avril Haines [named
director of national intelligence on Monday]: CNAS-the Brookings Institution; WestExec; and
Palantir
Technologies , a controversial, CIA-seeded, NSA-linked data-mining firm. Kathleen Hicks , probable deputy
secretary of defense: CSIS and the Aerospace Corporation , a
federally funded research and development center that lobbies on defense issues.
An extra note about Hicks: she's the
head of Biden's Department of Defense transition team and also a senior vice president at
CSIS. There, she hosts that think tank's "Defense 2020" podcast. In case anyone's still
wondering where CSIS's bread is buttered, here's how Hicks
opens each episode:
"This podcast is made possible by contributions from BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop
Grumman, and the Thales Group."
In other words, given what we already know about Joe Biden's previous
gut-driven policies that pass for "middle of the road" in this anything but middling
country of ours, the experiences and affiliations of his "
A-Team " don't bode well for systemic-change seekers. Remember, this is a president-elect
who
assured rich donors that "nothing would fundamentally change" if he were elected. Should he
indeed stock his national security team with such a conflicts-of-interest-ridden crowd,
consider America's sacred cows of foreign policy all but saved.
Biden's outfit is headed for office, it seems, to right the Titanic, not rock the boat.
Off the Table: A Paradigm Shift
President Barack Obama meeting with his national security team, April 25, 2011.
Michèle Flournoy, as under secretary of defense for policy. is on the president's right,
seated against wall. (White House, Flickr, Pete Souza)
In this context, join me in thinking about what won't be on the next presidential menu when
it comes to the militarization of American foreign policy.
Don't expect major changes when it comes to:
One-sided support for Israel that enables
permanent Palestinian oppression and foments undying ire across the Greater Middle East. Tony
Blinken
put it this way: as president, Joe Biden "would not tie military assistance to Israel to
things like annexation [of all or large portions of the occupied West Bank] or other decisions
by the Israeli government with which we might disagree." Unapologetic support for various Gulf
State autocracies and theocracies that, as they cynically
collude with Israel, will only continue to heighten tensions with Iran and facilitate yet
more grim war crimes in Yemen. Beyond Michèle Flournoy's professional
connections with the UAE, Gulf kingdoms generously fund the very think tanks that so many
Biden prospects have populated. Saudi Arabia, for example, offers annual donations to
Brookings and the Rand Corporation; the UAE, $1 million for a new CSIS office building ; and Qatar,
$14.8 million to Brookings. America's historically unprecedented and provocative
expeditionary military posture globally, including at least
800 bases in 80 countries , seems likely to be altered only in marginal ways. As Jake
Sullivan put it in a June CSIS interview : "I'm
not arguing for getting out of every base in the Middle East. There is a military posture
dimension to this as a reduced footprint."
Above all, it's obvious that the Biden bunch has no desire to slow down, no less halt, the "
revolving door " that
connects national security work in the government and jobs or security consulting positions in
the defense industry. The same goes for the think tanks that the arms producers amply
fund to justify the whole circus.
In such a context, count on this: the militarization of American society and the
"thank-you-for-your-service" fetishization of American soldiers will continue to thrive,
exhibit A being the way Biden now closes almost any speech
with "May God protect our troops."
All of this makes for a rather discouraging portrait of an old man's coming administration.
Still, consider it a version of truth in advertising. Joe and company are likely to continue to
be who they've always been and who they continue to say they are. After all, transformational
presidencies and unexpected pivots are historically
rare phenomena. Expecting the moon from a man mostly offering MoonPies almost guarantees
disappointment.
Obama Encore or Worse?
Tony Blinken, at right, as deputy national security advisor, with President Barack Obama,
Sept. 19, 2014. (White House, Pete Souza)
Don't misunderstand me: a Biden presidency will certainly leave some maneuvering room at the
margins of national security strategy. Think nuclear
treaties with the Russians (which the Trump administration had been systematically tearing
up) and the possible thawing of at least some of the
tensions with Tehran.
Nor should even the most cynical among us underestimate the significance of having a
president who actually accepts the reality of climate change and the need to switch to
alternative energy sources as quickly as possible. Noam Chomsky's
bold assertion that the human species couldn't endure a second Trump term, thanks to the
environmental catastrophe, nuclear brinksmanship, and pandemic negligence he represents, was
anything but hyperbole. Yet recall that he was also crystal clear about the need
"for an organized public" to demand change and "impose pressures" on the new administration the
moment the new president is inaugurated.
Yet, in the coming Biden years, there is also a danger that empowered Democrats in an
imperial presidency (when it comes to foreign policy) will actually escalate a
two-front New Cold War with China and Russia. And there's always the worry that the ascension
of a more genteel
emperor could co-opt -- or at least quiet -- a growing movement of anti-Trumpers, including
the vets of this country's forever wars who are increasingly
dressing in antiwar clothing.
What seems certain is that, as ever, salvation won't spring from the top. Don't count on
Status-quo Joe to slaughter Washington's sacred cows of foreign policy or on his national
security team to topple the golden calves of American empire. In fact, the defense industry
seems bullish on Biden. As Raytheon CEO Gregory Hayes recently put it ,
"Obviously, there is a concern that defense spending will go way down if there is a Biden
administration, but frankly I think that's ridiculous." Or consider retired Marine Corps major
general turned defense consultant Arnold Punaro who recently said
of Biden's coming tenure, "I think the industry will have, when it comes to national security,
a very positive view."
Given the evidence that business-as-usual will continue in the Biden years, perhaps it's
time to take that advice from Cornel West, absorb the truth
about Biden's future national security squad, and act accordingly. There's no top-down
salvation on the agenda -- not from Joe or his crew of consummate insiders. Pressure and change
will flow from the grassroots or it won't come at all.
Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army officer and contributing editor at antiwar.com . His work has appeared in the LA Times ,
The Nation , Huff Post , T he Hill , Salon , Truthdig ,
Tom Dispatch , among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance
units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the
author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders
of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge . His latest book is
Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War. Follow him on Twitter
at @SkepticalVet . Check out his
professional website for contact info,
scheduling speeches, and/or access to the full corpus of his writing and media appearances.
The choices the incoming president Joe Biden has made so far are not great at all. The
people he so far selected are staunch interventionists who will want to continue the wars
they have started during their previous time in office.
Tony Blinken will become Secretary of State. (It was probably thought to be too hard to
get Senate confirmation for the similar bad
Susan Rice.) In 2013 the Washington Post
described his high flying pedigree :
Blinken is deputy national security adviser to President Obama, who has also invoked the
Holocaust as his administration wrestles, often painfully, with how to respond to Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons. One of the government's key
players in drafting Syria policy, the 51-year-old Blinken has Clinton administration
credentials and deep ties to Vice President Biden and the foreign policy and national
security establishment in Washington. He has drawn attention in Situation Room photos,
including the iconic one during the May 2011 raid of Osama bin Laden's compound, for his
stylishly wavy salt-and-pepper hair. But what sets him apart from the other intellectual
powerhouses in the inner sanctum is a life story that reads like a Jewish high-society
screenplay that the onetime aspiring film producer may have once dreamed of making. There's
his father, a giant in venture capital; his mother, the arts patron; and his stepfather,
who survived the Holocaust to become of one of the most influential lawyers on the global
stage. It is a bildungsroman for young Blinken -- playing in a Parisian jazz band, debating
politics with statesmen -- with a supporting cast of characters that includes, among
others, Leonard Bernstein, John Lennon, Mark Rothko, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Abel
Ferrara and Christo.
The man is a war mongering psycho:
Blinken surprised some in the Situation Room by breaking with Biden to support military
action in Libya, administration officials said, and he advocated for American action in
Syria after Obama's reelection. These sources said that Blinken was less enthusiastic than
Biden about Obama's decision to seek congressional approval for a strike in Syria, but is
now -- perhaps out of necessity -- onboard and a backer of diplomatic negotiations with
Russia. While less of an ideologue than Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations (a job for which he was considered), he not surprisingly shares her belief that
global powers such as the United States have a "responsibility to protect" against
atrocities.
He has since shown
no remorse about those foreign policy failures:
Blinken maintains that the failure of U.S. policy in Syria was that our government did not
employ enough force. He stands by the false argument that Biden's vote to authorize the
invasion of Iraq was a "vote for tough diplomacy." He was reportedly in favor of the Libyan
intervention, which Biden opposed, and he was initially a defender and advocate for U.S.
support for the Saudi coalition war on Yemen. In short, Blinken has agreed with some of the
biggest foreign policy mistakes that Biden and Obama made, and he has tended to be more of
an interventionist than both of them.
If you can't quite place Jake Sullivan, he's was a long-serving aide to Hillary Clinton,
starting with her 2008 race against Barack Obama, then serving as her deputy chief of staff
and director of the State Department's Office of Policy Planning when Clinton was Obama's
secretary of state. (...) In 2016, during her failed presidential campaign, Sullivan once
again teamed up with Clinton, and he was widely expected to have been named to serve as her
national security adviser or even secretary of state had she won.
Since 2016, and since the creation of NSA, Sullivan has emerged as a kind of foreign
policy scold, gently -- and sometimes not so gently -- criticizing those who reflexively
oppose American intervention abroad and who disparage the idea of American
"exceptionalism." Indeed, in an article in the January-February issue of The Atlantic,
"What Donald Trump and Dick Cheney Got Wrong About America," Sullivan explicitly says that
he's intent on "rescuing the idea of American exceptionalism" and presents the "case for a
new American exceptionalism".
Sullivan
send classified documents to Hillary Clinton's private email server. He wrote to her that
Al Qaida is "on our side in Syria." He also hyped fake Trump-Russia collusion
allegations.
It is yet unknown who will become Secretary of Defense. Michèle Flournoy is the
most named option but there is
some opposition to her nomination :
[B]ackers of Michèle Flournoy, his likely pick for defense secretary, are trying to
head off a last-minute push by some left-leaning Democrats trying to derail her selection,
with many progressives seeing her nomination as a continuation of what critics refer to as
America's "forever wars."
I expect that the progressive will lose the fight and that either Flournoy or some other
hawkish figure will get that weapon lobbyist position.
Progressives also lost on the Treasury position. Biden's nomination for that is Janet
Yellen who is known to be an inflation hawk. She is unlikely to support large spending on
progressive priorities.
As usual with a Democratic election win the people who brought the decisive votes and
engagement, those who argue for more socialist and peaceful policies, will be cut off from
the levers of power.
In three years they will again be called upon to fall for another bait and switch.
Posted by b on November 24, 2020 at 16:32 UTC | Permalink
There are so many creatures that the swamp holds. Don't be surprised by what comes
next.
The entire project for Democrats in this election cycle was to get rid of Trump. There was
never any vision for the future or a presentation of policy to gain voters. It was all "Trump
is an existential threat and the only priority is to defeat him at the polls." Bernie Sanders
made this all quite clear as he again led his legion of lemmings off a cliff and into an
ocean of Neoliberal/neoconservative Forever Empire.
But hey, it's all worth it to get rid of The Man With The Golden Toilet.
Meanwhile, yeah, it's back to future with more of the same as far as the eye can see.
Which, with an economy in shambles, and a populace with a death wish, might not be as long as
one thinks.
At the very least "gravitas" will have been restored to its venerable and "sacred"
institution. And a good portion of the american population can heave a huge sigh of relief,
and go about their business of profound ritualistic conformity.
Gravitas restored by an aging old man, potentially on the verge of dementia, which is a
sad condition by any measure. A collection of Human beings about as bereft of solutions of
philosophy of spiritual comprehension as possible, at this point in human history. We all
have an enormous amount to look forward to!
It's a veritable who's who of the same criminals who instigated and executed the covert (and
sometimes overt) military and economic aggressions across several regions of the globe, to
include North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
"US multinationals aim to clear away a stumbling block, the Trump administration's
protectionism and anti-globalism, to push forward their international plans, in particular
their exploration of the Chinese market, experts said. They made the comments in response to
news that New York business leaders signed a letter urging the Trump administration to start
the power transition to the incoming Biden administration.
"They also predicted that many of the prejudicial and disruptive policies launched by the
Trump administration against China, like sanctions on Huawei and tariff hikes, will be
corrected once Biden becomes the new US president.
"More than 160 top US executives have signed a letter pressing the Trump administration to
acknowledge Joe Biden as the president-elect and begin the transition to the new
administration, according to a report by The New York Times. Most of the executives come from
US multinationals including Mastercard, Visa, Condé Nast, WeWork and American
International Group.
"Many top executives from US financial companies have signed the letter, including David
Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs and Jon Gray, Blackstone's president."
Such an attitude might sway Biden away from a confrontation first policy with China since
the overall balance of power has changed greatly since he was Vice-President. Perhaps the
Neocons will finally learn Peace is more profitable than war.
@ karlof 73 Trump's draconian trade restrictions will soon be lifted
wiki: The trade war has negatively impacted the economies of both the United States and
China. In the United States, it has led to higher prices for consumers and financial
difficulties for farmers. In China, the trade war contributed to a slowdown in the rate of
economic and industrial output growth, which had already been on a decline. Many American
companies have shifted supply chains to elsewhere in Asia, bringing fears that the trade war
would lead to a US-China economic 'decoupling'. In other countries the trade war has also
caused economic damage, though some countries have benefited from increased manufacturing to
fill the gaps. It has also led to stock market instability. Governments around the world have
taken steps to address some of the damage caused by the economic conflict.//
As on war, and many other issues, the corrupt US Congress has allowed "executive
privilege" to enact measures and programs that would never be allowed in a real "democratic"
country, governed by citizens with availability to a free press.
Edward Abbey: "Democracy--rule by the people--sounds like a fine thing; we should try it
sometime in America."
The incoming Biden administration's cabinet carries a strong whiff of deja vu, and that's no
accident – the uninspiring president-elect is staking everything on evoking a lost utopia
that never existed under ex-president Obama.
The Biden campaign's rule of thumb for his cabinet appointments seems to be to channel the
Obama administration – with an extra helping of wokeness where possible. This has seen
him float Pentagon veteran and dyed-in-the-wool megahawk Michele Flournoy as the first-ever
female Secretary of Defense and former DACA czar Alejandro Mayorkas as the first Latino-Jewish
head of the Department of Homeland Security.
There's also the rumor he's planning to pick Obama's former Fed chair
Janet Yellen as the first-ever female Treasury Secretary – but even if she's not the
lucky lady, fellow former Clinton adviser Lael Brainard could get the nod, or one of two black
candidates – one of whom happens to be gay. Whoever he picks, they'll be a "first"
– and, given their institutional history as reliable servants of the ruling class under
Obama, a dependable source of more-of-the-same fiscal policies.
Lest all this wokeness turn off the Republicans who defected to Biden out of distaste for
President Donald Trump's determination to upset the military-industrial applecart, the presumed
president has also brought back ex-Secretary of State John Kerry, who'll be returning to
Washington to serve as a 'climate czar' on the National Security Council. While Kerry would be
the first person to hold such a position, which will allow him to skip a Senate confirmation
that could be unfriendly given the chamber's Republican control, Kerry's time at the head of
the State Department saw the Obama administration continue digging the US deeper into its
portfolio of ill-advised wars. And Kerry was the man who signed the Paris Climate Accords on
behalf of Washington in 2016, a treaty President Donald Trump wasted no time removing the US
from. He should go down plenty smooth indeed.
Most of the Biden picks were second-stringers during the Obama years and thus haven't quite
become household names yet. This is likely to be a point in their favor – if the history
of would-be Secretary of State Antony Blinken is any indication, Biden has good reason for
picking relative unknowns. A report from the American Prospect revealed Blinken had spent the
post-Obama years getting rich quick at consulting firm WestExec – which coincidentally
(or not) was co-founded by
would-be Pentagon chief Flournoy after her most recent stint at the Pentagon. The firm focuses
on "helping new companies navigate the complex bureaucracy of winning Pentagon
contracts" – suggesting a Biden presidency won't just deliver a fatter Pentagon
budget, but new wars to go with it.
It's no surprise, then, that Washington-watchers are sinking into deja vu. Biden was elected
as the "anti-Trump," a return to some vague fantasy of "normalcy" . Except the
nostalgia for the Obama era that helped shoehorn Biden into office earlier this month was based
on a wholly synthetic reimagining of the eight years in which the career politician served as
vice president.
Obama may have inherited George W. Bush's financial crisis in 2008, born of rapacious
investment banks that mistook people's life savings for free chips from a casino, but the "
recovery " he claimed as his own never bothered to lift up
most working- and
middle-class Americans . Many of these lost their homes, and if they didn't, their children
"failed to launch," in no position to strike out on their own. The younger generation
were either mired in student debt or merely unable to afford even the cheapest 'starter homes'
due to an absence of living-wage jobs open to young adults entering the
workplace.
Biden made it clear repeatedly in the run-up to this month's election that he had no
interest in feeling these people's pain. "I have no empathy for it – give me a
break," he said,
complaining that millennials had been given everything by his own generation, the Baby
Boomers. In reality, those "whiners" so loathed by the president-to-be made 20 percent
less than Biden's generation at the same age at best – assuming they were lucky enough to
have a job at all. Back when it was still considered acceptable to trash Biden, most
establishment outlets raked him over the coals for such tone-deaf comments. But such negativity
was memory-holed when the Democrats crowned Biden their pick to run against Trump –
speaking ill of the anointed one got progressives labeled Trump supporters or Nazis or
worse.
Those whose rose-colored glasses let them see Biden as the second coming of Obama forget
that "Bush in a black-man suit" turned two wars into seven, allowed Citibank – one
of the worst offenders of the 2008 financial crisis – to shape his cabinet, and passed a
mockery of "universal healthcare" that forced the lower-middle-class to purchase health
insurance they couldn't afford or shoulder a tax penalty they also couldn't afford. Biden has
promised to reignite the war in Syria, veto the actual universal healthcare policy that is
Medicare for All, and ensure nothing will fundamentally change for his fat-cat Wall Street
donors – and those
donors seem to be picking
his cabinet just like they did his boss' in 2008.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
82
Robin Olsen 13 hours ago 23 Nov, 2020 10:23 PM
Restarting the war in Syria will take a major false flag that is bullet proof in order to get
Russia to withdraw...not one false flag chemical attack staged by Obama and Biden actually
worked in the past. Trump's failed too. The world is onto America's false flag strategy...To
get Americans behind another 20 years of forever wars is also gonna take significant false
flag. Americans will fall for it, they always do...but no one else will...not this time.
Without international support he cannot restart anything, the British are not enough to
counter Russian interference and I don't think Bojo will survive the next election anyways.
HypoxiaMasks 17 hours ago 23 Nov, 2020 06:17 PM
With any luck he will bless us with Hillary, Comey, Brennan, the corpse of McCain and as an
added bonus Lil Bush and both Obamas
DukeLeo HypoxiaMasks 9 hours ago 24 Nov, 2020 02:50 AM
Biden has not officially been pronounced winner in the elections, and he already has picked a
neocon team. What a big surprise. Makes you wonder how many people who voted for him really
knew what they were doing.
Ibmekon 17 hours ago 23 Nov, 2020 06:34 PM
When Trump got into power he soon overtook Obama record of 26171 bombs in 2016. Trump since
2015 has dropped over 133,000 bombs . Trump tried to get troops out - the MIC just sent them
back in. Joey Biden and new secretary of state are committed to keep the troops out occupying
countries around the world - which requires the bombs to keep falling, one every 12 mins.
Because nobody actually wants the USA military in their country (apart from a few well bribed
military/religious dictators) We have no number for those murdered - the USA refuses to keep
any count.
Annoying Russians with a destroyer 10 miles or so from Vladivostok under good old Trump.
Apparently, after a series of moves that replaced some top figures in Pentagon. The
relationship with Russia, under Trump, is fully under control of Kaganate of Nulandia, or
whatever we see on the top of that iceberg -- and try to make a search what it would take to
change the course of an iceberg from Antarctics (people were investigating it as a way of
bringing fresh water to Arabian peninsula where money is plentiful but water is scarce).
There are two important aspects there. Local trade is more profitable than distant trade
when consider in totality, i.e. including the products that you would never make profit after
crossing oceans. Second aspect is that Far East is a cultural zone like Europe -- lots of
animosities collected over centuries, but even more commonalities in culture. As USA imposes
various types of tribute on allies/vassals, centripetal forces in various continents should
increase. Among visible costs of vassaldom:
1. paying costs of American presence
2. annoying China beyond the national needs, thus decreasing the national security
3. participating in sanctions imposed by USA, directly and indirectly (through resulting
conflicts) reducing profits in economies that are struggling
"... U.S. cabinet positions are positions of power that can drastically affect the lives of millions of Americans and billions of our neighbors overseas. If Biden is surrounded by people who, against all the evidence of past decades, still believe in the illegal threat and use of military force as key foundations of American foreign policy, then the international cooperation the whole world so desperately needs will be undermined by four more years of war, hostility and international tensions, and our most serious problems will remain unresolved. ..."
"... Medea Benjamin is ..."
"... of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection . Nicolas J. S. Davies is a writer for Consortium News and a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq ..."
Congratulations to Joe Biden on his election as America's next president! People all over
this pandemic-infested, war-torn and poverty-stricken world were shocked by the brutality and
racism of the Trump administration, and are anxiously wondering whether Biden's presidency will
open the door to the kind of international cooperation that we need to confront the serious
problems facing humanity in this century.
For progressives everywhere, the knowledge that "another world is possible" has sustained us
through decades of greed, extreme inequality and war, as U.S.-led neoliberalism has repackaged and force-fed
19th century laissez-faire capitalism to the people of the 21st century. The Trump
experience has revealed, in stark relief, where these policies can lead.
Joe Biden has certainly paid his dues to and reaped rewards from the same corrupt political
and economic system as Trump, as the latter delightedly trumpeted in every stump speech. But
Biden must understand that the
young voters who turned out in unprecedented numbers to put him in the White House have
lived their whole lives under this neoliberal system, and did not vote for "more of the same."
Nor do they naively think that deeply-rooted problems of American society like racism,
militarism and corrupt corporate politics began with Trump.
During his election campaign, Biden has relied on foreign policy advisors from past
administrations, particularly the Obama administration, and seems to be considering some of
them for top cabinet posts. For the most part, they are members of the "Washington blob" who
represent a dangerous continuity with past policies rooted in militarism and other abuses of
power.
These include interventions in Libya and Syria, support for the Saudi war in Yemen, drone
warfare, indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo, prosecutions of whistleblowers and
whitewashing torture. Some of these people have also cashed in on their government contacts to
make hefty salaries in consulting firms and other private sector ventures that feed off
government contracts.
– As former Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security Advisor to Obama,
Tony Blinken played a
leading role in all Obama's aggressive policies. Then he co-founded WestExec Advisors to
profit
from negotiating contracts between corporations and the Pentagon, including one for Google
to develop Artificial Intelligence technology for drone targeting, which was only stopped by a
rebellion among outraged Google employees.
– Since the Clinton administration,
Michele Flournoy has been a principal architect of the U.S.'s illegal, imperialist doctrine
of global war and military occupation. As Obama's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, she
helped to engineer his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and interventions in Libya and
Syria. Between jobs at the Pentagon, she has worked the infamous revolving door to consult for
firms seeking Pentagon contracts, to co-found a military-industrial think tank called the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and now to join Tony Blinken at WestExec
Advisors.
– Nicholas
Burns was U.S. Ambassador to NATO during the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since
2008, he has worked for former Defense Secretary William Cohen's lobbying firm The Cohen Group, which is a major global
lobbyist for the U.S. arms industry. Burns is a hawk on Russia and China
and has condemned
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a "traitor."
– As a legal adviser to Obama and the State Department and then as Deputy CIA Director
and Deputy National Security Advisor, Avril Haines provided legal cover and worked
closely with Obama and CIA Director John Brennan on Obama's
tenfold expansion of drone killings.
– Samantha
Power served under Obama as UN Ambassador and Human Rights Director at the National
Security Council. She supported U.S. interventions in Libya and Syria, as well as the Saudi-led
war on Yemen . And despite her human rights portfolio, she never spoke out against Israeli
attacks on Gaza that happened under her tenure or Obama's dramatic use of drones that left
hundreds of civilians dead.
– As UN Ambassador in Obama's first term, Susan Rice obtained UN cover for his
disastrous intervention in Libya. As National Security Advisor in Obama's second term, Rice
also defended Israel's savage
bombardment of Gaza in 2014, bragged about the U.S. "crippling sanctions" on Iran and North
Korea, and supported an aggressive stance toward Russia and China.
A foreign policy team led by such individuals will only perpetuate the endless wars,
Pentagon overreach and CIA-misled chaos that we -- and the world -- have endured for the past
two decades of the War on Terror.
Making diplomacy "the premier tool of our global engagement."
Biden will take office amid some of the greatest challenges the human race has ever faced --
from extreme inequality, debt and poverty caused by neoliberalism , to intractable wars and the
existential danger of nuclear war, to the climate crisis, mass extinction and the Covid-19
pandemic.
These problems won't be solved by the same people, and the same mindsets, that got us into
these predicaments. When it comes to foreign policy, there is a desperate need for personnel
and policies rooted in an understanding that the greatest dangers we face are problems that
affect the whole world, and that they can only be solved by genuine international
collaboration, not by conflict or coercion.
During the campaign, Joe
Biden's website declared, "As president, Biden will elevate diplomacy as the premier tool
of our global engagement. He will rebuild a modern, agile U.S. Department of State -- investing
in and re-empowering the finest diplomatic corps in the world and leveraging the full talent
and richness of America's diversity."
This implies that Biden's foreign policy must be managed primarily by the State Department,
not the Pentagon. The Cold War and American post-Cold War
triumphalism led to a reversal of these roles, with the Pentagon and CIA taking the lead
and the State Department trailing behind them (with only 5% of their budget), trying to clean
up the mess and restore a veneer of order to countries destroyed by
American bombs or destabilized by U.S. sanctions
, coups
and
death squads .
In the Trump era, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reduced the State Department to little more
than a
sales team for the military-industrial complex to ink lucrative arms deals with India,
Taiwan , Saudi
Arabia, the UAE and countries around the world.
What we need is a foreign policy led by a State Department that resolves differences with
our neighbors through diplomacy and negotiations, as international law in fact requires , and a
Department of Defense that defends the United States and deters international aggression
against us, instead of threatening and committing aggression against our neighbors around the
world.
As the saying goes, "personnel is policy," so whomever Biden picks for top foreign policy
posts will be key in shaping its direction. While our personal preferences would be to put top
foreign policy positions in the hands of people who have spent their lives actively pursuing
peace and opposing U.S. military aggression, that's just not in the cards with this
middle-of-the-road Biden administration.
But there are appointments Biden could make to give his foreign policy the emphasis on
diplomacy and negotiation that he says he wants. These are American diplomats who have
successfully negotiated important international agreements, warned U.S. leaders of the dangers
of aggressive militarism and developed valuable expertise in critical areas like arms
control.
William
Burns was Deputy Secretary of State under Obama, the # 2 position at the State Department,
and he is now the director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. As Under
Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs in 2002, Burns gave Secretary of State Powell a prescient
and detailed but unheeded
warning that the invasion of Iraq could "unravel" and create a "perfect storm" for American
interests. Burns also served as U.S. Ambassador to Jordan and then Russia.
Wendy Sherman was
Obama's Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, the # 4 position at the State
Department, and was briefly Acting Deputy Secretary of State after Burns retired. Sherman was
the lead
negotiator for both the1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea and the negotiations with
Iran that led to the Iran nuclear agreement in 2015. This is surely the kind of experience
Biden needs in senior positions if he is serious about reinvigorating American diplomacy.
Tom
Countryman is currently the Chair of the Arms Control Association . In the Obama administration,
Countryman served as Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs, Assistant
Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, and Principal Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs. He also served at U.S. embassies in
Belgrade, Cairo, Rome and Athens, and as foreign policy advisor to the Commandant of the U.S.
Marine Corps. Countryman's expertise could be critical in reducing or even removing the danger
of nuclear war. It would also please the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, since Tom
supported Senator Bernie Sanders for president.
In addition to these professional diplomats, there are also Members of Congress who have
expertise in foreign policy and could play important roles in a Biden foreign policy team. One
is Representative Ro
Khanna , who has been a champion of ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen, resolving the
conflict with North Korea and reclaiming Congress's constitutional authority over the use of
military force.
If the Republicans hold their majority in the Senate, it will be harder to get appointments
confirmed than if the Democrats win the two Georgia seats that are
headed for run-offs , or than if they had run more progressive campaigns in Iowa, Maine or
North Carolina and won at least one of those seats. But this will be a long two years if we let
Joe Biden take cover behind Mitch McConnell on critical appointments, policies and legislation.
Biden's initial cabinet appointments will be an early test of whether Biden will be the
consummate insider or whether he is willing to fight for real solutions to our country's most
serious problems.
Conclusion
U.S. cabinet positions are positions of power that can drastically affect the lives of
millions of Americans and billions of our neighbors overseas. If Biden is surrounded by people
who, against all the evidence of past decades, still believe in the illegal threat and use of
military force as key foundations of American foreign policy, then the international
cooperation the whole world so desperately needs will be undermined by four more years of war,
hostility and international tensions, and our most serious problems will remain
unresolved.
That's why we must vigorously advocate for a team that would put an end to the normalization
of war and make diplomatic engagement in the pursuit of international peace and cooperation our
number one foreign policy priority.
Whomever President-elect Biden chooses to be part of his foreign policy team, he -- and they
-- will be pushed by people beyond the White House fence who are calling for demilitarization,
including cuts in military spending, and for reinvestment in our country's peaceful economic
development.
It will be our job to hold President Biden and his team accountable whenever they fail to
turn the page on war and militarism, and to keep pushing them to build friendly relations with
all our neighbors on this small planet that we share.
Background: Burns, a career diplomat who has served as ambassador to Russia and as
deputy secretary of state, gets particularly high marks for cognitive empathy -- understanding
the perspectives and motivations of international actors.
Few if any contenders for foreign policy positions in the Biden administration surpass Burns
when it comes to appreciating one tenet of progressive realism: military interventions have a
way of leading to bad things. In a ten-page memo Burns wrote to
Secretary of State Colin Powell, then his boss, during the runup to the Iraq War, he laid out a
cornucopia of possible unintended consequences, including some that became all too real. (Like:
Iran feels threatened and acts accordingly.)
Even highly surgical uses of violence, Burns recognizes, can have blowback. Last year he
wrote
that, during the Obama administration, as "drone strikes and special operations grew
exponentially," they were "often highly successful in narrow military terms" but at the cost of
"complicating political relationships and inadvertently causing civilian casualties and fueling
terrorist recruitment."
So it's not surprising that Burns has often pushed for non-military solutions to foreign
policy problems. Still, he has supported dubious interventions -- such as America's joining
allies in arming Syrian rebels, a policy hatched while Burns was deputy secretary of state in
the Obama administration.
In retrospect, it's not shocking that this policy only succeeded in amplifying the killing
and chaos, given the conflicting agendas of our allies and the divergent aims of the various
rebel groups -- not to mention the aforementioned inherent unpredictability of military action.
Yet, even with years of hindsight, Burns confined his criticism of this proxy intervention to
matters of timing and execution. In his 2019 book The Back Channel , he said we should
have given more aid to the rebels earlier. But Burns does, at least, get credit for considering
Obama's public demand for regime change ("Assad must go") unwise, and for having initially
hoped for more open-ended negotiations than that demand permitted.
Cognitive empathy (A)
Burns is adept at seeing the perspectives of international actors, as demonstrated in
particular by his views on Russia. He has a history of dealing effectively with the country,
and he takes Moscow's interests seriously. Unlike many in the foreign policy establishment,
Burns doubts the wisdom of NATO expansion -- including its early phases but especially its
later ones. When the US "pushed open the door for formal NATO membership for Ukraine and
Georgia," he has
said , "I think that fed Putin's narrative that the United States was out to keep Russia
down, to undermine Russia and what he saw to be its entitlement, its sphere of influence."
Burns believes that, though Putin
clearly sees the US as an adversary, he doesn't see the US-Russia relationship in purely
zero-sum terms; Putin is capable of seeing "those few areas where we might be able to work
together. He is capable of juggling apparent contradictions."
Burns is very aware -- as many US officials over the years have not been -- that hectoring
foreign countries about how they should behave can be counterproductive. "I've always felt we
get a lot further in the world with the power of our example than we do with the power of our
preaching," he
said in a New Yorker interview. "Americans can sometimes... be awfully patronizing
overseas."
Respect for international law (B)
Burns is generally a strong advocate of international law. And in the course of his career
he has often had occasion to invoke it -- as when, in 2014, he
said disputes over islands in the South China Sea should be resolved via adjudicatory
mechanisms outlined in the Law of the Sea Convention. (Had he not been speaking for the US
government, he might have added that, regrettably, America itself has not ratified that
convention.)
Unfortunately, Burns seems to have adopted the habit, widespread in the foreign policy
establishment, of being more fastidious in applying international law to adversaries than to
the US. In The Back Channel he offers some practical criticisms of America's 2011
intervention in Libya, but he doesn't note that when the mission shifted from defending
imperiled civilian populations to overthrowing the regime, it arguably
violated the letter of the authorizing UN resolution and certainly violated its spirit.
Similarly, his discussion in that book of Obama's arming of Syrian rebels evinces no concern
about the fact that this intervention, according to common
legal reckoning , violated the UN Charter.
Support for international governance (A)
Burns certainly supports international governance of a progressive sort -- agreements and
institutions that address climate change and arms control, for example, and the inclusion of
labor and environmental provisions in trade agreements. And he has been deeply involved in
multilateral problem solving, such as the Iran nuclear deal.
But what sets Burns apart from your typical progressive supporter of international
governance is his understanding of the need to expand it beyond these traditional areas. He
recognizes, for example, that if work in artificial intelligence and genetic engineering
proceeds without restraint in a context of intense international competition, bad things could
happen. So he wants to
"create workable international rules of the road" in these areas, and he wants the US State
Department to "take the lead -- just as it did during the nuclear age -- building legal and
normative frameworks."
Universal engagement (A-)
As a quintessential diplomat, Burns believes that the U.S. should be open to relations with
any country willing to talk. He is especially emphatic about the importance of maintaining
diplomatic and economic engagement with China; he
criticizes those who "assume too much about the feasibility of decoupling and containment
-- and about the inevitability of confrontation. Our tendency, as it was during the height of
the Cold War, is to overhype the threat, over-prove our hawkish bona fides, over-militarize our
approach, and reduce the political and diplomatic space required to manage great-power
competition." And Burns recognizes one of the biggest payoffs of engagement with China: to
"preserve space for cooperation on global challenges."
Burns eschews a Cold War not just with China but with authoritarian states more broadly. He
is refreshingly
skeptical of proposals -- fashionable in neoconservative and some liberal circles -- to
form a "league" or "concert" of democracies that would fight "techno-authoritarianism."
Burns doesn't seem to have expressed the degree of skepticism about America's promiscuous
use of economic sanctions that a progressive realist might like. But he gets points for at
least recognizing the inconsistency of their application. "We focus our criticism on Maduro, in
Venezuela, who richly deserves it, and then pull punches with Mohammed bin Salman, in Saudi
Arabia," he
said in a New Yorker interview.
Burns also recognizes that the foreign policy establishment's obsession with Iran is, well,
obsessive. Tehran has "an outsized hold on our imagination," he
says . Yes, he believes, Iran poses threats to American friends and interests, but those
threats are manageable, in part because, contrary to a common American view, Iran is "not 10
feet tall."
Miscellaneous
(1) After leaving the government, Burns became president of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. That's a highly and rightly respected position. But it should be noted --
since any good progressive realist wants to root out the influence of the military industrial
complex -- that Carnegie has taken money from Northrup Grumman
( as well as
from such foreign countries as Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates and from NATO).
(2) Burns deserves credit for seeing that the foreign policy establishment, confronted by
Trump's jarringly disruptive policies, is in danger of mindlessly retreating to pre-Trump
policies that in fact need sharp revision. Recounting (and embracing) the bipartisan opposition
to Trump's abrupt withdrawal of military support for Kurds in Syria, he
adds , "If all this episode engenders, however, is a bipartisan dip in the warm waters of
self-righteous criticism, it will be a tragedy We have to come to grips with the deeper and
more consequential betrayal of common sense -- the notion that the only antidote to Trump's
fumbling attempts to disentangle the United States from the region is a retreat to the magical
thinking that has animated so much of America's moment in the Middle East since the end of the
Cold War." This magical thinking, he continues, involves "the persistent tendency to assume too
much about our influence and too little about the obstacles in our path and the agency of other
actors."
"... Greenwald earlier this week said NBC "has always existed to disseminate US government, CIA and corporate propaganda." ..."
"... NBC also helped the CIA sell the Iraq War on its Meet the Press program, and sister network MSNBC was "ground zero for mindless CIA stenography of the most unhinged Russiagate conspiracy theories," he said. ..."
"... The C.I.A. owns anyone of any significance in the media. -William Colby. Former Director of the CIA. In 1974, the Rockefeller Commission was established to investigate shennanigans carried out by the Agency. President Ford fired William Colby and replaced him with George Herbert Walker Bush. Why? Because Gerald Ford thought that Colby was being too honest with the Commission about CIA wrong doings. ..."
"... Interestingly, Gerald Ford was often referred to as "The CIA's Best Friend in The Senate", which would explain his old appointment to the Warren Commission. It was Ford who ordered JFK's bullet wound in the back to be raised six inches up to his neck, thus allowing Arlen Specter to float his "Magic bullet Theory" ..."
"... As is not generally known, Bush I was lifetime CIA and became I believe the first CIA President. There is a little known picture of a young Bush standing outside the Texas Book Depository on the day of the assassination. ..."
"... The CIA controls the media in subtle ways. Blacklists for instance. I have experience after one of my buddies fell for the spiel of an agent provocateur. Never trust anyone, always assume they could be CIA and assess what damage they can do to you (and your associates) before you interact with them. Misleading them would be best. ..."
"... As shocking as it may sound, Glenn is stating the obvious. Even AFP and Reuters are CIA mouthpieces. Look up Operation Mockingbird. Look up "propaganda multiplier" by the Swiss policy research. ..."
"... Interesting that nobody even tried to deny it, they just come up with the same line they used to attack Wikileaks for telling the truth: exposing this might put out operatives at risk. ..."
"... Perilous Environments because the CIA is probably manipulating another of its regimes change, to very undemocratically put someone they control into office. Surely you remember Poroshenko? ..."
"... Operation Mockingbird was a secret CIA effort to influence and control the American media. The first report of the program came in 1979 in the biography of Katharine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post, written by Deborah Davis. Davis wrote that the program was established by Frank Wisner, the director of the Office of Policy Coordination, a covert operations unit created under the National Security Council. ..."
"... Reporters who work for the CIA are not spies, because the CIA is a lying agency, not a spying agency. If a terrorist accuses you of being a CIA agent, you can honestly reply that the CIA is the terrorist's friend. ..."
"... The CIA wants the world to believe that China, Russia and Iran are the leading state sponsors of terrorism, and that those seeking the overthrow of Syria's Bashar al-Assad are freedom fighters, not terrorists... ..."
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald torched accusations that he endangered reporters by
saying NBC News spouts CIA propaganda, saying he only spoke of a well-known fact, and the
effort to shame him was "manipulative bulls**t."
"Profoundly sorry for endangering the lives of NBC executives and TV personalities by
spilling the extremely well-kept secret of their close working relationship with the CIA,"
Greenwald tweeted sarcastically on Saturday. His message showed a picture of a headline about
NBC's 2018 hiring of ex-CIA chief John Brennan as an NBC and MSNBC contributor.
Greenwald's retort came in reply to reporter Sulome Anderson, who accused him of endangering
journalists who work in places where any CIA affiliation is "life-threatening."Greenwald earlier this week said NBC "has always existed to disseminate US government, CIA
and corporate propaganda."
"This crosses a line," Anderson said. "Like some of his proteges, Glenn is
endangering journalists working in perilous environments by telling his massive following that
they are mouthpieces for US intelligence."
Greenwald said on Saturday that NBC has a "long-standing role" in spouting CIA
propaganda, as evidenced by its hiring of Ken Dilanian, who was accused of sharing stories with the CIA press
office prior to publication while working as a Los Angeles Times reporter. NBC also helped the
CIA sell the Iraq War on its Meet the Press program, and sister network MSNBC was "ground
zero for mindless CIA stenography of the most unhinged Russiagate conspiracy theories," he
said.
"If you don't want to be known as a CIA outpost, then don't be one," Greenwald
tweeted. He added that NBC hired "John Brennan, Ken Dilanian and every other operative puked
up by the security state. People already know."
Anderson has written at least
two opinion
pieces on Lebanon for NBC in recent months. She has been critical of Hezbollah, designated
a terrorist group by the US government, but also has interviewed some of its fighters.
Anderson, who said she is "morally opposed" to journalists working as intelligence
agents, may have good reason for her sensitivity about alleged CIA ties. Her parents were both
journalists who covered Lebanon's 15-year civil war, and she said her father was kidnapped by
terrorists.
"They tortured him again and again for years, calling him CIA," she said
Saturday on Twitter. "'I am not a spy,' he would scream. 'I am a reporter.' It never stopped
them."
Anderson acknowledged journalists being used as intelligence-agency assets, but said such
cases are rare. "Time and again, American hostages – journalists and otherwise –
have been falsely called spies, tortured and killed," she said. "I have been in many
situations where I've had to convince the very dangerous men I am with that I am not a spy. My
saving grace has always been that I am not."
Greenwald came to international fame by breaking the Edward Snowden NSA whistleblower story
in 2013. He later co-founded the Intercept but quit the outlet last month after saying editors
there suppressed his coverage of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.
fezzie035fezzm 19 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 11:52 PM
The C.I.A. owns anyone of any significance in the media. -William Colby. Former Director of
the CIA. In 1974, the Rockefeller Commission was established to investigate shennanigans
carried out by the Agency. President Ford fired William Colby and replaced him with George
Herbert Walker Bush. Why? Because Gerald Ford thought that Colby was being too honest with
the Commission about CIA wrong doings.
Bush, as the new Director, stonewalled the hearings
and put the lid on any information coming out, which would explain why CIA Headquarters in
Langley was named after Bush. Colby is no longer among the living. Let's just say that he
didn't die from "natural causes".
Interestingly, Gerald Ford was often referred to as "The
CIA's Best Friend in The Senate", which would explain his old appointment to the Warren
Commission. It was Ford who ordered JFK's bullet wound in the back to be raised six inches up
to his neck, thus allowing Arlen Specter to float his "Magic bullet Theory"
JOHNCHUCKMAN fezzie035fezzm 1 hour ago 22 Nov, 2020 05:48 PM
Yes, Colby was an unusually frank man at times. He also told us about the ghastly Operation
Phoenix in Vietnam, a CIA run assassination scheme of village leaders and prominent men. They
killed 30 or 40 thousand people by sending in belly-crawling special forces guys to enter
villages at night and cut throats.
As is not generally known, Bush I was lifetime CIA and
became I believe the first CIA President. There is a little known picture of a young Bush
standing outside the Texas Book Depository on the day of the assassination. You'll find it on
my site Chuckman's Words in Comments on Wordpress. Its title to search is: A REMARKABLE DULL
LITTLE PHOTOGRAPH OF GEORGE H W BUSH WITH EXPLOSIVE SUGGESTIONS. Sorry, but RT doesn't like
links.
Of course, Colby himself may have been assassinated. He had a very odd boating
accident.
Ally Hauptmann-Gurski 20 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 11:14 PM
The CIA controls the media in subtle ways. Blacklists for instance. I have experience after
one of my buddies fell for the spiel of an agent provocateur. Never trust anyone, always
assume they could be CIA and assess what damage they can do to you (and your associates)
before you interact with them. Misleading them would be best.
Enorm 22 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:01 PM
NBC operatives don't have an opinion. They follow da money,. I feel sorry for folks glued to
propaganda TV.
WikiLeaks and other investigative outfits have looked at the conglomerates over the years and
over half of them are CIA "assets"...
Chris Cottrell 22 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 08:25 PM
Are they spies? Probably not. Are they tools of the CIA even if unwittingly, yes.
Oregon Observer Chris Cottrell 21 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:43 PM
Most ARE spies in every sense of the term. They look for specific information that they
pass onto their handler(s). It bears noting that the FBI and the 10,000 or so outfits that
contract with them and NSA and DHS and the pentagon and the various state Fusion programs are
as bad or worse and every stinking one if those outfits recruits reporters.
fakiho2 21 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:28 PM
As shocking as it may sound, Glenn is stating the obvious. Even AFP and Reuters are CIA
mouthpieces. Look up Operation Mockingbird. Look up "propaganda multiplier" by the Swiss
policy research.
shadow1369 fakiho2 6 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 12:30 PM
Interesting that nobody even tried to deny it, they just come up with the same line they used
to attack Wikileaks for telling the truth: exposing this might put out operatives at risk. My
response to that is good, time to have these roaches taken out.
Edward698 18 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 01:43 AM
You can bet on Glenn to tell you the truth unlike the main stream media which fed us with
lots of non sense on Syria. Read his interview with "Democracy now": .... Glenn Greenwald on
"Submissive" Media's Drumbeat for War and "Despicable" Anti-Muslim Scapegoating By Democracy
Now! ....
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, that clip is unbelievable. It is literally one
of the three most important military officials of the entire war on terror, General Flynn,
who was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He's saying that the U.S. government
knew that by creating a vacuum in Syria and then flooding that region with arms and money,
that it was likely to result in the establishment of a caliphate by Islamic extremists in
eastern Syria -- which is, of course, exactly what happened.
They knew that that was going to
happen, and they proceeded to do it anyway. So when the U.S. government starts trying to
point the finger at other people for helping ISIS, they really need to have a mirror put in
front of them, because, by their own documents, as that extraordinary clip demonstrates, they
bear huge responsibility for that happening, to say nothing of the fact that, as I said,
their closest allies in the region actually fund it.
Debra Edward698 14 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 05:37 AM
The US was not only counting on their ISIS creation to destabilize Syria in the hope of an
Assad exit but also to decimate the Hezbollah. I credit the Hezbollah for saving Lebanon,
Syria, and Iraq, but they suffered heavy, heavy losses. "So when the U.S. government starts
trying to point the finger at other people for helping ISIS, they really need to have a
mirror put in front of them, because, by their own documents, as that extraordinary clip
demonstrates, they bear huge responsibility for that happening, to say nothing of the fact
that, as I said, their closest allies in the region actually fund it."
frankfalseflag 19 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 12:08 AM
** "Glenn is endangering journalists working in perilous environments by telling. . ." ** . .
Perilous Environments because the CIA is probably manipulating another of its regimes change,
to very undemocratically put someone they control into office. Surely you remember
Poroshenko? ...
pogohere 21 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 10:16 PM
Operation Mockingbird was a secret CIA effort to influence and control the American media.
The first report of the program came in 1979 in the biography of Katharine Graham, the owner
of the Washington Post, written by Deborah Davis. Davis wrote that the program was
established by Frank Wisner, the director of the Office of Policy Coordination, a covert
operations unit created under the National Security Council.
According to Davis, Wisner
recruited Philip Graham of the Washington Post to head the project within the media industry.
Davis wrote that, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York
Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."
Davis also writes that Allen Dulles
convinced Cord Meyer, who later became Mockingbird's "principal operative," to join the CIA
in 1951.
The Taliban Won the War 7 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 12:28 PM
It is true and it is an undisputed fact that all Western governments use Journalists, aid
workers and so called human relief organisations as cover for espionage, undercover and dark
operations. Not just that, they also use exchange teachers and students, they use priests and
pastors. They use anything and anyone that can hid
Isiah Steele 8 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 11:45 AM
The Motion Picture Industry of Hollywood, too are CIA! Propagates: war and constant US
Military dominated narratives.
Sergio Weigel 16 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 03:31 AM
I'm pretty sure that most journalists don't know, or don't wanna know, the dirty open secret
that editorial lines of most outlets are indeed determined or influenced by the CIA. The
trouble is their working conditions. There are far more journalists than job openings, and
they already earn badly. In order to keep the job, they just play ball, and as humans are,
they make themselves believe that what they were doing was just right. Cognitive dissonance,
and the result is outrage and defensive anger when someone points out their hypocrisy. That
is also why they avoid to even read alternative media, they don't have their noses pointed to
it. In a way, we can pity them. Then again, why become a journalist these days?
I used to think maybe 'journalists' were simply misled, but the narrative on too many
stories, from 9/11 to Iraq, from Syria to the ukraine, from the Skripals to Navalny, was so
ludicrous that a five year old could see through the lies. Nope, they know full well that
they are lying, and do so regardless. A great example was when some bbc l!cksp!ttle was
interviewing a general about events in Syria. Somehow they got the wrong guy, or he had not
been properly briefed, because his responses were factual and balanced. After trying to
challenge him, the interviewer finally said 'Don't you realise this is an informatioon war'.
Debra 4 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 03:11 PM
This is another warning for people: Over the last two years Facebook has been advertising for
viewers to join Facebook groups. Many political groups on Facebook are set up by CIA and FBI
agents. Facebook is full of agents, and that is why the ones in Michigan were caught in their
attempted coup against the Michigan governor...
Quick Draw 22 hours ago 21 Nov, 2020 09:46 PM
Just NBC?
imnotarobot22 16 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 03:05 AM
google 'Udo Ulfkotte' ex editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine - he'll tell you about it.
Richard Burden 2 hours ago 22 Nov, 2020 05:07 PM
Reporters who work for the CIA are not spies, because the CIA is a lying agency, not a spying
agency. If a terrorist accuses you of being a CIA agent, you can honestly reply that the CIA
is the terrorist's friend.
The CIA wants the world to believe that China, Russia and Iran are
the leading state sponsors of terrorism, and that those seeking the overthrow of Syria's Bashar al-Assad are freedom fighters, not terrorists...
Full spectrum dominance theorists are dusted off and put in key positions in new
administration. Instead of punishment and jail terms Russiagaters got promotion.
Biden signals US return to full-on globalism and foreign meddling by picking interventionist
Anthony Blinken as secretary of state
Joe Biden has named Anthony Blinken – an
advocate for isolating Russia, cozying up to China and intervening in Syria – as
secretary of state, cementing a foreign policy built on military forays and multi-national
motivations.
Biden, the nominal president-elect, announced his selection of
Blinken along with other members of his foreign-policy and national-security team, which is
filled with such veteran Washington insiders as John Kerry, the new climate czar and formerly
secretary of state in the Obama-Biden administration.
Blinken, a long-time adviser to Biden and deputy secretary of state under President Barack
Obama, has been hailed by fellow Democrats and globalists, such as retired General Barry
McCaffrey, as an experienced bureaucrat with "global contacts and respect." Enrico
Letta, dean of the Paris School of International Affairs, called Biden's choice the "right
step to relaunch transatlantic ties."
He was even praised for a 2016 appearance on the Sesame Street children's television
program, where he explained to the show's 'Grover' character the benefits of accepting
refugees.
While some critics focused on how Blinken " got rich working for corporate
clients " during President Donald Trump's term in office, the new foreign-affairs chief's
neoconservative policy recommendations might be cause for greater concern. He advocated for the
Iraq War and the bombings of such countries as Libya and Yemen.
Blinken is still arguing for a resurgence in Washington's
military intervention in Syria. He lamented in a May interview that the Obama-Biden
administration hadn't done enough to prevent a "horrific situation" in Syria, and he faulted
Trump for squandering what remaining leverage the US had on the Bashar Assad regime by pulling
troops out of the country.
"Our leverage is vastly even less than it was, but I think we do have points of leverage to
try to effectuate some more positive developments," Blinken said. For instance, US special
forces in northeast Syria are located near Syrian oil fields. "The Syrian government would
love to have dominion over those resources. We should not give that up for free."
Blinken also sees Biden strengthening NATO, isolating Russia politically and " confronting
Mr. [President Vladimir] Putin for his aggressions."
As for China, Blinken has said Washington needs to look for ways to cooperate with Beijing.
Reinvesting in international alliances that were weakened by Trump will help the Biden
administration deal with China "from a position of strength" as it pushes back against
the Chinese Communist Party's human-rights abuses, he said.
Throughout his campaign, Joe Biden railed against Donald Trump's 'America First' foreign
policy, claiming it weakened the United States and left the world in disarray. "Donald Trump's
brand of America First has too often led to America alone," Biden proclaimed.
He pledged to reverse this decline and recover the damage Trump did to America's reputation.
While Donald Trump called for making America Great Again, Biden seeks to Make the American
Empire Great Again .
Joe Biden: "Tonight, the whole world is watching America. And I believe at our best, America
is a beacon for the globe. We will lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power
of our example."
Among the president-elect's pledges is to end the so-called forever wars – the
decades-long imperial projects in Afghanistan and Iraq that began under the Bush
administration.
"It's long past time we end the forever wars which have cost us untold blood and treasure,"
Biden has said.
Yet Biden – a fervent supporter of those wars – will delegate that duty to the
most neoconservative elements of the Democratic Party and ideologues of permanent war .
Michele Flournoy and Tony Blinken sit atop Biden's thousands-strong foreign policy brain
trust and have played central roles in every U.S. war dating back to the Bill Clinton
administration.
During the Trump era, they've cashed in through WestExec Advisors – a corporate
consulting firm that has become home for Obama administration officials awaiting a return to
government.
Flournoy is Biden's leading pick for Secretary of Defense and Blinken is expected to be the
president's National Security Advisor.
Biden's foxes guard the henhouse
Since the 1990s, Flournoy and Blinken have steadily risen through the ranks of the
military-industrial complex, shuffling back and forth between the Pentagon and hawkish
think-tanks funded by the U.S. government, weapons companies, and oil giants.
Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrinellial Defense
Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military's doctrine of permanent war – what
it called "full spectrum dominance."
Flournoy called for "unilateral use of military power" to ensure "uninhibited access to key
markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ivFFZ95EQvY
This video report was originally published at Behind The Headlines .
Support the independent journalism initiative here .
As Bush administration officials lied to the world about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD's,
Flournoy remarked that "In some cases, preemptive strikes against an adversary's [weapons of
mass destruction] capabilities may be the best or only option we have to avert a catastrophic
attack against the United States."
Tony Blinken was a top advisor to then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Joe Biden,
who played a key role in shoring up support among the Democrat-controlled Senate for Bush's
illegal invasion of Iraq.
During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Biden declared, "In my judgment, President Bush
is right to be concerned about Saddam Hussein's relentless pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction."
As Iraq was plunged into chaos and bloodshed, Flournoy was among the authors of a paper
titled "Progressive Internationalism" that called for a "smarter and better" style of permanent
war . The paper chastised the anti-war left and stated that "Democrats will maintain the
world's most capable and technologically advanced military, and we will not flinch from using
it to defend our interests anywhere in the world."
With Bush winning a second term, Flournoy advocated for more troop deployments from the
sidelines.
In 2005, Flournoy signed onto a letter
from the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century, asking Congress to
"increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps (by) at least 25,000
troops each year over the next several years."
In 2007, she leveraged her Pentagon experience and contacts to found what would become one
of the premier Washington think tanks advocating endless war across the globe: the Center for a
New American Security (CNAS). CNAS is funded by the U.S. government, arms
manufacturers, oil giants, Silicon Valley tech giants, billionaire-funded foundations, and big
banks.
Flournoy joined the Obama administration and was appointed as under secretary of defense for
policy, the position considered the "brains" of the Pentagon. She was keenly aware that the
public was wary of more quagmires. In the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, she crafted a new
concept of warfare that would expand the permanent war state while giving the appearance of a
drawdown.
Flournoy wrote that "unmanned systems hold great promise" – a reference to the CIA's
drone assassination program. This was the Obama-era military doctrine of hybrid war. It called
for the U.S. to be able to simultaneously wage war on numerous fronts through secret warfare,
clandestine weapons transfers to proxies, drone strikes, and cyber-attacks – all
buttressed with propaganda campaigns targeting the American public through the internet and
corporate news media.
Architects of America's Hybrid wars
Flournoy continued to champion the endless wars that began in the Bush-era and was a key
architect of Obama's disastrous troop surge in Afghanistan. As U.S. soldiers returned in body
bags and insurgent attacks and suicide bombings increased some 65% from 2009 and 2010, she
deceived the Senate Armed Services Committee, claiming that the U.S. was beginning to turn the
tide against the Taliban: "We are beginning to regain the initiative and the insurgency is
beginning to lose momentum."
Even with her lie that the U.S. and Afghan government were starting to beat the Taliban
back, Flournoy assured the senate that the U.S. would have to remain in Afghanistan long into
the future: "We are not leaving any time soon even though the nature and the complexion of the
commitment may change over time."
Ten years later – as the Afghan death toll passed 150,000 – Flournoy continued
to argue against a U.S. withdrawal: "I would certainly not advocate a US or NATO departure
short of a political settlement being in place."
That's the person Joe Biden has tasked with ending the forever war in Afghanistan. But in
Biden's own words, he'll "bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan" implying
some number of American troops will remain, and the forever war will be just that. Michele
Flournoy explained that even if a political settlement were reached, the U.S. would maintain a
presence.
Michele Flournoy: "If we are fortunate enough to see a political settlement reached, it
doesn't mean that the US role or the international community is over. Afghanistan without
outside investment is not a society that is going to survive and thrive. In no case are we
going to be able to wash our hands of Afghanistan and walk away nor should we want to. This is
something where we're going to have to continue to be engaged, just the form of engagement may
change."
In 2011, the Obama-era doctrine of smart and sophisticated warfare was unveiled in the NATO
regime-change war on Libya.
Moammar Gaddafi – the former adversary who sought warm relations with the U.S. and had
given up his nuclear weapons program – was deposed and sodomized with a bayonet.
Flournoy, Hillary Clinton's State Department, and corporate media were in lockstep as they
waged an elaborate propaganda campaign to deceive the U.S. public that Gadaffi's soldiers were
on a Viagra-fueled rape and murder spree that demanded a U.S. intervention.
Fox News: "Susan Rice reportedly told a security council meeting that Libyan troops are
being given viagra and are engaging in sexual violence."
MSNBC jumped on the propaganda bandwagon, claiming: "New reports emerge that the LIbyan
dictator gave soldiers viagra-type pills to rape women who are opposed to the government."
So did CNN.
As the Libyan ambassador to the US alleged "raping, killing, mass graves," ICC Chief
Prosecutor Manuel Ocampo claimed: "It's like a machete. Viagra is a tool of massive rapes."
All of this was based on a report
from Al Jazeera – the media outlet owned by the Qatari monarchy that was arming
extremist militias in Libya to overthrow the government.
Yet an investigation by the United Nations called the rape claims "hysteria." Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch found no credible evidence of even a single rape.
Even after Libya was descended into strife and the deception of Gadaffi's forces committing
rape was debunked, Michele Flournoy stood by her support for the war: "I supported the
intervention in Libya on humanitarian grounds. I think we were right to do it."
Tony Blinken, then Obama's deputy national security advisor, also pushed for regime change
in Libya. He became Obama's point man on Syria, pushed to arm the so-called "moderate rebels"
that fought alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS, and designed the red line strategy to trigger a
full-on U.S. intervention. Syria, he told the public, wasn't anything like the other wars the
U.S. had waging for more than a decade.
Tony Blinken: "We are doing this in a very different way than in the past. We're not sending
in hundreds of thousands of American troops. We're not spending trillions of American dollars.
We're being smart about this. This is a sustainable way to get at the terrorists and it's also
a more effective way."
Blinken added: "This is not open-ended, this is not boots on the ground, this is not Iraq,
it's not Afghanistan, it's not even Libya. The more people understand that, the more they'll
understand the need for us to take this limited but effective action ."
Despite Blinken's promises that it would be a short affair, the war on Syria is now in its
ninth year. An estimated half a million people have been killed as a result and the country is
facing famine.
Largely thanks to the policy of using "wheat to apply pressure" – a recommendation of
Flournoy and Blinken's CNAS think tank.
When the Trump administration launched airstrikes on Syria based on mere accusations of a
chemical attack, Tony Blinken praised the bombing, claiming Assad had used the weapon of mass
destruction sarin. Yet there was no evidence for this claim, something even then-secretary of
Defense James Mattis admitted: "So I can not tell you that we had evidence even though we had a
lot of media and social media indicators that either chlorine or sarin were used ."
While jihadist mercenaries armed with U..S-supplied weapons took over large swaths of Syria,
Tony Blinken played a central role in a coup d'etat in Ukraine that saw a pro-Russia government
overthrown in a U.S.-orchestrated color revolution with neo-fascist elements agitating on the
ground.
At the time, he was ambivalent about sending lethal weapons to Ukraine, instead opting for
economic pressure.
Tony Blinken: "We're working, as I said, to make sure that there's a cost exacted of Russia
and indeed that it feels the pressure. That's what we're working on. And when it comes to
military assistance, we're looking at it. The facts are these: Even if assistance were to go to
Ukraine that would be very unlikely to change Russia's calculus or prevent an invasion."
Since then, fascist militias have been incorporated into Ukraine's armed forces. And Tony
Blinken urged Trump to send them deadly weapons – something Obama had declined to do.
But Trump obliged.
The Third Offset
While the U.S. fueled wars in Syria and Ukraine, the Pentagon announced a major shift called
the Third Offset strategy – a reference to the cold war era strategies the U.S. used to
maintain its military supremacy over the Soviet Union.
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The Third Offset strategy
shifted the focus from counterinsurgency and the war on terror to great power competition
against China and Russia. It called for a technological revolution in warfighting capabilities,
development of futuristic and autonomous weapons, swarms of undersea and airborne drones,
hypersonic weapons, cyber warfare, machine-enhanced soldiers, and artificial intelligence
making unimaginably complex battlefield decisions at speeds incomprehensible to the human mind.
All of this would be predicated on the Pentagon deepening its relationship with Silicon Valley
giants that it birthed decades before: Google and Facebook.
The author of the Third Offset, former undersecretary of defense Robert Work, is a partner
of Flournoy and Blinken's at WestExec Advisors. And Flournoy has been a leading proponent of
this dangerous new escalation .
She warned that the United States is losing its military technological advantage and
reversing that must be the Pentagon's priority. Without it, Flournoy warned that the U.S. might
not be able to defeat China in Asia: "That technological investment is still very important for
the United States to be able to offset what will be quantitative advantages and home theater
advantages for a country like China if we ever had to deal with a conflict in Asia, in their
backyard."
While Flournoy has called for ramping up U.S. military presence and exercises with allied
forces in the region, she went so far as to call for the U.S. to increase its destructive
capabilities so much that it could launch a blitzkrieg style-attack that would wipe out the
entire Chinese navy and all civilian merchant ships in the South China Sea . Not only a blatant
war crime but a direct attack on a nuclear power that would spell the third world war.
At the same time, Biden has announced he'll take an even more aggressive and confrontational
stance against Russia , a position Flournoy shares: "We need to invest to ensure that we
maintain the military edge that we will need in certain critical areas like cyber and
electronic warfare and precision strike, to again underwrite deterrence, to make sure Vladimir
Putin does not miscalculate and think that he can cross a border into Europe or cross a border
and threaten us militarily."
As for ending the forever wars, Tony Blinken says not so fast: "Large scale, open-ended
deployment of large standing US forces in conflict zones with no clear strategy should end and
will end under his watch . But we also need to distinguish between, for example, these endless
wars with the large scale open ended deployment of US forces with, for example, discreet,
small-scale sustainable operations, maybe led by special forces, to support local actors In
ending the endless wars I think we have to be careful to not paint with too broad a brush
stroke."
The end of forever wars?
So Biden will end the forever wars, but not really end them. Secret wars that the public
doesn't even know the U.S. is involved in – those are here to stay.
In fact, leaving teams of special forces in place throughout the Middle East is part and
parcel of the Pentagon's shift away from counterinsurgency and towards great power
competition.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy explains that, "Long-term strategic competitions with
China and Russia are the principal priorities" and the U.S. will "consolidate gains in Iraq and
Afghanistan while moving to a more resource-sustainable approach."
As for the catastrophic war on Yemen, Biden has said he'll end U.S. support; but in 2019,
Michele Flournoy argued against ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia .
Biden pledged he will rejoin the Iran deal as a starting point for new negotiations.
However, Trump's withdrawal from the deal discredited the Iranian reformists who seek
engagement with the west and empowered the principlists who see the JCPOA as a deal with the
devil.
In Latin America, Biden will revive the so-called anti-corruption campaigns that were used
as a cover to oust the popular social democrat Brazilian president Lula da Silva.
In Central America, Biden
has presided over a four billion dollar package to support corrupt right-wing governments
and neoliberal privatization projects, fueling destabilization and sending vulnerable masses
fleeing north to the United States.
Behind their rhetoric, Biden, Flournoy, and Blinken will seek nothing less than global
supremacy , escalating a new and even more dangerous arms race that risks the destruction of
humanity. That's what Joe Biden calls "decency" and "normalcy."
naughty.boy , 14 hours ago
deep state will bankrupt the USA with forever wars.
Distant_Star , 14 hours ago
Yes. As a bonus neither of these Deep State wretches has even seen a shot fired in anger.
They are too "important" to be at risk.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly set to announce this week that Tony Blinken,
who supported the idea of "Russia collusion," would be his Secretary of State.
President-elect Joe Biden intends to name his longtime adviser Antony Blinken as secretary
of State, according to three people familiar with the matter, setting out to assemble his
cabinet even before Donald Trump concedes defeat.
In addition, Jake Sullivan, formerly one of Hillary Clinton's closest aides, is likely to
be named Biden's national security adviser, according to two people familiar with the matter.
An announcement is expected Tuesday, the people said.
Blinken, who served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security advisor under
President Barack Obama, has also been a New York Times
opinion writer and a "global affairs analyst" for CNN. In that capacity, he supported the
"Russia collusion" hoax.
As Breitbart News reported in 2017, Blinken
told CNN: "The president's ongoing collusion with Russia's plans is really striking,
intentional or not." He said that Russia had sown doubt about American elections and
institutions.
(Subsequently, an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of any
collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.)
Blinken also
apologized earlier this year to left-wing anti-Israel radical Linda Sarsour, regarded by
many critics (
even on the left) as an antisemite, after the Biden campaign tried to distance itself from
her views.
He is also married to Evan Ryan, a former aide to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. Ryan
worked for Clinton at a time when Clinton's chief of staff, Margaret Williams, acknowledged
accepting a campaign donation from entrepreneur Johnny Chien Chuen Chung.
Chung said that the donation was meant to help Clinton pay for Christmas receptions for the
Democratic National Committee at the White House, in exchange for "VIP treatment for a
delegation of visiting Chinese businessmen," according to the
Los Angeles Times .
Biden is expected to name several potential Cabinet nominees in the coming days.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart
News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7
p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The
Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump's Presidency . His recent
book,RED
NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a
conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship.
Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak .
is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ' SCORPION
KING : America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the
Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during
the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter 21 Nov, 2020 13:52 Joe
Biden thinks he can save America and the world from four years of Donald Trump. Instead, Biden
will find himself in a foreign policy trap where his tough guy rhetoric compels him to finish
what Trump started.
If one listens to Joe Biden and his closest national security advisors, all it will take to
undo four years of Trump-era foreign policy is a few dozen strokes of the pen. According to the
plan, the presumptive president-elect will sign off on a series of executive orders which
reverse the course charted by Trump, returning America back to the path of greatness derived
from undisputed global leadership that had been the trademark of the Obama years, when Biden
reigned as vice president and Barack's right-hand man.
Rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran nuclear agreement and the World Health
Organization are all actions Biden can take as soon as he takes office. Reversing Trump's troop
withdrawal from Afghanistan and halting the redeployment of US forces from Germany are also
high on Biden's 'to do' list. However, simply reversing a decision made over the course of the
past four years does not reset the clock; for example, the world has moved on regarding climate
change, with nations like China taking the lead in promulgating plans for reaching a "carbon
zero" posture by 2060. Biden claims he can do this by 2050, but American domestic political
reality, shaped by an economy fine-tuned by Trump and inherently resistant to the kind of
economic change that would need to occur to make the Biden climate change plan viable, may have
something to say about that timetable.
The Iran deal
The Iran nuclear deal finds Biden trapped by his own hardline rhetoric, setting conditions
that are as unrealistic as they are unobtainable (for instance, requiring Iran to renegotiate
key aspects of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, as a pre-condition for
the US rejoining that pact). Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, recognizing the bad
position Biden's mouth has placed its owner in, has wisely noted that Iran can return to its
JCPOA commitments simply by Biden signing an executive order cancelling the Trump sanctions.
This is one executive order Biden likely will not sign, because it requires him to certify the
JCPOA as being good as written, something he has already articulated against.
One of the first decisions Biden will be compelled to make upon assuming the presidency is
how to proceed on the issue of US troops in Afghanistan. If the Trump reductions are completed
as planned by January 15 (a big 'if', given the proclivity of the US military to
lie to Trump about actual troop deployments), Biden will be pressured by the Pentagon to
immediately redeploy up to 5,000 troops in order to create the force structure the Pentagon
believes necessary to ensure stability while Afghanistan transitions to peace. This, of course,
would kill the peace plan the US has in place with the Taliban, setting the stage for even more
'forever war'.
Regime change and more war
Other regional issues jump out – the ongoing effort to oust Nicolas Maduro in
Venezuela, and the ongoing Saudi-led war in Yemen, to name two. Biden's anti-Maduro rhetoric is
every bit as strong as Trump's, meaning there is little chance of a policy re-direct on this
front. Likewise, if Trump fulfils threats to name the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a terrorist
organization, it will be difficult for Biden politically to reverse that decision, or else be
doing the bidding of Iran. Yemen will become another example of a 'forever war' living up to
its name.
Awkward in Europe
Another issue Biden will be called upon to deal with is the ongoing American redeployment of
troops out of Germany. Trump has committed to sending thousands of these redeployed troops to
Poland, a move Biden will have difficulty reversing. In the end, Biden will be pressured to not
only halt the withdrawal of US forces from Germany, but also find fresh troops to replace those
headed for Poland. But such a commitment must be measured in relation to the ongoing
controversy over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Russia with Europe. Trump has put in
place sanctions designed to halt the pipeline from being completed; Biden is likewise opposed
to the pipeline reaching fruition. Getting Germany to commit to taking in US troops while
blatantly interfering with German economic sovereignty is a balancing act Biden may not be up
to carrying out.
Arms control deadlock
Likewise, Biden has indicated that he would be inclined to sign an extension to the
soon-to-expire New START Treaty. Russia has long insisted that future arms control agreements
must consider missile defense issues. The Trump administration has just tested a missile
interceptor integral to the Aegis Ashore anti-missile system deployed in Romania and Poland in
an anti-intercontinental ballistic missile configuration. The likelihood of Russia agreeing to
any new arms control measures without a commitment on the part of a Biden administration to
reduce and/or eliminate European-based missile defense systems is zero. So, too, is are the
odds of a Biden administration doing away with missile defense in Europe. The result is an
expensive arms race at a time when the US can afford it least.
Finally, Biden inherits a policy posture toward both Russia and China which is as hostile a
relationship as has existed since the Cold War. Russia's force posture in Europe is such that
NATO would need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to be in a realistic position to take
on the Russian military in any conventional ground war in Europe. Moreover, it is unlikely
Europe will agree to either the formal endorsement of such an objective, or the economic
commitment needed to underwrite it. Complicating matters further is that China and Russia have
reacted to the aggressive policies of the US, which pre-dated the Trump era, by considering the
possibility of a formal alliance against what they term "western hegemony." Such an alliance
would complicate any effort on the part of a Biden administration to back up the
president-elect's pusillanimous rhetoric with actual muscle, since any conflict in Europe would
automatically trigger a Pacific response, and vice versa.
China's dominance
Regardless of anything else, perhaps the biggest challenge facing a Biden administration
will be in dealing with the consequences of Trump's decision to withdraw from the Obama-era
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an abortive free trade agreement designed to keep China out
while promoting American economic leadership. China, together with 14 other Asia-Pacific
nations, recently signed what amounts to the world's largest free trade agreement. The
signatories to this agreement, known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP),
include the 10 countries comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along
with China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia, and together account for around 30
percent of global GDP. The RCEP cements China's status as the dominant economic power in the
Asia-Pacific regions, and represents a stunning reversal of fortune for the US, whose
precipitous withdrawal from the TPP in 2017 paved the way for China's stunning diplomatic
coup.
The collapse of the TPP, when combined with the economic crisis brought on by the Covid-19
pandemic, made the RCEP attractive to nations who looked to trade with China as the only viable
means of rebuilding their stricken economies. The RCEP helps solidify the regional geopolitical
objectives of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative by opening the economies of the Asia-Pacific
region to Chinese-funded development projects. The diplomatic victory of China in bringing the
RCEP to fruition represents a stunning defeat for the US, which had been seeking regional
support in its ongoing trade war with China. Moreover, given the linkage between economic and
security issues, the fact that major regional allies such as Japan, South Korea, New Zealand
and Australia have so decisively joined their economies to China's undermines ongoing US
efforts to build a regional coalition designed to contain and eventually roll-back China's
presence in the South China Sea. While President-elect Joe Biden has reached out to Japan and
South Korea in an effort to reassure them of his administration's commitment to their security,
a future Biden administration is ill-positioned to counter the economic influence China has
locked itself into through the RCEP. From an economic perspective, the US 'pivot to Asia' has
been effectively halted, with the Asia-Pacific nations now firmly in China's court.
From Europe, to South America, the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and on to the Pacific,
President Joe Biden will be inheriting a world transformed by four years of Trump policies.
While Biden has indicated that he is inclined to reverse many, if not all, of the Trump foreign
policy "disasters" as soon as practical after assuming office, the reality is that he
will find his hands tied by the combined impact of his own aggressive rhetoric, which in many
instances paralleled the policies undertaken by Trump, or the fact that the geopolitical
situation that exists today does not permit a return to the foreign policy of yore.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
An eye-popping array of corporate consultants, war profiteers, and national security hawks
have been appointed by President-elect Joe Biden to agency review teams that will set the
agenda for his administration. A substantial percentage of them worked in the United States
government when Barack Obama was president.
The appointments should
provide a rude awakening to anyone who believed a Biden administration could be pressured to
move in a progressive direction, especially on foreign policy.
If the agency teams are any indication, Biden will be firmly insulated from any pressure to
depart from the neoliberal status quo, which the former vice president has pledged to restore.
Instead, he is likely to be pushed in an opposite direction, towards an interventionist foreign
policy dictated by elite Beltway interests and consumed by Cold War fever.
Robert Gates, who served as defense secretary for the Obama administration, paused for a
moment and said "I don't know" in an interview Sunday when asked if he thinks former VP Joe
Biden would be a good president.
CBS's "Face The Nation" host Margaret Brennan asked Gates if he stood by a statement from
his memoir that Biden has "been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national
security issue over the past four decades." Recommended
MARGARET BRENNAN: I was rereading your memoir before we sat down to talk and you said in your
memoir, Joe Biden is impossible not to like.
Quote: "He's a man of integrity, incapable of hiding what he really thinks, and one of
those rare people you know you could turn to for help in a personal crisis. Still, I think
he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the
past four decades."
Would he be an effective commander-in-chief?
ROBERT GATES: I-- I don't know. I don't know. I-- I think I stand by that statement. He
and I agreed on some key issues in the Obama administration. We disagreed significantly on
Afghanistan and some other issues. I think that the vice president had some issues with the
military. So how he would get along with the senior military, and what that relationship
would be, I just-- I think, it-- it would depend on the personalities at the time.
MARGARET BRENNAN: He's a peer of yours. Does that mean you're older?
ROBERT GATES: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You think he's right for this moment?
ROBERT GATES: I think I'm pretty busy and pretty active but I think-- I think having a
President who is somebody our age or older, in the case of Senator Sanders, is- I think it's
problematic. I think that you don't have the kind of energy that I think is required to be
President. I think-- I'm not sure you have the intellectual acuity that you might have had in
your sixties. So, I mean it's just a personal view. For me, the thought of taking on those
responsibilities at this point in my life would be pretty daunting.
American libs are just as fundamentally imperialist as the right, and their obsession with
IdenPol garbage is just a smokescreen to pretend that they aren't.
Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote about
the banality of evil , and there's never been a more banal bunch than the foreign policy
and security state crew Barak Obama surrounded himself with for eight years beside the possible
exception of
Bush's own Neocons .
Now after three years screaming about
"Russian collusion" it appears the Evil Empire is about to regain its lost ground,
championing new wars and more interventionist expansionism with a much greater role for the US
military in the world.
Let's name names.
Pentagon
For the defense chief post, the Washington Post has portrayed the banal face of Michele
Flournoy as the pick to
'restore stability' to the Pentagon , an entirely false assertion. Recall that Fluornoy
promotes unilateral global US military intervention, and advocated the destruction of Libya in
2011. By the
military-industrial revolving door , Flournoy enabled many Corporate weaponry contracts
amounting to tens of millions. Likewise Fluornoy is on the Booz-Hamilton board, where the swamp
cannot get any deeper. As if this wretched example of an agent-provocateur for war and
destruction were not bad enough, Biden is reportedly considering Lockheed-Martin banal kingpin
Jeh Johnson for the DoD position, too.
Lockheed director Johnson was employed by Rob Reiner and Atlantic editor arch-Neocon
David Frum to run
the Committee to Investigate
Russia which mysteriously blew up as soon as the Mueller Report was released. Jeh Johnson
has continued to warn of "Russian interference" in the US presidential election until now.
Biden's anointing as president-elect has ended that. As Homeland Security head, Johnson
authorized cages for holding immigrant children. He also supported the assassination of General
Suleimani, and has voiced support for US wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
State
From Libya to Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and beyond, the banality of evil is perhaps best
personified by Susan Rice – apparently Biden's premiere pick for Secretary. Rice was an
abject failure at the United Nations, but all seems forgiven, probably at the behest of Biden's
donors. After her failure at the UN, Obama kicked Rice upstairs to be his National Security
Advisor, a position that does not require Senate approval.
An obvious war hawk in the mold of the Democrat's donor class, a Rice appointment could
reinforce the liberal mantra that women can be just as good at interventionism as men, and
ensure full re-establishment of the Neoliberal agenda in Washington. John Kerry has been
flagged as a potential for State (again) too, but at age 77 and subsequent to the failure
of the
JCPOA Kerry is an unlikely pick.
Another potential pick among the banal Daughters of Darkness is Victoria Kagan-Nuland ,
architect of the 2014 debacle in Ukraine (among other things). Outed at State in an
embarrassing act of what she called impressive statecraft and other
embarrassing incidents, Nuland seems an unlikely choice. But Kagan-Nuland is as banal as banal
can be, and Biden may somehow wish to reinforce his solidarity with the JTF and his donor class, on
Israel.
National Security Advisor
Banality is certainly the mark of the beast here, in the form of Tony Blinken. Well in with
Michele Flournoy (above) Blinken typifies
the type of banality the Deep State engages in to promote its evil, with Blinken as successful
as any other Deep State actor. A major hawk on Russia and war hawk in general, Blinken is an
apologist for Israel . Blinken is a war hawk on Afghanistan and Syria too, and Blinken was
directly
involved in CIA operation Timber Sycamore . Oh, the banality.
Another model of banality is Leon CIA Panetta who so far claims that cruising the Monterey
peninsula is more fun that being in Washington. But we know that's false and Panetta would be a
logical pick. Besides being a hawk on everything, and laughing about the fact he has no idea
how many wars Obama's America was fighting – because he lost count – Panetta is
simply another sycophant for evil like Hannah Arendt portrayed in her study of Adolf
Eichmann.
CIA
Banal of the banal is of course Mike Morell. This incredibly vacuous excuse for a human
being has been hate-mongering for years. Beside his
blatant pandering support for another banal and brutal warmonger – Hillary Clinton
– Mike Morell is one Neoliberal who still maintains that Saddam Hussein actively
aided and abetted al Qaeda with regard to the 911 attacks. But Morell simply and ultimately
represents the banality of evil, just as Arendt depicted Adolf Eichmann, but in Morell's case
succinctly summarized here by
Ray McGovern .
United Nations
Outing the banality of the banal would be incomplete without mentioning Jen Psaki . Although a potential pick for
White House Communications Director, why not promote an accomplished liar to a venue where
accomplished lying really matters?
Conclusion
There is no indication that the United States as an entrenched warfare state will ever
change its course until forced to. Mr Trump was incapable of enforcing that change. Sidelined
by
Russiagate psychosis , as a Beltway Neophyte and his own worst enemy at times, that sank
Trump's agenda. The actions of Mr Trump now – to end the wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan
and Yemen -- should have been undertaken in earnest and without compromise years ago. Point
being that Mr Trump's new appointments to the Pentagon – and let's hope CIA – will
hopefully blunt the efficacy of Biden's bad actors going forward.
Regardless, characters the same or similar to the ones listed above will definitely infest
Washington's infernal Beltway cesspool once again via Joe
Biden make no mistake. And they will be meaner and nastier than ever before!
Guaranteed.
Creative_Destruct , 2 hours ago
And the same old swamp slime (Morell, et al) waits eagerly to burst back in through the
doors of power. New boss, same as the old(er) boss(es). Uuuuuuggh.
EndofTimes , 5 hours ago
Obama's 3rd Term. Swamp will grow like a tumor. These demons are shaking with excitement
to get into office and fulfill the desires of the founders of the UN. Kill off America and
establish a global government
truth or go home , 4 hours ago
Biden is 100% deep state puppet. He will say and do whatever they tell him to.
Dominion = Scytl = CIA = Deep State = Swamp
CIA threw the election. Trump team caught them.
Trump has already cut the CIA off at the knees. Getting ready to fill up Guantanamo
again...
Giant war going on inside the gov right now - Biden enjoying the limelight before he is
retired to his rocking chair.
CatInTheHat , 5 hours ago
NICE JOB Biden voters!!
You MORONS electing Obama 2.0 on STEROIDS is WHY we got a Trump in the first place
To Hell In A Handbasket , 4 hours ago
The USSA electorate are idiots, and divided idiots at that. You got Trump because the
electorate was desperate, and you got Biden because the other half was desperate. That adds
up to a desperate population. Your enemy is not voters from the other side of the Uniparty.
Please get off the GOP vs DEMOCRAT horse$h1t.
Bay of Pigs , 3 hours ago
Quite an impressive list of Neoliberal globalist ****bags.
SabOObas , 3 hours ago
The establishment demonizes Trump for 4 years.
The sheeple voted to put the guy with 40 years of corruption under his belt in office,
because the establishment said its good for you.
Jgault , 2 hours ago
It is always the small man, the inept man, the insecure man who has a need to demonstrate
to the world his bravado with reckless and senseless gestures.
Biden and his brothel of advisors he surrounds himself with have perhaps the worst track
record of international policy since Jimmy Carter, absolute proven failures and disasters in
Ukraine, Syria, Lybia, and Egypt. This is the group that laid the intellectual groundwork for
what would become the largest refugee crisis and humanitarian disaster in nearly 50
years.
Laughably, now the MSM is doing a complete 180 in their editorial view of troops in
Afghanistan and Syria...what a shock!
Lacking foresight, insecure, lacking ethical standards and being given the ability to
order troops, how could this possibly go wrong?
Trump was the first President in 30 years not to provoke any new millitary interventions,
yet the world criticized him for his style. Let's see how long it takes for the world to
start looking back to a more stable past.
ReadyForHillary , 3 hours ago
The Democrat party is the WAR party.
RumbleGuts , 4 hours ago
Another article that doesn't realize red and blue are the same team. Make no mistake, big
baby bonespurs is in deep with the deep state. Think epstein. ;-)
Someone Else , 2 hours ago
Mike Morell, the most evil man to ever draw a breath, as CIA Director?
A Biden Presidency can never be allowed to happen.
flawse , 2 hours ago
There will not be a Biden presidency. There is obviously some other plan.
DebbieDowner , 3 hours ago
This author's last paragraph fails to acknowledge that the CIA and FBI has not obeyed
Trump's (or any President's) orders in quite some time. Now is the time for someone to
finally make a change and it took such a massive plan to expose them all to drain the
swamp.
For those readers who may be unfamiliar with the term "Color Revolution", it refers to what has now become the standard technique
for promoting "regime change" in targeted nations.
The term may have its origins in the works of
Gene
Sharp
, who wrote some guidebooks on how to organize popular revolts using Madison Avenue-style marketing techniques. He
recommended to the sponsors that rather than confusing or boring the participants with too much political theory, they should
motivate their budding revolutionaries with pop culture, using catchy, content-free slogans, logos, and team colors.
Color R
e
volutions are expensive (
$5
billion in the case of Ukraine
) and are typically orchestrated by a public-private partnership comprised of government agencies
such as the State Department and MI6 and/or CIA, combined with private funding and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).
The most famous organization of this sort is the National Endowment For Democracy, a curious entity that is funded by the US
Government through USAID (as well as by donations from major
neocon
private
foundations), and has two sub-organizations that disseminate the funds to various Regime Change projects: the International
Republican Institute, affiliated with the Republican Party, and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs,
affiliated with the Democrats. Both organizations carry out the same activity, which underscores the fact that on matters of
subverting and bullying the rest of the world, there is a lot more bipartisanship in the US than people are inclined to think.
Another name associated with funding and orchestration is
George
Soros
, whose various tax-exempt organizations such as the Open Society Foundations invariably pump money into the latest Color
Revolutions, for reasons that are often more commercial than strictly political.
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, the
neocons
fanned
the flames of indignation and xenophobia, and were able to exploit them in order to assume a dominant role in most American
institutions, particularly the political parties and the media. Regime Change fever swept the foreign policy establishment, and
anyone who looked cross-eyed at a neocon became a target.
Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama embraced the neocon ethos and gave them virtual carte blanche to carry out Color
Revolutions around the world. The advent of social media, which fosters communication in the form of short, catchy slogans and
images that can be made to "go viral," was particularly conducive to Gene Sharp's formula of organizing the masses around
advertising copy and team colors. The Color Revolution techniques were used on a large scale in the former Soviet Union, such as in
the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia or the 2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
If the targeted populations can't be organized effectively to overthrow their leaders, there is always the fall back option of
arming mercenary groups to seize power by violence, or if that fails, out and out military aggression by the US or NATO. The most
reliable method seems to be a combination of non-violent and violent action, such as in the case of Ukraine's second Color
Revolution in 2014 (a coup which was comically dubbed the "Revolution of Dignity" by its neocon sponsors, who know that a successful
marketing campaign must never be understated.) A similar case was the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, where gang violence was deployed
in hopes of provoking a crackdown by the state which could then be exploited for propaganda purposes.
But it was inevitable that these techniques would eventually be used on the US itself. Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of
reducing US reliance on Regime Change wars and NATO "out-of-area deployments" as a centerpiece of foreign policy. This was
anathema
to the neocons.
Once in office, Trump vacillated, bringing prominent neocons into his cabinet and allowing them to launch
multiple Regime Change operations. However, Trump was not a doctrinaire neocon, and he angered them by advocating better relations
with North Korea, Russia and China. And for the neocons, anything short of total allegiance to their ideology is tantamount to
betrayal.
The standard methodology was put into play the moment Trump was inaugurated. The team color was pink, in the form of the pink "pussy
hats" (these ostensibly called attention to Trump's sexual vulgarity and libertine lifestyle, which lacked the charm of Bill
Clinton's.) The buzzword was #Resistance, which was intended to conjure up images of the struggle by nations which had been
conquered by Nazi aggression during World War II. Oddly enough, however, the aggressive moves by Trump against other nations were
not #Resisted. In fact, those were the only instances where he received hearty praise from the corporate media.
But it's not possible to mobilize a population with hats and hashtags alone. There had to be some minimal political content, and
herein lay the dilemma for the organizers of America's Color Revolution. There was widespread popular discontent with what has
become known as the "forever war" policy, as well as the neoliberal economics which have produced an unprecedented income disparity
between the 1% and the 99%, and this popular discontent was key in electing Trump. The neocons wanted discontent, but
not
on those issues
, since they had no intention of changing those policies.
Instead, they opted for a revival of the Cold War. Americans seem to have a particular susceptibility to jingoism, and the
demonization of the former communist powers, which had already begun in 2014 with the neocon-sponsored coup in Ukraine, was cranked
up to full volume in the corporate media, using all the imagery and sloganeering that had proved so effective during the 1950s.
This involved some spectacular feats of cognitive dissonance. Despite
Trump's
outbursts of bellicosity toward Russia
and other neocon targets, Trump was portrayed as being "soft," an appeaser, or an
outright enemy agent. The Democratic Party, which is considered to be the more liberal of the two parties and had in decades past
expressed some nominal opposition to military adventures in Vietnam and elsewhere,
swung
way to the right of the Republicans
in the jingoism derby.
The
secret
police agencies
and their pet journalists concocted what will be admired by historians as one of the most preposterous
conspiracy theories in recorded history, the tale of Russia manipulating the 2016 election with a computer hack which somehow
cannot
be detected by the NSA
, and
puppy
pages on Facebook
.
There was also a big focus on Trump's personality, which is admittedly none too winsome. This is consistent with the neocon "Hitler
of the Month Club" formula, where each new nemesis, from Manuel Noriega to Saddam Hussein to Muammar Gaddafi to Vladimir Putin, is
depicted as the most brutish, authoritarian dictator ever to walk the face of the planet.
They succeeded in impeaching Trump in December 2019, almost three years into his first term in office. They did not actually charge
Trump with an impeachable crime, but rather offered the rationale that he had allegedly used the power of his office in ways that
could benefit his re-election campaign (something that no other American president would ever dream of doing.) This was a far cry
from the much sexier, hoped-for rationale of "collusion" with the Bolshevik Foe, which had been shot down by the Mueller Report.
However, impeachment maven
Adam
Schiff
managed to insinuate that this Collusion was the real basis for impeachment, every time he saw a TV camera. We faced the
surreal spectacle of liberals begging John Bolton to testify, as the role of the neocons in orchestrating the #Resistance became
ever more explicit.
The impeachment passed the House on purely partisan lines, and Senate voted not to convict on purely partisan lines as well. There
has been much speculation that popular pushback to the whole spectacle may actually benefit Trump in this year's election. We shall
see.
Meanwhile, with the massively FUBAR Iowa caucuses of February 2020, questions were once again raised once again about the Democratic
nominating process. Bernie Sanders was emerging as a new threat to neocon dominance, this time from within the Democratic Party.
During the days leading up to Super Tuesday, there was a remarkable development. Every prominent neocon, from Bill Kristol to Max
Boot to David Frum to Susan Rice, acted with synchronized, military precision to endorse Joe Biden. Several neocon-friendly
Democratic presidential candidates abruptly withdrew from the race to endorse him as well. There was an immediate Pavlovian response
from cable news pundits and other putative journalists. Russiagate was dusted off and started up again, this time for use against
Sanders. On April 8, Sanders capitulated and withdrew from the race.
No one in their right mind believed that the confused and incoherent Biden could defeat the also incoherent, but clever and
confident Trump. But at this point, it was more important to the neocons that they keep control over at least one of the two
parties, and a decision was made that it were better to throw the election to Trump rather than to allow Sanders' brand of
left-populism to become ascendant in the Democratic Party.
But then the neocons saw a fresh opportunity, following the May 25 murder of African-American George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
Protest demonstrations by the Black community intersected the anxieties of a population frightened and frustrated by the one-two
punch of economic collapse combined with public health isolation to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Violent groups from the
Antifa
milieiu,
predominately
white
and
possibly assets of the FBI's
COINTELPRO
progam,
initiated vandalism and looting. Neocons were salivating at the prospect of Maidan-style chaos.
The beleaguered Trump had already been showing signs of psychological fatigue, and there had been significant lapses in his already
questionable judgement. In addition to mishandling the public health measures and the economic crisis, he had capitulated once more
to the neocons and went on an anti-China tirade. Then, when the social unrest began in the wake of the George Floyd killing, all of
Trump's political flaws came into play.
The neocons triumphantly hit the airwaves and the digital arena. Their great oracle,
The
Atlantic
, published
an
article
that serendipitously confirms the central theme of the article you are presently reading. Neocon high priestess Susan
Rice
suggested
that the Russians were to blame
for the rioting. Trump's every misstep was amplified by neocon pundits. Suddenly the idea of
electing Biden was no longer so implausible, as long as he could be
kept
away from live microphones.
It's important to
bear
in mind that the neocons are not
in the least concerned with Trump's mishandling of COVID-19 pandemic or civil unrest. They
were delighted when he ranted against China. But when he advocated reducing U.S. troop deployments in Germany and Afghanistan, they
were livid. On June 26, the
New York Times
published
yet
another story
based on anonymous leaks from the "intelligence community". This one claimed that the Taliban needed some
incentives after being occupied by a foreign power after 20 years and was now accepting "bounties" from Russia in exchange for
fighting the US military. In mid-September, General Frank McKenzie, Commander of the U.S. Central Command, told NBC News that no
evidence had been found to support this claim. Neocons continued to speak of it as established fact.
Although the corporate press continued to depict Trump as a fanatical right-winger in coverage intended for the rubes, within the
citadels of neoconservatism he was regarded as something entirely different. On September 30, 2020, the
Atlantic
published
another revelatory article entitled "
What
a Second Trump Term Would Mean for the World
." Author Thomas Wright drops a few bombshells like this one, likening Trump to the
great Progressive leader Henry Wallace (who is regarded by neocons as a close relative of Satan):
Looking back on U.S. diplomatic history, one of the great counterfactuals is what would have happened if Franklin D. Roosevelt
had not replaced his vice president Henry Wallace with Harry Truman in 1944. Wallace was sympathetic to the Soviet Union and
became an ardent opponent of the Cold War. If he had become president when FDR died, in April 1945, the next half century could
have gone very differently -- likely no NATO, no Marshall Plan, no alliance with Japan, no overseas troop presence, and no
European Union.
The U.S. is now teetering on another historically important moment. With Trump, we would not only be deprived of our Truman. We
would be saddled with our Wallace -- a leader whose instincts and actions are diametrically opposed to what the moment requires.
The good news is that the neocons are not omnipotent. They are adept at conning the public and they have the full cooperation of the
corporate media, but the public is volatile and increasingly skeptical of the official "narratives." This is why the neocons are
growing more and more hysterical in their public proclamations about "conspiracy theories" and "disinformation." They are in fact
strongly in favor of conspiracy theories and disinformation, provided that it is their own conspiracy theories and not someone
else's.
Neocons are demanding
censorship
of social media
, to drive everyone into the arms of CNN and
The
Atlantic.
As the election approaches, these demands have become increasingly more vociferous, leading to a major controversy
with the decision by both Facebook and Twitter to censor the
New
York Post
coverage
of leaked email correspondence between Joe Biden's son and executives of the Ukrainian energy firm
Burisma (which employed him at a rather remarkable salary). The rationale offered by the two social media giants, that the sourcing
of the emails was unclear, did not impress media critics, who
pointed
out
that if that policy were applied in an even-handed fashion, Russiagate could never have happened.
As long as the option is open, follow alternative news sources online. I recommend the
Grayzone
and
Consortium
News
, both of which I have found to be quiet reliable. The neocons are frightened; they worry about what John Durham's
investigation, or the declassification of documents ordered by Trump, may reveal about their methods of manipulation. Frightened
people make tactical errors. We must keep our wits about us and find ways to turn those errors to our advantage.
Nota Bene: the author of this article was subsequently
suspended
from Twitter
without explanation. Contact @TwitterSupport
and ask them why.
Was Trump an isolationist? Not really, though it's easy to see how he got this reputation,
at first glance of his foreign policy.
He had an aggressive posture
against Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela, with his illegal sanctions policy against these countries.
He demonstrated total fealty to the Israeli project to
annihilate Palestine. His "trade war" against China is sold as a way to rebuild the U.S.
economy, but it is also about maintaining U.S. power; for what other purpose could instruments
such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation and América Crece be used when they have
been
designed to advantage U.S. companies around the world?
Trump certainly attacked the Western military alliance system, trying to force NATO members
to spend more on their military. But at the same time, Trump developed other military
alliances: one of these, first developed by George W. Bush in 2007, is the Quadrilateral
Security Dialogue, or Quad, which draws Australia, India, and Japan into a military alliance
against China. At the same time, Trump drove an agenda in Latin America -- through the
Lima Group (established in 2017) -- to create an alliance against Venezuela.
Why Biden Is Not a Multilateralist
The liberal media portrays Biden as a multilateralist -- but the evidence for this
speculation on the president-elect's foreign policy is problematic, to say the least.
Biden wants to rebuild the Western military alliance system that Trump has eroded. An
indication of Biden's enthusiasm was an early phone
call to French President Emmanuel Macron, to suggest that the United States is back as a
player in Europe. This is not an advance toward a multilateral world order, but rather a return
to the old alliance system where the United States (with its Canadian and European allies)
attempts to dominate the world system by the use of its military, diplomatic, and economic
power.
Further evidence offered for Biden's multilateralism is his commitment to return the United
States to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or the Iran deal) and the 2016 Paris
Agreement.
Why does Biden wish to return the United States to its commitments toward Iran? Obama
entered this deal because the Europeans were desperate for a source of energy after the United
States and France destroyed access to Libyan oil in NATO's 2011 war and hurt access to
Russian natural gas because of the Ukraine conflict in
2014. Obama agreed to the Iran deal because the Europeans were desperate, not to line up with
the demands of international law; Biden will give the Europeans this gift, welcomed by the
Iranian people, in order to cement the Western alliance system. Meanwhile, Biden continues to
talk
about suffocating the Iranian people.
On climate, during the negotiations that resulted in the Paris deal during Obama's
presidency, the United States
watered down the text of the agreement, preventing a truly multilateral deal that would
have accepted Western responsibility for a century of fossil fuel use. Again, there is no major
commitment to save the planet in Biden's pledge to return to the Paris Agreement; the main
agenda is to strengthen and subordinate the European countries to the U.S.-led alliance
system.
Primacy Remains the U.S. Goal
The U.S. State Department's Policy Planning Staff wrote in the early years of the
Cold War, "To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat. Preponderant power
must be the object of U.S. policy." This desire for primacy remains the explicit U.S. policy.
Trump, in his four years as president, did not depart from this policy. Nor has Biden in his
five decades in public office. They might differ in their tone or in their strategy, but not in
the pursuit of this goal. Biden's adviser Charles Kupchan has written a new book called
Isolationism , which offers a clichéd view of U.S. foreign policy, and then
concludes, "[T]he United States must reclaim its exceptionalist mantle"; this means that the
United States must continue to seek primacy.
This goal of primacy has made it difficult for the U.S. elites to come to terms with the
fact of the slow attrition of U.S. power since the illegal war on Iraq (2003) and the credit
crisis (2007). Failure to acknowledge that the world will no longer tolerate one single
superpower has led the United States to impose a warlike situation against China. This
begins with Obama's "pivot" to Asia in 2015, and intensifies with Trump's "trade war."
Cold War on China Looms
Since 2015, not one U.S. Silicon Valley CEO has made a robust statement for comity between
the United States and China. Apple's Tim Cook held a
meeting with Trump in August 2019 merely to allow Apple to better compete with Samsung,
which was not hit by the U.S. tariffs. There was no broad statement about Trump's "trade war,"
with which Cook seemed quite pleased.
Silicon Valley firms know that on certain technological developments -- such as 5G,
robotics, GPS, and soon microchips -- Chinese firms have clearly produced next-generation
technologies, and in many cases have leapfrogged over their U.S. counterparts. Silicon Valley
companies are quite happy for the U.S. government to put the entire weight of the state against
Chinese firms. This includes using the security apparatus to accuse Huawei of being involved in
Chinese government espionage. It is a curiosity that none of the Silicon Valley firms worry
about privacy per se, because -- according to the Edward Snowden revelations -- the
National Security Agency uses the PRISM program to collect data freely from Silicon Valley
internet firms; but the U.S. uses the privacy and espionage arguments to try to hurt Chinese
tech firms and protect the intellectual property and market advantages of Silicon Valley. Since
this is the real cause of the trade war, there is every likelihood -- and Biden has said so --
that a Biden administration would continue to prosecute the trade war.
In 2013, the Chinese government set up the One Belt, One Road (now Belt and Road Initiative,
or BRI) to extend its commercial links across the world. The Obama administration responded in
2015 with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a platform to break China's commercial ties
along the Pacific Rim. Trump jettisoned the TPP and went for a more direct trade war. To
counter the trillions of dollars that China will mobilize for the BRI, the United States used
the Millennium Challenge Corporation (set up in 2004) and América Crece (2019) to funnel
billions of dollars to countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. All of this is a desperate
attempt to undermine China and maintain U.S. primacy.
The United States is not yet prepared to acknowledge the changed world situation. This will
take time. Short of that, it is important for people to speak up against an escalation of hostilities.
This article was produced by Globetrotter.
Vijay Prashad's most recent book is No Free Left: The Futures of Indian Communism (New
Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2015).
KARABAKH. This ceasefire should last. Russian troops have been moved to the points of
contact and secure the road link from Karabakh to Armenia proper. (
Deployment positions and General Staff
briefing ). Baku recovered a lot of territory that had been taken in the first war and can
justifiably claim to have won. Armenia, which officially was not involved at all, under its
present somewhat
colour revolution leadership has lost – but avoided a greater defeat – and
Pashinyan is now under considerable pressure to quit. Ankara has once again extended itself
but come up
short . Moscow has demonstrated that it is the indispensable element in the area. However,
it is important to recognise that the final
status of Karabakh itself remains undecided and this will be a difficult problem to solve.
But it will likely be settled with Moscow's efforts and not that of outsiders.
RED SEA. It is reported that a
small naval logistics base will be constructed in Sudan . Not sure I understand why: I
don't see how this fits into Russia's defensive posture. Although it might be connected to
supporting Iran which is in Moscow's interest (the enemy of my enemy is my friend).
RUSSIA AND THE WEST. I speculate that Moscow is giving up on the West
and Western courts .
THE EMPTINESS OF FORMER FLAPS. Remember all we were told about how weak US election security
was and how Russia could easily change results? Well, forget it, Russia was
shut out this year and US elections are
solid as a rock . (Not that these people would give credit to Trump for the alleged
re-securing.) Although those
pesky Russians are still busy sowing , won't
congratulate and are disinforming .
UKRAINE. Remember when
Putin allegedly told Bush that Ukraine wasn't even a country ? What he meant was that it is
a territory assembled out of parts of other countries by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev (not the
people I'd personally pick to design my country) and deeply divided. It still is in the
post-Maidan nightmare. A recent poll in " the poorest
country in Europe " shows it After all the
propaganda, only 41% want to join NATO, 37% want non-alignment, 13% want to join the
Russian-led security grouping. 57% expect relations with Russia to get better, 30% do not.
Results vary with location. ( Here's the original
). All that suffering and misery to remain where they were and not much change on the "
cultural map " either.
As I said at the beginning, Ukraine no longer
exists : the West broke the First Rule of Ukraine.
Patrick,
Any thoughts on why RF is not part of RCEP. Eurasian country on the Pacific. Any reason to
think they weren't eligible or deliberately excluded. Multilateralists that they appear to be
... BRICS, CSTO, SCO, BRI...
Best I could figure from the "good" Russian covid vaccine study:
Started with 40,000 but only observed 16,000 - huge drop out rate. Why?
Only 20 actual cases of covid among the 16,000 observed cases - a 0.001% active disease
incidence rate - how did these 16 covid cases break down between the placebo group and the
treated group.
Demographics of the groups and the active cases are missing. But the headlines claim 92%
success rate. The real story is still missing. Same criteria will be applied to US claims -
who are also very coy about the details.
No satisfaction in what has happened In the Ukraine since May 2014, but there must be some
quiet satisfaction, Mr Armstrong, in having got it dead right that early. Might I put in a
couple of queries?
1. On the school in Sevastopol, the specs didn't show any conversion to military use and
the work done was in any case similar to work done by the US Navy in other parts of Eastern
Europe. Also converting a school for military use before the coup would have been
announcing to the Russians "We're coming", which is unlikely.
So I reckoned at the time that that school renovation was nothing to do with any intention
of NATO forces taking over Sebastopol but was simply a "hearts and minds" gesture. I see
there was a EUVOM statement later put out confirming this. The school renovation was a
"humanitarian facilitation project."
But Lada Ray, writing back in 2014, has a different take -
"One of the high schools (a gymnasium) in Sevastopol the Kiev authorities were about to
sell to the US to be repurposed as a school for spies, targeting Russia. It was planned that
the kids going to that school would be learning languages and spying techniques since an
early age."
Now more is presumably known, was Lada Ray's statement merely part of the wash of
speculation around at that time or have documents come to light since that authenticate this
story?
2. The involvement of the EU is mentioned. Sakwa, the writer I take as the most
authoritative on the EU negotiations with the Ukraine, does not touch on EU liason with NATO
forces. Nor, if I remember correctly, does he go into the complex relationship between
Brussels and the constituent EU countries.
From what little I've picked up it seems the EU negotiating team was deeply involved in
the internal politics of pre-coup Ukraine, though having slightly different objectives from
NATO. As for who drove EU policy, it's quite certain that we can't speak of a "Brussels
policy" here when looking at the EU pre-coup negotiations but rather that the EU approach to
the Ukraine was mostly driven by two main players, Germany and France.
Mr Armstrong - any chance of your sorting this tangle out and giving us a bird's eye view
of who was up to what in that confused pre-coup period?
The US military establishment will breathe a sigh of relief at Joe Biden's victory in the
presidential election. Nearly 800 former high-ranking military and security
officials penned an open letter in support of the Democratic candidate during the campaign.
A who's who of former generals, ambassadors, admirals and senior national security advisers --
from former Secretary of State Madeline Albright to four-star admiral and Bush-era Deputy
Homeland Security Advisor Steve Abbot -- backed Biden as the best bet to revive US power. A
month earlier, 70 national security officials who served in Republican administrations threw
their weight behind Biden (the list soon grew to 130), arguing that, on foreign policy, Trump
"has
failed our country" .
Why was Biden the war criminals' candidate of choice? The foreign policy chaos and
controversy of the Trump years were a symptom of a global superpower in relative decline, with
no real strategy out of the quagmire.
The US empire is at a turning point. It is the world's undisputed superpower; its reach is
global, both militarily and economically . The US has been the world's largest economy since
1871, and its military has close to 800 installations in 80 countries around the world. But
today, it is facing a growing economic rival in China, and several lesser powers challenging
its ability to call the shots in every corner of the globe, most notably Iran and Russia.
The War on Terror, launched by the administration of George W. Bush , resulted in the
invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. It killed more than a million people and
cost upwards of US$2.4 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. For the people
of the Middle East, it was a massacre. For US empire, it was a disaster. The destabilisation of
Iraq led to the expansion of Iranian influence across the region, rather than the regime change
in Tehran the Pentagon dreamed of. The intervention in Iraq was meant to secure US dominance.
It instead exposed the weaknesses and limits of US power right at the moment when China's
dramatic economic expansion was beginning.
Tensions between the US and China have been increasing for years. Since its accession to the
World Trade Organization in 2001, China has built its economic power, its diplomatic power and
its military power, while the US became bogged down in endless wars and suffered economic
crisis and depression with the 2008 financial crisis.
Barack Obama's "pivot to Asia", with its plan to increase US naval forces in the
Asia-Pacific, was a signal that the US ruling class wanted to contain and encircle China.
Obama's then classified Air-Sea Battle doctrine was an effort to create an operational plan for
a possible military confrontation. Leaked cables made public by WikiLeaks reveal that Australia
was in lockstep with US imperial strategy. In conversation with Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton in 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd confirmed Australia's willingness to "deploy force
if everything goes wrong". But Obama's strategy was too little too late for containment. China
became more aggressive in pressing claims in the South China Sea while beginning to close the
enormous gap in military capabilities with the United States, engaging in the most rapid
peacetime arms build-up in history.
Under Trump, these tensions further increased. Trump's confrontational rhetoric and trade
war were a sharp break from the decades-long US strategy of integrating China into the
international liberal order. Since the Republican administration of Richard Nixon -- who in
1972 became the first US president to visit Beijing -- the US ruling class thought it could
ensure global supremacy by incorporating China into the world system. For a while, it appeared
to work. China became the world's sweatshop and a key site of investment for US companies such
as Apple and General Motors. But the strategy could be mutually enriching for only so long.
Today, China is leveraging its meteoric growth to challenge the United States' leadership in
the Asia-Pacific.
Obama's signature containment strategy was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP
would have been the largest free trade deal in history, lowering tariffs and other non-tariff
barriers to trade between eleven Pacific countries and the US. Its goal was to lock out China
and further integrate Pacific countries with the US economy. Obama's Defense Secretary Ashton
Carter said that the TPP was "as important as another aircraft carrier".
But just a few years later, Donald Trump tore up the TPP. The move was at odds with the
consensus among the US economic and military elite, but the new president had his own ideas
about how to contain China. Trump railed against the US trade deficit, accused Beijing of
currency manipulation and, as Obama did, of stealing technology from US companies. In the 2019
State of the Union address he said, "We are now making it clear to China that after years of
targeting our industries and stealing our intellectual property, the theft of American jobs and
wealth has come to an end".
By August this year, Trump had slapped tariffs on $550 billion of Chinese goods, with a
targeted campaign against tech giant Huawei, which had been tipped to overtake Apple in global
phone sales. While Republican and Democratic politicians have backed a hardline approach to
China, Trump's erratic protectionist approach to trade has alienated large sections of the
capitalist class otherwise happy with domestic tax cuts and deregulation. A Bloomberg Economics
report, released before the pandemic gripped the country, estimated that the escalating tariffs
on China would cost the US economy $316 billion by the end of this year.
More worryingly for the US establishment, Trump adopted a dismissive attitude towards US
allies, particularly the European Union. Trump prided himself on his ability to cut deals with
other nations that favoured the US. He signalled that the multilateral approach to trade was
over when he tore up the TPP, and followed that by applying tariffs on German cars, Canadian
steel and French luxury goods. For much of the US elite, these moves have simply created a void
that Beijing is attempting to fill with its own free trade deals and the $1 trillion Belt and
Road initiative, which aims to incorporate more than 138 countries into trade routes and
production chains centred on China.
The International Monetary Fund, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the UN and other
international institutions project US dominance by drawing allied nations behind US leadership.
Trump's presidency delegitimised or sidelined those institutions as he focused on an "America
first" posture. The military establishment believes that this has threatened, rather than
strengthened, US power -- although there is now an acknowledgement that those institutions
failed to keep China in check, something a Biden presidency will also grapple with.
The war criminals hope that Biden will restore political legitimacy to the office by
rehabilitating the liberal ideology that manufactures consent for American imperialism,
pitching US aggression as necessary to "make the world safe for democracy" and defending the
"rules-based liberal world order". Above all, the US establishment hopes that Biden will
restore relationships with US allies and construct a coalition of nations to confront China,
after a disastrous four years that called into question US global leadership. As the National
Security Leaders for Biden open letter bemoaned: "Our allies no longer trust or respect us, and
our enemies no longer fear us".
Biden has a proven record as a hawkish proponent of US empire. For decades, he served on the
Senate foreign relations committee. He was an early proponent of the expansion of NATO to
project US influence into the former eastern bloc after the fall of the USSR. He backed US
intervention in the Balkan war, supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, voted for the
war on Iraq in 2003 and, as vice president, backed the US intervention in Libya.
There is consensus within the US ruling class over the need to "get tough" with China. The
military establishment expects Biden to turn the screws. On the campaign trail, he accused
Trump of "getting played" by Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he called a "thug". This is
consistent with Democratic Party practice in the Congress, which is to criticise Trump for not
being tough enough. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, for example, accused Trump of
"selling out" by cutting a trade deal with China. Schumer also spearheaded legislation to
implement bans on Huawei when Trump appeared to back down.
Since his first days in Congress, Biden has also made a name for himself as a staunch
supporter of the apartheid state of Israel. According to Israeli publication Haaretz ,
Biden is said to have a "real friendship" with Israel's far-right president, Benjamin
Netanyahu. He was vice president when the US signed a $38 billion military aid deal with
Netanyahu, which the State Department called the "single largest pledge of bilateral military
assistance in US history". So while Trump pushed pro-Israeli rhetoric far to the right,
abandoning any pretence of support for Palestinian statehood, Biden put his money where his
mouth is when it came to propping up Israeli apartheid in Palestine.
On Afghanistan, Biden may prove to be to the right of Trump. As vice president, he supported
an enduring US military presence in the country. Trump, by contrast, shocked the US military
when he announced on Twitter that he wants all troops out by Christmas. In contrast, Biden in
an interview with Stars and Stripes , a military newspaper, said he would maintain a
troop presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Anti-imperialists need to judge Biden by his blood-soaked record in Congress and by the
company he keeps. The bulk of the US military establishment has backed Biden precisely because
they think his multilateral approach will restore credibility to US interventions. It's for
this reason that Forbes magazine senior contributor Loren Thompson predicted last month:
"A Biden presidency would be more likely to use US military forces overseas than President
Trump has been".
Global capitalism is facing a profound crisis that is reshaping international relations and
putting pressure on the fault lines of existing conflicts. Open imperialist rivalry will be a
feature of the coming period, along with wars over regional disputes. There is no length to
which the US ruling class won't go to safeguard its position as global superpower. And Joe
Biden is the commander-in-chief. He is now the most dangerous man in the world.
*
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While probably "less aggressively nasty" than Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden is still a
"conventional politician," but it won't be easy for him to dismiss his party's progressive
wing, Larry Sanders told RT's Going Underground.
Brother to US Senator Bernie Sanders and the Green Party Spokesperson on Health and Social
Care (England & Wales), Larry Sanders told RT's Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi that
while Biden was not his "choice" for president, he prefers him over the current
incumbent, President Donald Trump.
... ... ...
As a fixture of the establishment, Biden will follow the interests of corporate money and
the military-industrial complex rather than anybody else's, Sanders noted.
"Biden is a conventional politician, he is beholden to big money, he is beholden to
defense industries,
joe_go 13 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 07:03 AM
If no one in America went to vote the country would still look the way it looks today. The
big money and military industry would run the country the way it runs it when people vote and
think it matters.
Spirgily_Klump 20 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 12:46 AM
Do you know after Biden was out of the VP office the Chinese communist party had donated $70
million to one of his foundations at the University of Pennsylvania from which Joe drew a
salary of over $900,000 per year? With his benefiting from the hundreds of millions his
family took in from foreign powers and persons how can he gain the security clearance
necessary for the presidency? The president needs the highest clearance. Even an applicant to
the CIA get polygraphed.
shadow1369 Spirgily_Klump 9 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 11:00 AM
Just one of many skeletons jangling in Bidet's closet, they will be used by his controllers
to keep him on track.
Iwanasay 19 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 01:22 AM
It doesn't matter who is in power, America's destiny has been chosen by other behind the
scene faces
RedDragon 15 hours ago 19 Nov, 2020 05:27 AM
All USA presidents are beholden to big money entities, inclusive incoming Biden presidency.
Trump is beholden to the Jewish money powers etc..
Beware savvy, sophisticate liberals bearing gifts of evasive and ethically empty prose.
Having, for my sins, spent a few weeks reading just about everything on offer from what
unrepentant neocon zealot – and born-again Washington Post columnist – Max
Boot
dubbed Joe Biden's foreign policy "A-Team," I can vouch for the new transition team's
vapidity and verisimilitude. Put another way, Boot's favored Biden Posse – the Iran
nuke channeling , P4
(Tony Blinken, Avril Haines, Jake Sullivan, and Nicholas Burns) +1 (Michèle Flournoy)
– have a rare gift for typing tons but saying little.
Worse still, what they do let slip drips with subtext of status quo-hawkishness
– Biden's shadow team of five ground hogs spotting their shadows and predicting four
more years of warfare winter. Moreover, these aren't just any Washington lowland creatures
– they're being groomed
, respectively, for national security adviser, director of national intelligence, a
senior
diplomatic role,
possible secretary of state, and probable secretary of defense.
Only you're not supposed to look under the lid of Biden's national security transition
team, because, well uh, Trump was worse, and there's, like, lots of ladies in the lineup. No
really, "serious" people are saying that . With straight faces. And clear consciences.
With no consequences. What a world!
This column's immediate genesis, though, was Glenn Greenwald 's vicious and vital
responsive -evisceration of
MSNBC contributor – and self-described "thriver on chaos"
– Mieke Eoyang's recent nonsense Newspeak tweet . Here's her attempt
to silence through shaming – and signaling by buzzword:
If the Chinese decide to really mess with the Biden administration, I'd imagine they would
do something like build a road or even a pipeline in Afghanistan, even though it is
completely unnecessary, simply to force the US to stay longer. Doesn't seem like their style,
though.
In regards to Russia, same as most of the last 100 years, really. If anything big happens
at all, it would be Putin retiring. In that case, CNN will have wild fantasies about Boris
Yeltsin 2.0, while in reality Russian oligarchs may have some kind of trial moment to figure
out whether his successor can continue to enforce a balance or not, which is a big question.
Team Biden brings nothing to the table in that situation other than talking sh#t and creating
confusion. The EU on the other hand could, but it's looking less and less likely. Especially
as they will likely be immersed in a post covid political crisis and renewed challenge from
right wing parties.
Last but not least, look for Biden to be nominated for Nobel Peace Prize before lunch on
his first day in.
here will be much pressure from the liberal hawks to finish the war they had launched
against Syria by again intensifying it. Trump had ended the CIA's Jihadi supply program.
The Biden team may well reintroduce such a scheme.
Susan Rice has criticized Trump's Doha deal with the Taliban. Under a Biden
administration U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are therefore likely to again increase.
One possible change may come in the U.S. support for the Saudi war on Yemen. The
Democrats dislike Mohammad bin Salman and may try to use the Yemen issue to push him out of
his Crown Prince position.
Biden and his team have supported the coup attempt in Venezuela. They only criticized it
for not being done right and will probably come up with their own bloody 'solution'.
After four years of Russiagate nonsense, which Susan Rice had helped to launch, it is
impossible to again 'reset' the relations with Russia. Biden could immediately agree to
renew the New START treaty which limits strategic nuclear weapons but it is more likely
that he will want to add, like with Iran's nuclear deal, certain 'amendments' which will be
hard to negotiate. Under Biden the Ukraine may be pushed into another war against its
eastern citizens. Belarus will remain on the 'regime change' target list.
China would heave a big sigh of relief if Biden picks Rice as his secretary of state.
Beijing knows her well, as she had a hands-on role in remoulding the relationship from
engagement to selective competition, which could well be the post-Trump China policies.
For the Indian audience, which is obsessive about Biden's China policy, I would
recommend the following YouTube on Rice's oral history where she narrates her experience
as NSA on how the US and China could effectively coordinate despite their strategic
rivalry and how China actually helped America battle Ebola.
Interestingly, the recording was made in April this year amidst the "Wuhan virus"
pandemic in the US and Trump's trade and tech war with China. Simply put, Rice
highlighted a productive relationship with Beijing while probably sharing the more
Sino-skeptic sentiment of many of America's foreign policy experts and lawmakers.
All together the Biden/Harris regime will be a continuation of the Obama regime. It's
foreign policies will have awful consequences for a lot of people on this planet.
Domestically Biden/Harris will revive all the bad feelings that led to the election of
Donald Trump. The demographics of the election
show no sign of a permanent majority for Democrats.
It is therefore highly probable that Trump, or a more competent and thereby more
dangerous populist republican, will again win in
2024 .
Obama-Biden 3.0 as Pepe Escobar put it with an added twist
I do not agree with the assumption that the new administration (either Biden or Trump)
will start more wars, as you call them. I posit that Trump would have had his war if it
were possible but we are in a MAD phase of a civilization war and Biden will be just as
neutered as Trump.
We are not going back to Obama 3.0. That ship sank when Russia stymied Obama empire in
Syria. We are in a brave new world that is unfolding before our eyes....the future is all
around us but just not evenly distributed.
The Atlantic council this morning ("The way forward for transatlantic sanctions") is
already discussing new sanctions the Biden Administration will bring in against Russia over
the failed revolution in Belarus and the Navalny fraud. I'm amazed at how
self-congratulating these fools are, they truly are blind both to the problems the US is
facing and how the US is creating new international crisis that will destroy the
nation.
I can not understand why you insist here that Trump ended jihadist´s support in
Syria, when it was these past days that we knew by US envoy there, Jeffries, that the
troops not only were not decreased, by augmented.
Anyway, I guess we can conclude that if not directly, jihadists support continues
through Turkey, as we have witnessed in the past conflict in the Caucasus.
An article in Foreign Policy from a Bush era neo-con tells you what to expect:
Russia under Putin poses an existential threat to the United States and other countries of
the West, Russia's neighbors, and his own people. Biden seems to understand that, not least
because he has been the target of Russian interference in the 2020 election, including a
disinformation campaign tied to Russia that was designed to smear him and his son Hunter.
Earlier this year, Biden wrote, "To counter Russian aggression, we must keep [NATO's]
military capabilities sharp while also expanding its capacity to take on nontraditional
threats, such as weaponized corruption, disinformation, and cybertheft." He continued: "We
must impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms and stand with
Russian civil society, which has bravely stood up time and again against President Vladimir
Putin's kleptocratic authoritarian system." In an interview with CBS News' 60 Minutes
before the election, Biden said he considered Russia "the biggest threat to America right
now in terms of breaking up our security and our alliances."
These instincts are sound, and Biden likely will appoint officials who think the same
way he does when it comes to Putin's Russia.
The more articles and postings that I see that bemoan the Deep State restoration (horror!)
and return of business-as-usual (horror!), the more I think that we are being set up for an
eventual Trump win.
Recent history tells us that Republican Presidents do BIG WARS (invoking Republican's
claim to patriotism and a strong military) and Democratic Presidents do small, covert
wars.
Why else would Trump fight an EMPIRE-FIRST establishment that he largely agrees with (as
demonstrated by his actions while President)?
Mr Wabbit - as I've written before (here and elsewhere): there is NO really existing
difference between the which colored face(s) hang out in the WH (or in Congress) because they
all belong to the same political stratum and, essentially, hold exactly the same positions,
worldviews, attitudes, perspectives. All (aside from a tiny handful on occasion) support the
MICIMATT, are intrinsically part and parcel of it. All get to fatten their bank accounts, get
to revolve twixt this post and that in the MIC/TT/MA. At base most if not all (Blue/Red, it
matters not at all) work for/along with/are part of the corporate-capitalist-imperialist
plutocratic ruling elite.
Thus the warmaking will NOT stop without serious and continuous effort on the part of a
large part of this country's population - and that isn't likely to happen: lots of folks earn
their nice livelihoods in the MICIMATT industry; and most - overwhelmingly most - of the US
population do not give a fuck what this country does to any other around the world, so long
as a) doesn't affect them; b) their pension plans benefit; c) they can go back to sleep. How
many even know where Syria, Libya, Iran, Ukraine ARE????
And they do not care - except when there is the occasional blowback - which is viewed as
(what else?) terrorism, not simply retaliation. The real terrorism being projected, inflicted
by guess which nations?
Kevin Gosztole on Grayzone; Patrick Lawrence on Consortium News; Danny Sjursen on Anti-war
- all pieces give one despair, sheer and utter despair at the so-called electoral "choices"
we had and the reality of the continuation of the imperial war machine, run by the utterly,
completely grotesque, barbaric usuals (whatever their bloody sex, skin hue).
While lecturing the world over "international norms", the deliberate obliviousness over
the astonishing rolling humanitarian disasters initiated by the USA is beyond disturbing.
Watch out for Eliot A Cohen and what Phil Geraldi coined as "Kaganate of Nulandia" ilks in
that FP Team. In Obama's first year we had Dennis Ross at the WH and Jeffrey Feltman at
Turtle Bay whilst the R2P women were at Foggy Bottom : we got the Arab Spring followed by the
demise of Ghaddafi and the havoc in Syria.
Who will Susan Rice put in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to give the middle finger to
Abu Mazen?
While The Dem party is strongly anti-Russia, connected at it is to the Atlantic Council
and NATO, the probable next SecDef Flourney is throwing down the gauntlet on China.
...from TaiwanNews:
Flourney assessed that China is starting to believe it can achieve a quick strike that
would disable all U.S. defenses in the region, paving the way for an invasion of Taiwan.
"China's theory of victory increasingly relies on 'system destruction warfare' -- crippling
an adversary at the outset of conflict, by deploying sophisticated electronic warfare,
counterspace, and cyber-capabilities," wrote Flourney.
To boost deterrence capabilities, Flourney asserts that the U.S. must modernize and
strengthen its forces in the region to raise the cost of "Beijing's calculus." Such is the
buildup that Flourney is advocating, that it would enable the U.S. military to "credibly
threaten to sink all of China's military vessels, submarines, and merchant ships in the
South China Sea within 72 hours" . . here
This is quite a change from the current administration, which has followed the Taiwan
Relations Act in stressing that the break-away province is responsible for its own defense,
with no mention of US support. In fact the US does not have a mutual defense treaty with this
Chinese province. Normally these treaties only include countries of course, and while Taiwan
claims to be a country of course it isn't.
On the question of war, it's no secret that Biden is likely to prove more hawkish than
Trump, though Biden himself is a diplomatic man. However the world has changed since the days
of Obama. The Middle East has ground to a stalemate, and there are no objectives to achieve
by putting in more troops or air-strikes. Trump just tried and failed to bomb Iran. The
military advice to Biden won't be different.
With regard to the "pivot to Asia", I doubt that the Chinese are much afraid of a US
attack.
...Abstracting the factor of a new party naturally being inclined to reinitialize all the
wars abandoned or paralyzed by the previous party at a first glance...
1) Venezuela: I would bet Biden should have learned from Trump's mistake, but fact on the
field is the Southern Caribbean nation is a too appetizing target for him to to revisit it
and do a real invasion with Colombia through the land as an auxiliary;
2) South China Sea/Taiwan: Susan Rice's little story is touching, but the Western-backed
Asian MSM (SCMP, Asia Times etc.) is already preparing the psychological/ideological field
for a hot war between China and the USA there, which means they were already briefed by
Biden's team it will happen;
3) Afghanistan: at the heart of Central Asia (Heartland) + CIA opium = a matchstick will
rule over the Cocytus before the USA abandon its occupation of that country;
4) Yemen: the war pays for itself as the Saudis are recycling USDs into American weapons,
so I think inertia will prevail. When the Saudis say it's over, it's over;
5) Syria: game's over for the Americans there. The Russians imposed a no-fly zone to
NATO/USA. Most they can do is to prop up Turkey (which they don't like right now) to fund
terrorists in Idlib to try to drain the Russian coffers a little bit more but the Kremlin can
push the nuclear button anytime if it really comes to that point (if ever);
6) Belarus: it was more a German affair than an American affair. Doesn't apply;
7) Ukraine: unfinished business will probably lead to another ramping up over the Dnieper,
but the Donbassians have the geographical advantage and will never lose their territory as
long as they have full-fledged support from Russia;
8) Russia: the problem here is the USA is in a position it has to choose - Russia or the
European Peninsula? Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has already stated Germany's unconditional
loyalty to the USA is directly linked to the continuation of NATO. If NATO's gone, then the
European Peninsula may become a second Southeast Asia.
If ... Tom Cotton is the Republican nominee, a Dem Presidential victory in 2024 will make
Biden's 2020 landslide look like the small mound of sand sliding into the bottom half of an
hourglass.
Citibank's foreign policy Team would be much more accurate wouldn't it ?
That's like saying Obomber or Bush had their own foreign and economic policy.
The only reason DC puts on this shit show is to protect the owners from
accountability.
No matter who the "president" is there will be more war, sanctions, and coup attempts
because that's what the money/power cult needs to obtain more power and control.
These assholes successfully perpetrated a coup of the US government, why would they worry
about which flunky gets (s)elected ??
"Hillary Clinton at the UN? Whether or not Biden appoints her, things are getting very
brazen and very bitter, very fast."
Lawrence opines:
"Let us now send this conscienceless liar to the UN to make sure the world knows we're all
for international cooperation so long as all others submit to our dictates and don't get in
our way when we invade other countries, foment coups or otherwise breach international
law.
"I confess to longstanding animosity toward the odious Clinton. In truth she is merely the
apotheosis of what we've known for some time about the incoming regime's character.
"Biden's army of foreign-policy transition advisers -- 2,000 in number -- is chock-a-block
with warmongers, Russophobes, Sinophobes, Iranophobes, exceptionalists, puppets of apartheid
Israel, humanitarian interventionists, and others promising nothing but trouble. We've known
this for some time."
Lawrence did some great digging to complement the work done by other investigators. The
following is excellent:
"The Democratic 2020 platform published on the eve of Biden's nomination last summer,
intended to bring Bernie Sanders' supporters on board, included these commitments on the
foreign-policy side:
•"Bringing our forever wars to a responsible end."
•"Rationalizing the defense budget."
•Ending covert "regime change" operations in favor of "more effective and less costly
diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement tools."
•"Right-sizing our counterterrorism footprint."
•Scaling back U.S. involvement in Afghanistan in favor of "a durable and inclusive
political settlement" with a residual role for special operations forces.
"Didn't President Donald Trump attempt to achieve various of these objectives? Didn't
hawks in his administration and at the Pentagon vigorously and illegally subvert these
attempts? Didn't the mainstream press cheer on these subversions while lambasting Trump daily
for jeopardizing "national security" as he tried (however inconsistently) to bring troops
home, settle up in Afghanistan, negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and other
such things?...
"Those who expected the Biden regime to give Americans a thoughtful, informed,
post-exceptionalist foreign policy -- and I am not among these people -- are in for too many
disappointments to list over the next four years. Let us consider a few of the more
consequential."
Lawrence goes on to detail why there'll be no peace in Eurasia and no reduction in the
Imperial Budget. I agree 100% with his summation:
"One principle will guide the Biden regime's foreign policies. Biden is a man of empire
and those around him empire's lieutenants. This will determine all of what is to come."
Realistically that means the Outlaw US Empire will continue to drown as it spins around
and slowly descends down the toilet bowl. Nowhere in anyone's analysis of this issue is there
any mention of the fact that great domestic strength and vitality are a prerequisite for any
attempt at Imperial Dominance, and nowhere in Bidenland is there any policy proposal to
rehabilitate that fact. Sure, all sorts of hawks will populate the Pentagon and continue at
the State Dept, but they might as well be doves since the Empire's industrial base can no
longer support an aggressive Imperial Policy. Then there's the Human Capital that's in just
as dire a condition as the Industrial Plant. Biden in many respects faces the same set of
problems Trump was confronted with and allowed to fester/worsen. Plus, half the nation is
dead-set against him and his regime, perhaps even more so than with Trump since there'll be
no constant BigLie Media smearing.
The gap between the Outlaw US Empire and those nations it's chosen to demonize as
competitors and worse continues to grow daily. The RCEP is only one manifestation. A second
is the continuance of BRICS, which just held a Summit. If Biden launches an attack against
Iran, he'll suffer a massive defeat for the same reasons as Trump. Same with North Korea.
Same as with the South China Sea. Same as with Taiwan. Same as with Syria. And I'd say the
last bullet within the Color Revolution gun available for use in Eurasia was recently fired
to no effect. Latin America is rebounding again. In almost every respect, the Outlaw US
Empire is weaker now than in 2017 when Trump took over. IMO, Biden's #1, most important and
difficult job will be domestic since his donors will insist they be allowed to continue to
eat away at the vitals that are the fundamental basis of support for the Empire--Following in
the footsteps of Rome.
Russia will be the main target of the new US regime, expect to see the russian underbelly
in flames in the Caucasus, in Central Asia and of course in Ukraine and Syria.
The russian regimen change project will be at full speed, economically, politically,
domestic and external insurgencies, all in order to bleed to death the Bear that they see as
a cultural, military, industrial and natural resources rival that has to be fully destroyed
and reduced to smithereens, divided in corrupt satrapies much smaller and easy dominate
"à la ukrainien" or georgian, to extract, on the cheap, all their natural resources
with nice fees for the Biden family or many others american plutocrats. Win-win
situation.
One of the pieces to "bleed the beast" project was the Pashinyan sororite hiper-corrupt
regime, who sell large amounts of weapons to the jihadis in Syria to kill russians and
syrians soldiers, this was the last straw for the russkies with them:
So the DoD just announced that Trump is drawing down troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to
2500 for each by January 15th 2020, and there are about 5,000 private military contractors in
each which will probably increase to compensate. Easy call for Trump.
Yes, I saw McConnel plead to be able to stay and "finish" Afghanistan. Such a tired show
now. The same ol' tune, spoken a thousand times on that senate floor.
But to your point, not all Republicans are non-interventionists. There are many, many
RINOs amongst them who actually loathed the idea of Trump as POTUS in 2015, so much so that
it took the groundswell of support for DJT that these RINOs relented and hopped aboard the
Trump-train.
Now that he has lost, they want to revert back to their prior and favored position as
controlled opposition to the Dem establishment. It will at first be subtle, with feigned
support for outgoing POTUS, but gradually, they will cease mentioning him at all.
It remains to be seen whether the constituents in these RINOs' districts will not see
through the subterfuge.
As I have mentioned before, I think they will come for the RINOs if they disembark the
Trump-train. They are sowing wind.
As we move forward resistance to American hegemony becomes stronger, more broad and a more
viable counterbalance to the western hegemony on world affairs. This is while US and her
allies have and are becoming weaker and therefore more unbalanced. Political and economic
unbalance as seen during the pandemic is much more difficult and costly for developed
nations as would be for the third world.
As has been seen in past few years this shifting power balance will naturally make the losing
power, more reactionary and more violent to preserve and restore her power, both domestically
and externally.
As this giant corpse start decaying her parasites start chowing more and demanding more to
save themselves, which makes this dying giant even more unpredictable, and perhaps more
reactionary and violent regardless who's the president and in power, Trump or Biden has not
and will not make any change difference for the Deep state policies.
Fortunately this is, and has been, the trajectory we are on for some time now, and IMO this
is unstoppable, no matter who and how much propaganda is leveled inside and outside of
west.
Biden has said that he will re-instate the nuclear agreement with Iran but with
'amendments'.
Wishful thinking by Biden and his faction, if he get into white house at all. The greatest
obstacle for any US president to get back to JCPOA is the general disqualification of US
governments to be part of any international agreement.
Obama signed, Trump teared in pieces, Biden signing again (are we in a Kindergarten?), who is
going to guarantee that the next republican president (in 4 years?) doesn't tear it in pieces
again or even the to-be president Kemala Harris (in 2 years?) doesn't trigger the snap back
as a friendly pay back gesture to the Zionist Apartheid regime for getting the job as
president?
Although Rouhani government has sent strong signals that they are ready for a new round of
negotiation, with less then 9 months to the next elections in Iran, almost no chance that the
next winner come from technocrat camp, theocracy not ready to support technocratic efforts
for new negotiations and finally wide popular resistance to continue the JCPOA even in the
current format. It would be more then a wounder to encounter JCPOA 2.0
What occupies the fantasies of the populace does matter to the oligarchs who run the show.
If it didn't matter to the elites they would not spend so much time and energy trying to
shape those fantasies...
The elites are going to support the politicians that are most accomplished and adept at
bolstering the fantasy of the two party system and American democrazy. There is no doubt that
Donald Trump is the salesman of the year for the smoke the elites are blowing up your ass.
There is no other politician that could get 150 million americans sucked into the
fantasy.
And what that means is they will do whatever they can to make sure trump gets another four
more years.
Can't say I disagree with much of this when taken at face value, but I'd appreciate some
backing to this assertion, for which it's quite uncharacteristic of b not to provide right up
front.....if true.
Biden and his team have supported the coup attempt in Venezuela. They only criticized it
for not being done right and will probably come up with their own bloody 'solution'.
I should note, and most MoA readers will agree, that it's nearly impossible to find any
Western media organization - including erstwhile progressive outlets - who don't agree with
the alleged status quo that Maduro is a "dictator" and "has to go."
So what WOULD a Biden administration do differently? All's I can find of substance is that
they'd use sanctions in a more precise manner, not the blunt force instrument that Trump has
applied - and - that they would grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans wishing to
flee (I'd bet there's a good mix of the Mestizo and Moreno poor, as well as the trust fund
descendants of the colonial elite) to the United States whereas Trump refused or dragged his
feet to the point that it didn't matter.
I think, then, that the decisions made will be less to do with Biden being a bad man
(which, like Trump, he is), but instead all grounded in the accepted "reality" that "Maduro
must go" and there must be a "peaceful democratic transition" (back to right-wing colonialist
descendants from whom (some of) their stolen land and oil leases were stolen back under
Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. This falsehood has been cemented as truth and reality
across both sides of the U.S. political spectrum as well as that of the UK, Canada and
France: Maduro = Commie Dictator and Brutal Humanitarian Abuser. There is absolutely ZERO way
that Joe Biden would go against it in any meaningful way. He'll just do it a little less
roughly and mean spiritedly as Trump and Bush before him had done (no coups and fewer
sanctions under Obama).
This is a good article on the
intricacies of the politics of food (and resources - a good history lesson all the way
around and recommended - written in June of 2018 and looking back not only on the Chavez
years, but the colonial history that preceded him. I think it's required reading for anyone
who wants to get into a debate or discussion (here or elsewhere) about Chavez and Maduro.
Trump is war monger lite compared to Biden that is war monger/criminal heavy. Greater
chaos is coming inside and outside the US while liberals go back to sleep comfortable that
another Obama like admin is in charge.
My prediction: in the next four years it will be near impossible to paper over the
objective collapse of the US Empire of Insanity.
Biden's campaign said he "was among the first Democratic foreign policy voices to
recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's legitimate leader and to call for Maduro to
resign."
Even socialist Sanders, who refused to call Maduro a "dictator", is anti-Maduro:
Sanders called Maduro a "vicicious tyrant" and said there should be "international and
regional cooperation for free elections in Venezuela so that the people of that country can
make -- can create their own future."
there's plenty of countries in the world where the US will continue and/or try to regime
change legitimate governments.
some of these were already started by Mr. Hope and Change, and will continue or be ramped
up by Mr. Sleepy/Rice/Flournoy - like Ukraine, a perfect pretext to irritate Russia with. And
poor Venezuela, which both current and past administrations have attempted to strangle to
death
Some of these came to fruition under Pompeo/Haspel/Trump like Armenia (2018); and some
like Belarus have survived, so far.
some where successfully changed under Trump, like Brazil.
some were temporarily regime changed, like Bolivia (2019), but are now back in the hands
of the real Socialists and indigenous peoples.
some were successfully carried out under Obama, like in Honduras and Paraguay.
The chinese finally learned and took action in Hong Kong which is now essentially out of
the regime change column. Iran will never be regime changed either, nor Syria.
And some like Lebanon are still in play.
I expect economic sanctions/warfare to be increasingly used by this incoming democratic
administration as much as the outgoing republican.
The way for all this nefarious and despicable activity by the US and the West to end
is....??
Trump just didn't have the same amount of low hanging fruit that Obama did . . .like
Ukraine and Syria
low hanging fruit: a thing or person that can be won, obtained, or persuaded with little
effort.
Let's be clear that Obama's "fruit" turned out to be rotten apples (losses in Ukraine*
& Syria**), plus Mr Hope & Change foolishly sent 70,000 more troops to Afghanistan,
destroyed one of the leading countries in Africa (Libya) for no reason, threatened Iran every
fortnight with his "all options on the table" BS then did an 'agreement' with Iran that was
easily overturned,. .the list goes on.
*NATO wanted Russia's only warm-water port in Crimea, and didn't get it.
**Russia stepped in to prevent US-supported regime change
All of the linear and conventional predictions about the next administration's foreign
policy will be proven wrong, because they neglect the near-fatal deterioration of the US
economy and its social fabric in the last 4 years. In short, any return to the pre-Trump
status quo is simply impossible. That ship sailed forever.
What is pretty much guaranteed, however, is significant and irreversible ratcheting up of
economic tension between America and the rest of the world. The approach may undergo some
finessing, but substance will not only remain but acquire additional urgency. The US is in
desperate need of reducing its current account deficit, and that can't be accomplished
without more threats, more brinkmanship, and more unilateral impositions. You can say goodbye
to any prospect of international harmony, it won't happen. Sure, Democrats may attempt
softening of rhetoric at first, but it will be proven counterproductive and abandoned rather
quickly.
The only reason the Deep State brought Biden back to political life, is because he is one of
the few remaining old Cold Warriors capable of achieving normalization of relations with
Russia. It's of overarching importance at this point, as without it nothing really works for
America and all possible geopolitical equations simply fall apart right away. It's also
pretty clear that because Biden's mental and physical condition is in rapid decline, such
normalization will be proceeding at breakneck speed. Expect Biden-Putin summit in first 6
months of the inauguration, ostensibly to sign new Start Treaty or prolong the old one. After
that, "the dialogue" will kick into overdrive.
All in all, modeling next 4 years of US foreign policy based on op-ed articles in American
MSM is just silly. These are written not to enlighten but to obfuscate. Expect secret
entreaties to Moscow literally within hours of January 20, 2021.
There may be some small cookies thrown Russia's way, but that country as a serious threat
must remain. The 500,000 person US ground force, modernly equipped, depends upon it. There is
no other justification, only a "dangerous" Russia.
Look at Zionist-imperialist bitch Susan Rice berating the UN General Assembly for its
overwhelming vote in 2012 on according Palestine non-member observer status:
Just as the US must have enemies, because there's so much money in it, it must also (for
the same reason) continue to have Israel calling the signals in the Middle East.
By "low hanging fruit" (or poisoned apples), what I meant was from the PR angle.
Situations in those places - by the CIA's making or not - were being reported in the West in
such a manner so that they were more easily than usual sold as "humanitarian interventions"
to "help democracy flourish" and the like. Whereas Bush had his 9/11 and fake WMD threats
from Saddam, Obama had the "organic" "grassroots" uprisings in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Tunisia
and other places which would be used as excuses to go in and steal gold, wreck nations who
were a threat to the Franco or American post-colonial control structures, and otherwise
instill chaos, which is one major goal of EVERY U.S. intervention - especially in the ME.
But yeah, what was done to Libya, Syria and the Ukraine is unforgiveable. I'm just saying
that TPTB when Trump was in office didn't have the easy, made-for-humanitarian intervention
news stories to excuse the next round of destruction. That's one reason they had to try so
hard with Iran - going as far as designating their military and its leaders as terrorists and
all that shit so they could bomb Soleimani while he was on a diplomatic mission. Can't have
an outbreak of peace, now, can we? That is, unless it's a carefully scripted PR version of
"peace" such as what we saw recently with the gulf monarchies and Israel.
Gonna have to say target numero uno has got to be Syria. Finishing off Syria, and chasing
the Russians home will be the lynchpin to the rest of Biden's Middle East Policy. Once Syria
is collapsed into chaos and ethnic cleansing, Lebanon/Hezbollah become much easier to deal
with. Iran becomes further isolated and it's ability to project power seriously reduced. The
whole point of JCPOA IMO was a delaying tactic, keeping Iran on the back burner while Iranian
Proxies and Regional Influence are mopped up.
I expect the Mighty Media Wurlitzer of Pro-War Propaganda will soon begin spinning up and
focusing on the brutality inflicted on the moderate head-choppers by the Assad
Regime...another chemical weapons attack anyone?
The Russian presence in Syria is actually quite precarious, despite their military gains
they don't project power very efficiently beyond their borders. The Biden Regime will
therefore turn up the heat, possibly with a No-Fly Zone over both Idlib and Southern Syria/Al
Tanf in conjunction with a well armed proxy offensive backed by air-support. DNC Dems/Deep
State/NeoCon believe Russia to be bluffing and will either back down or be rolled over in
short order.
Strange IMO.
Most everyone here is talking like it will be business as usual on foreign policy.
I am not so sure. I think that Covid19 has pricked the phony bubble created after the 08/09
collapse. I know the stock market is right back and everything looks fine but I think there
is deep rot beneath.
Couple that with a lot of draws in their latest endeavours and I doubt that the machine can
keep operating with such confidence/arrogance.
Do you also remember how the 2000 presidential campaign played out? Gore was characterized
by the MSM, straight up, as an "interventionist" while Bush - eager to distance his own
foreign policy from the Balkan wars and Clinton/Gore tried to walk a fine line between
isolationism (of which he was accused) and non-interventionism.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush announced that he would pursue a
"distinctly American internationalism" in foreign policy (Bush i999a), largely in contrast
to the liberal internationalism of the Clinton administration. He initially sought to have
a foreign policy that placed greater emphasis on American national interests than on global
interests.
(look up George W. Bush and "classical realism")
So what do Trump and Bush II have in common? How about Trump and Obama? I'll tell you: The
preceding administration of the opposite political party had a history of military
interventions that were quite unpopular with the public, which was looking for a change. And
guess what Obama said when he first stepped into office. That's right - he'd pursue a
retrenchment based foreign policy dedicated to fighting existing terror threats in places and
places near where the previous administration had already placed American troops - AND to
wrap up the already existing wars. From the Atlantic's retrospective:
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Although Obama never presented himself as a pacifist
candidate, his 2007-2008 presidential campaign was predicated in part on the promise to end
the war in Iraq and properly prosecute the war in Afghanistan. In March 2008, he declared
of Iraq, "When I am commander in chief, I will set a new goal on day one: I will end this
war." Later that year, he listed his first two priorities for making America safer as
"ending the war in Iraq responsibly" and "finishing the fight against al-Qaeda and the
Taliban." The president also promised a foreign policy that relied more on diplomacy and
less on military might in his first inaugural address, telling his audience that "our power
grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the
force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint." Well before the
tumult of the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Obama famously offered to extend a hand to
those willing to unclench their fist. (there are links embedded there)
Here's what Brookings has to say:
I do not mean to overstate. Obama's presidency will not go down as a hugely positive
watershed period in American foreign policy. He ran for election in 2007 and 2008 promising
to mend the West's breach with the Islamic world, repair the nation's image abroad, reset
relations with Russia, move toward a world free of nuclear weapons, avoid "stupid wars"
while winning the "right war," combat climate change, and do all of this with a
post-partisan style of leadership that brought Americans themselves together in the
process.[1] He ran for reelection in 2012 with the additional pledges of ending the
nation's wars and completing the decimation of al Qaeda. Six years into his presidency,
almost none of these lofty aspirations has been achieved.[2] There has not been, and likely
will not be, any durable Obama doctrine of particular positive note. The recent progress
toward a nuclear deal with Iran, while preferable to any alternative if it actually
happens, is probably too limited in duration and overall effect to count as a historic
breakthrough (even if Obama shares a second Nobel Prize as a result).
And before you start to think that Trump said much different, here's a blurb from your own
article:
"We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we
shouldn't be involved with," Trump said. "Instead, our focus must be on defeating terrorism
and destroying ISIS, and we will."
Hence, there hasn't been a President for the last 50 years that has campaigned on, or
entered office with a PUBLIC plan to engage in foreign regime change activities. But nearly
every one of them, especially since Ronald Reagan, have had "excuses" crop up for
"humanitarian interventions" and that includes Bush II and Obama. The so-called Arab Spring
began in earnest in mid- to late 2010 and Syria and Libya were in mid to late 2011 during
their peak, at which point the U.S. and France got involved under the auspices of
"humanitarian intervention."
So more than 3 years into his first term, Obama still hadn't "started any new wars." Three
years is an incredibly short period of time when looking at history, even the history of the
United States. Trump's only been in office for about 3 years and 9 months. Nothing like the
Arab Spring has happened so far while he's been there. That is indisputable. What is also
indisputable is that Trump DID try to spark a war by assassinating General Soleimani. Whether
there was any plan AT THE TIME to end up invading Iran (a total fool's errand as you know
well), I doubt, but the goal of that assassination was to prevent an organic, non-U.S.
brokered peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which at the very least was a threat to Trump's
precious arms sales, but also very much in line with his Zionist friendly Israel policy. At
worst, who knows, but you can't make an unchallenged assumption that Trump and his advisors
had fully thought through all possible Iranian retaliation options and concluded that there
was no way the assassination would cause Iran to do something so bad that a new war was
justified regardless of the cost. Sorry, but you just can't.
Yeah, yeah, Trump hasn't started any "new wars" but his rhetoric and public facing stated
foreign policy goals were virtually the same as Obama's. Trump just didn't get any 9/11s,
Eastern European or Middle East uprisings that would have been sufficient for him or ANY
previous president to attempt to justify "humanitarian interventions" abroad. As I've said
for a while, if he had a second term, there would have been a new war - even if it was the
"deep state" and CIA who created the astroturf casus belli.
...Trump has also unleashed a mass proto fascist movement, which is based amongst the
lowest scum of the working class, various billionaire factions, and the white suburban middle
class and small business owners.
These genies will not go back into their bottles. Neoliberal hegemony is shattered.
All of this is the result of the 1% sucking the blood of the working class for the past
four decades. 2008 was the spark. Covid was the explosion.
I see this every damn day in the US, even in a wealthy liberal city. The social fabric has
largely fallen apart. Living in the US is daily suffering, dashed hopes, sadness, and rage.
It is awful.
Biden won't have any room for major wars abroad. He might try to rebuild liberal alliances
but he won't have any capacity to overthrow Asad or Maduro or to reverse the objective trends
of global capitalism. How can he reboot US primacy if China and Asia account for 90 percent
of world economic growth?
Covid has revealed the US as a paper tiger with little institutional capacity to manage
itself or the world. It is in fact a threat to the world.
Biden and his neoliberal coterie will act like arrogant pricks. They are arrogant pricks.
But we can laugh at them. They have a limited shelf life.
Well of course it will be awful. There has never been an administration in American
history that hasn't been awful on foreign policy. We've always been an empire.
Biden will find a world different than the one he remembers from four years ago. The
blustering incompetence of the Trump administration was the world's cue to move on. And the
empire now has a lot of issues in the home territory that need immediate and drastic
attention.
Few empires survive long after being forced to turn inward after a long period of
expansion. We're beyond things that can papered better with a glorious little war.
Biden likely takes power with a collapsed health care sector and a real economy of misery
for most. He'll have a federal government riddled wholly unqualified ideologues in a country
that went ahead and delegitimized it's own elections for one man's vanity. Where half the
country doesn't believe in the virus that crushed the health care system and wrecked the
economy. It will all be terrible because the US has reached the historical point where
terrible describes all the options.
"... There is some pushback in Washington to Israeli dominance, but not much. Recent senior Pentagon appointee Colonel Douglas Macgregor famously has pointed out that many American politicians get "very, very rich" through their support of Israel even though it means the United States being dragged into new wars. ..."
That Israel would blatantly and openly interfere in the deliberations of Congress raises
some serious questions which the mainstream media predictably is not addressing. Jewish power
in America is for real and it is something that some Jews
are not shy about discussing among themselves. Jewish power is unique in terms of how it
functions. If you're an American (
or British ) politician, you very quickly are made to appreciate that Israel owns you and
nearly all of your colleagues. Indeed, the process begins in the U.S. even before your election
when the little man from AIPAC shows up with the check list that he wants you to sign off on.
If you behave per instructions your career path will be smooth, and you will benefit from your
understanding that everything happening in Washington that is remotely connected to the
interests of the state of Israel is to be determined by the Jewish state alone, not by the U.S.
Congress or White House.
And, here is the tricky part, even while you are energetically kowtowing to Netanyahu, you
must strenuously deny that there is Jewish power at work if anyone ever asks you about it. You
behave in that fashion because you know that your pleasant life will be destroyed, painfully,
if you fail to deny the existence of an Israel Lobby or the Jewish power that supports it.
It is a bold assertion, but there is plenty of evidence to support how that power is exerted
and what the consequences are. Senators William Fulbright and Chuck Percy and Congressmen Paul
Findlay, Pete McCloskey and Cynthia McKinney have all experienced the wrath of the Lobby and
voted out of office. Currently Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is running against Georgia
Loeffler for a senate seat in Georgia demonstrates exactly how candidates are convinced to
stand on their heads by the Israel Lobby. Warnock was a strong supporter of Palestinian rights
and a critic of Israeli brutality.
He said as recently as 2018 that the Israelis were shooting civilians and condemned the
military occupation and settlement construction on the Palestinian West Bank, which he compared
to apartheid South Africa. Now that he is running for the Senate, he is saying that he is
opposed to the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement due to what he calls the
movement's "anti-Semitic overtones." He also supports continued military assistance for Israel
and believes that Iran is in pursuit of a nuclear weapon, both of which are critical issues
being promoted by the Zionist lobby.
There is some pushback in Washington to Israeli dominance, but not much. Recent senior
Pentagon appointee Colonel Douglas Macgregor
famously has pointed out that many American politicians get "very, very rich" through their
support of Israel even though it means the United States being dragged into new wars. Just
how Israel gains control of the U.S. political process is illustrated by the devastating
insider tale of how the Obama Administration's feeble attempts to do the right thing in the
Middle East were derailed by American Jews in Congress, the media, party donors and from inside
the White House itself. The story is of particularly interest as the Biden Administration will
no doubt suffer the same fate if it seeks to reject or challenge Israel's ability to manipulate
and virtually control key aspects of U.S. foreign policy.
The account of Barack Obama's struggle with Israel and the Israeli Lobby comes from a
recently published memoir written by a former foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes. It is
entitled
The World As It Is , and it is extremely candid about how Jewish power was able to
limit the foreign policy options of a popular sitting president. Rhodes recounts, for example,
how Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once nicknamed him "Hamas" after he dared to speak up for
Palestinian human rights, angrily shouting at him "Hamas over here is going to make it
impossible for my kid to have his fucking bar mitzvah in Israel."
Rhodes cites numerous instances where Obama was forced to back down when confronted by
Israel and its supporters in the U.S. as well as within the Democratic Party. On several
occasions, Netanyahu lecture the U.S. president as if he were an errant schoolboy. And Obama
just had to take it. Rhodes sums up the situation as follows: "In Washington, where support for
Israel is an imperative for members of Congress, there was a natural deference to the views of
the Israeli government on issues related to Iran, and Netanyahu was unfailingly
confrontational, casting himself as an Israeli Churchill . AIPAC and other organizations exist
to make sure that the views of the Israeli government are effectively disseminated and opposing
views discredited in Washington, and this dynamic was a permanent part of the landscape of the
Obama presidency."
And, returning to the persistent denial of Jewish power even existing when it is running
full speed and relentlessly, Rhodes notes the essential dishonesty of the Israel Lobby as it
operates in Washington: "Even to acknowledge the fact that AIPAC was spending tens of millions
to defeat the Iran deal [JCPOA] was anti-Semitic. To observe that the same people who supported
the war in Iraq also opposed the Iran deal was similarly off limits. It was an offensive way
for people to avoid accountability for their own positions."
Many Americans long to live in a country that is at peace with the world and respectful of
the sovereignty of foreign nations. Alas, as long as Israeli interests driven by overwhelming
Jewish power in the United States continue to corrupt our institutions that just will not be
possible. It is time for all Americans, including Jews, to accept that Israel is a foreign
country that must make its own decisions and thereby suffer the consequences. The United States
does not exist to bail Israel out or to provide cover for its bad behavior. The so-called
"special relationship" must end and the U.S. must deal with the Israelis as they would with any
other country based on America's own self-interests. Those interests definitely do not include
funding the Israeli war machine, assassinating foreign leaders, or attacking a non-threatening
Iran while continuing an illegal occupation of Syria.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is[email protected] .
Threat inflation is like Apple pie among Washington swamp national security parasites
Notable quotes:
"... The US security state, with its huge military forces and techno-industrial base, and no diplomatic need nor capability, REQUIRES (fake) "security threats" in order to exist. ..."
"... Those appointed "threats" are currently, probably not changing soon, in some order of "threat-size" . . . ..."
Applying any logic to the "threats" against the US "national security" AKA world hegemony
becomes much simpler with recognizing two simple facts:
1. The US security state, with its huge military forces and techno-industrial base, and no
diplomatic need nor capability, REQUIRES (fake) "security threats" in order to exist.
2. Those appointed "threats" are currently, probably not changing soon, in some order of
"threat-size" . . .
China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, & African
"terrorists" -- did I miss anyone?
Trump's election, Russiagate and the smear campaign against Julian Assange have deluded and
disoriented many "left" organizations.
"I was shocked at the virulent animosity to anything Putin."
I returned from a delegation to
Russia a year ago, so am now more sensitive to the pervasive and persistent anti-Russia
propaganda in this country. To prepare for my trip, I read Stephen Cohen's War
with Russia? , which I believe is an unimpeachable source of information. So I was
dismayed to learn of his recent death, because he was a voice of reason amidst the salivating
war fever. Caitlin Johnstone does justice to
his memory: " We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We
should...call for détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition
to this world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late."
The delegation was led by Sharon Tennison, founder of Center for Citizens Initiatives , which has been taking citizen
diplomacy delegations to the USSR and Russia since 1983. On her recent 84th birthday she
published a letter about where she sees current US/Russian relations ,
including the risk of nuclear war. I posted her letter to a listserv of the National Lawyers
Guild, an organization I have been a member of for 37 years. Although I have previously
exposed the NLG for losing its political compass, I was shocked at the virulent animosity
to anything Putin, or even Russian, in the emails it generated.
Unfortunately, this anti-Russia bias is not unique to the Guild. Trump's election,
Russiagate, and the smear campaign against Julian Assange have deluded and disoriented many
organizations and individuals with profoundly critical and activist traditions, including the
Pacifica radio
network ,
Democratic Socialists of America and Democracy Now! Since COVID, China is now in the US
crosshairs as well, with increased risk of catastrophe. The intent of this article is to expose
this extremely dangerous political tendency, with the Guild as but one example, because it is
increasing international hostilities, at our peril. What we desperately need is an anti-war
movement.
"China is now in the US crosshairs as well."
I shared with a retired lawyer and fellow-member of the Russia delegation that a Guild
member said I would create more chaos than clarity on the left if I exposed the Guild. She
responded "'You will create more chaos than clarity on the Left,' sounds like old-time,
1930's communism when it was politically incorrect to criticize any defects in the party. Any
organization, or any individual, that lacks the backbone to stand up to criticism and to
examine itself to see if that criticism is warranted, and to self-correct if it is or to
vigorously defend itself if it isn't, is weak, an empty box echoing platitudes it cannot
defend."
Tennison received many positive responses to her birthday letter, such as:
"I thank you for the gift of that wonderfully thoughtful letter!"
"I liked your perspectives on President Putin."
"I think you make a persuasive case."
"I am forwarding your message to others."
Apparently, it's controversial to publish group emails anonymously without the author's
consent. I told Tennison that the many Guild responses were largely hostile to her point of
view and asked if it was ethical to expose them. She said, " I think you should expose them
on their ungrounded biases. Tell them to go see the country that was collapsing from communism
and then robbed blind by the oligarchs in the 90s, then finally began to get up on its knees by
the early 2000s and today is in amazing shape.What do you mean when you ask 'what are
the ethics?' You should tell the truth! That's the height of ethics!!!"
"You should expose them on their ungrounded biases."
Guild responses, which echo what many "progressive" groups are saying, include: "This is
garbage propaganda... Anyone with a small amount of knowledge of Russia knows this article is
absolutely not true. No matter what you think of the current state of our government, we have
nothing to gain from Putin. There is nothing admirable about him as a leader and there is
nothing admirable about his government. I can't even fathom the motivation for disseminating
this....I am hardly a lover of American MSM propaganda, but I am getting tired of seeing
knee-jerk reactions to any criticism or negative news about Putin or RT...I don't know if
Tennison's piece is propaganda (implying some intent), but it certainly is misguided. I (and
probably a fair number of other folks on this list) have not met Putin and am not particularly
invested in this debate...move this offlist, or set up a 'debates about politicians foreign and
domestic' sublist...I was disputing the accuracy of the author's description of Putin's
character and questioning why Putin's character is being defended on an NLG listserv."
A former comrade, who still probably calls himself a socialist, claimed it is an electoral
issue: "Riva doesn't give a damn if Trump is re-elected by the electoral college,...She even
attacked the NLG for failing to oppose Russia Today having to register as a foreign agent. The
discussion is a total turn-off to new and veteran members alike." Others voiced election
concerns: " Support for Putin is support for Trump...When I see an article like this come,
apparently, out of the blue and unrelated to the NLG's mission, I wonder who benefits from
propping up Putin's character?...It's difficult for me to believe that there are NLG members
who want to rehabilitate Putin's image in order to help the Trump Administration...My fears are
that the election is the motivation for the email supporting Putin."
" Support for Putin is support for Trump."
A Guild member of over 30 years said, "When nonsense like that is sent out by Guild
members it contributes to making the Guild irrelevant." Several others claimed the wisdom
of age and Red-rearing: "My own father was in Local 1199 In the 1930s and recruited and
covered for the absences of NYC Health workers sent to Spain as medics and ambulance drivers in
the Spanish Civil War... what could be more " pinko " than that!...Putin and his boss Leningrad
Mayor Anatoly Sobchak visited Los Angeles in the 1980s on a visit arranged by the LA-St
Petersburg Sister City Committee ( on which I served along with the CEO of Lockheed and other
major LA area companies). A fruit of their visit was booking a float in the Rose Parade
featuring tourism in St. Petersburg! Can't make this up!" [What is wrong with that? I wish
we could build more sister city relationships in Russia. I recently tried to get San Francisco
to consider having a sister city in Russia, and was told it wasn't a good time to do so.]
Another long-term socialist comrade said " in defending, as you do, Putin and Putin's
Russia, you lose credibility with Guild folks who, I suspect, also share our desire to not see
a US-Western World conflict with Russia. It is one thing to defend against red-baiting...as one
called before HUAC during Vietnam, believe me, I am deeply opposed to red-baiting...it is
another to present a picture of Putin which, quite frankly, does not square with reality. (I
know, you believe the western press gives us a false picture of Putin. But there are plenty on
the left, and in the left media, that have a very different assessment of Putin than the woman
writing that letter you sent around.)" It is remarkable that people who challenge my
questioning of the groupthink on Russia, refuse to offer a coherent, written counter to my
perspective or a defense of the groupthink.
And the younger generation: " These kinds of threads are the reason people unsubscribe
from lists and/or are turned away from the NLG altogether. I'm a very new member and am very
disheartened to see this exchange from Guild members who set the example for my generation This
is setting a bad precedent for the Next Gen by putting this BS on the NLG List...Well, speaking
for myself, this Next Gen member is unsubscribing, having applied my own judgment values and
critical thinking skills to the situation...This is a barrier to the Guild's outreach and
membership development, and has encouraged me to channel my energy into other
organizations."
"People who challenge my questioning of the groupthink on Russia, refuse to offer a
coherent, written counter to my perspective."
And of course people use the danger of fascism : "Many of us generally support radical or
left ideals. With the rise of fascism in this country, now, more than ever, we need to promote
inclusion and allyship rather than sectarianism and exclusion?" Does principled debate (let
alone simply posting a letter) imply "sectarianism and exclusion" and foreclose "inclusion and
allyship?" Others said there is an "expectation that we be collegial" and "good to each
other."
One of the very few positive responses came from a member who recently visited Russia:
"I must say I agree with many of those who criticize Tennison's piece on Putin -- but
very much oppose the notion that this list should be reserved for local Guild work. People who
are offended by or oppose comments posted by NLG members shouldn't be able to shut down
contentious discussions. It's easy enough to simply delete a thread that you consider
'irrelevant' -- although I would hope most Guild members would want to engage in discussion
about the countries and leaders that our governing elites and the MSM are attacking in
promotion of US imperial power (i.e. Russia, China, Venezuela, and Iran, for starters).The Guild is an organization of internationalists -- and not limited to local
struggles."
And there was this qualified support: "I agree that we should be very suspect of
Red-baiting news stories on general principle...while holding the nuance of resisting
authoritarianism includes using a critical lens."
A democratic organization requires open discussion and voting on controversial positions.
Until recently, since its founding in 1937, that occurred at the Guild's annual conventions. It
was through such a process that the Guild improved its position on Palestine. I have no problem
being a vocal minority in a democratic organization, but there must be debate for positions to
be clear. I have tried, unsuccessfully, several times over the Trump years -- and the New
McCarthyism -- to have such discussions. If there had been, I would have kept these issues
internal to the organization. The squashing of debate was the catalyst for my airing dirty
laundry, as well as its implications for the broad progressive community.
I was told that I will create "fissure" and "NLG folks will be on the defensive," (about
being called out on their anti-Russia bias?) and an old comrade says he will not respect me if
I expose the Guild's anti-Russia bias by pulling anonymous quotes from Guild members emails. As
to ethics, my Russia delegation comrade says: " Your old comrade favors quashing the truth
in order to present a good face. A false face, in fact. Is it ethical to do that? You are in
the boat that many of us are struggling to stay afloat in. Going against popular opinion
becomes a whole lot more than just a quaint quirk when the stakes are raised -- as they are
right now with the election in view and the Dems seriously worried. It is getting really nasty
out there."
Riva Enteen is a lifelong peace activist, social worker, lawyer, advocate for justice and
editor of"Follow the Money,"a
collection of Pacifica Radio's Flashpoints Interviews.
The recommendations of the State Department paper
listed by Axios are not practical steps but pure ideology:
The blueprint: The paper lays out "ten tasks" for the U.S. to accomplish.
Promoting constitutional government and civil society at home.
Maintaining the world's strongest military.
Fortifying the rules-based international order.
Reevaluating its alliance system.
Strengthening its alliance system and creating new international organizations to
promote democracy and human rights.
Cooperating with China when possible and constraining Beijing when appropriate.
Educating Americans about the China challenge.
Train a new generation of public servants who understand great-power competition with
China.
Reforming the U.S. education system to help students understand the responsibility of
citizenship in a complex information age.
Championing the principles of freedom in word and in deed.
Note especially the points 7 to 10.
They have nothing to do with China. They call for domestic propaganda, more domestic
propaganda and even more domestic propaganda.
Compare with Kennan characterization of Soviets in 1946:
Kennan described dealing with Soviet
Communism as "undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably
greatest it will ever have to face". In the first two sections, he posited concepts that
became the foundation of American Cold War policy:
The Soviets perceived themselves at perpetual war with capitalism;
The Soviets viewed left-wing, but non-communist, groups in other countries as an even
worse enemy of itself than the capitalist ones;
The Soviets would use controllable Marxists in the capitalist world as
allies;
Soviet aggression was fundamentally not aligned with the views of the Russian people or with
economic reality, but rooted in historic Russian nationalism and
neurosis ;
The Soviet government 's
structure inhibited objective or accurate pictures of internal and external reality.
b's 5 bullet points covering Keenan presumptions lends itself to substitution of Soviet /
communism w/ Global Corporatist Oligarchy ... not aligned with wishes of citizenry, not
democratic, not aligned with reality, etc.
I do agree that Kennan's "long telegram" was misconstrued by the NatSec loons of the time
to justify what they wanted to do. But that is no surprise, that is how US politics works.
It's has always been a racket.
I don't know. The language Kennan used is too vague to make any specific conclusions.
The center-left certainly hated the USSR more than they hated capitalism. Indeed, it was
the intellectuals from the center-left - not the right - who created the term
"totalitarianism" as we know today.
US president-elect Joe Biden's approach to diplomacy is diametrically opposed to that of the outgoing Donald Trump, known as he
was to levy undiplomatic salvos at foreign leaders via social media. But one shouldn't expect a wholesale revamp in substance
when the veteran Democrat takes office in January. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look at Biden's foreign policy agenda.
ADVERTISING
The former
US
vice
president brings a wealth of foreign policy experience, expertise and, not insignificantly, genuine interest in global affairs
to the White House. The Democrat served as chair of the
Senate
Foreign Relations Committee
, readily making
trips
to Iraq and Afghanistan
to gather the facts on the ground, prior to spending eight years as President
Barack
Obama
's right-hand man from 2009 to early 2017.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday reflected fondly on her regular meetings with VP
Biden
under
Obama. "He knows Germany and Europe well. I remember good encounters and conversations with him," Merkel said as she
underlined Biden's "decades of experience in foreign policy" and "very warmly" congratulated him on his election win.
The transatlantic conversation is indeed likely to mellow amid a promised early flurry of multilateral moves on Biden's part
that dovetail with key European priorities and reverse the sorts of
Trump
manoeuvres
that boggled European capitals.
Biden
has
said
his foreign agenda would "place the United States back at the head of the table, in a position to work with its
allies and partners to mobilise collective action on global threats". The operative word there may be "table" -- Biden recognises
there should be one. After four years of "America First", with the erratic Trump toppling proverbial roundtables with an
iconoclastic flourish, Biden will be conspicuous about putting the pieces back together.
"For 70 years, the United States, under Democratic and Republican presidents, played a leading role in writing the rules,
forging the agreements, and animating the institutions that guide relations among nations and advance collective security and
prosperity -- until Trump," Biden wrote in a Foreign Affairs piece last spring that
reads
like a foreign policy manifesto
. "If we continue his abdication of that responsibility, then one of two things will
happen: either someone else will take the United States' place, but not in a way that advances our interests and values, or no
one will, and chaos will ensue. Either way, that's not good for America."
Biden says he will rejoin the
Paris
Climate Agreement
"on day one" and, "in his first 100 days in office", he will convene a global summit on climate to press
the world's top carbon-emitters to join the US in making national pledges more ambitious than the ones they made in the French
capital back in 2015.
On the campaign trail, the president-elect also pledged to rejoin the
World
Health Organization
on his first day in office -- after Trump eschewed and quit the Geneva-based institution in the midst of
the
Covid-19
global
public health crisis. "Americans are safer when America is engaged in strengthening global health," Biden reasons.
During his first year in office, the president-elect has also pledged to host "a global Summit for Democracy to renew the
spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the Free World". The gathering's stated aim is to obtain commitments toward
fighting corruption, countering authoritarianism, notably through election security, and advancing human rights globally.
Biden has also pledged to rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council.
As a presidential candidate, Biden stumped for renewing America's support
NATO
,
calling his country's commitment to the 70-year-old political and military alliance "sacred, not transactional", in contrast
to his predecessor's vision of the body as a protection club with dues.
"NATO is at the very heart of the United States' national security, and it is the bulwark of the liberal democratic ideal -- an
alliance of values, which makes it far more durable, reliable, and powerful than partnerships built by coercion or cash," the
lifelong transatlanticist wrote. Cue the sigh of relief in Baltic capitals.
Countering 'Russian aggression'
Naturally, part of Biden's argument for bolstering NATO is the message it will send
Moscow
.
"To counter Russian aggression, we must keep the alliance's military capabilities sharp while also expanding its capacity to
take on nontraditional threats, such as weaponised corruption, disinformation, and cyber-theft," Biden explained in Foreign
Affairs.
He was vice president in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, sinking ties between Moscow and Washington to a
post-Cold War low.
Observers note that Washington has not been complacent with Moscow in the intervening years, imposing sanctions on Russia
during Trump's term in office even as the man behind the desk in the Oval Office seemed keen to look the other way. But under
Biden, the mixed message of friendliness to Vladimir Putin conveyed by Trump -- who declined to address such affronts as the
bounties Moscow allegedly put on the heads of US troops in Afghanistan -- will likely be a thing of the past.
"We must impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms and stand with Russian civil society, which has
bravely stood up time and again against President Vladimir Putin's kleptocratic authoritarian system," Biden has pledged.
Despite his wariness of Moscow, Biden has promised to pursue an extension of the New START Treaty, which his campaign called
"an anchor of strategic stability between the United States and Russia" and use that nuclear arms reduction agreement as a
foundation for future arms control arrangements.
Coalescing allies to confront China
Biden sees
China
,
meanwhile, as the most pertinent threat to US interests long-term, a stance that enjoys rare relative bipartisan agreement in
Washington, meaning the shift on relations with Beijing will primarily be one of tone and method.
Biden has slammed China for stealing US firms' technology and intellectual property and for giving its state-owned firms an
unfair advantage with subsidies.
Instead of addressing US concerns unilaterally as Trump has, Biden has proposed building a coalition of allies to confront
China where the nations disagree (unfair commercial practices, human rights abuses) and to engage in cooperation where it is
needed (climate issues, global public health, nonproliferation, not least vis-à-vis North Korea).
"On its own, the United States represents about a quarter of global GDP. When we join together with fellow democracies, our
strength more than doubles. China can't afford to ignore more than half the global economy," wrote Biden in Foreign Affairs.
"That gives us substantial leverage to shape the rules of the road on everything from the environment to labour, trade,
technology, and transparency, so they continue to reflect democratic interests and values," he reasoned.
The Delaware Democrat has blasted Trump's propensity for designating imports from the European Union and Canada, America's
"closest allies", as national security threats, damaging long-entrenched relationships with "reckless tariffs".
"By cutting us off from the economic clout of our partners, Trump has kneecapped our country's capacity to take on the real
economic threat," he wrote, pointing to China.
No more 'forever wars' in the Middle East
Biden has pledged to "re-enter" the Iran nuclear deal, "negotiated by the Obama-Biden administration alongside our allies and
other world powers" -- namely France, Germany, the UK, the EU, China and Russia. He credits the accord with having blocked
Iran
from
obtaining a nuclear weapon and blames Trump's decision to cast it aside for prompting Iran to rekindle its nuclear ambitions
and adopt a more provocative stance. Biden has pledged to rejoin the agreement "if Tehran returns to compliance" and use
"hard-nosed diplomacy and support from our allies to strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against
Iran's other destabilising activities".
Meanwhile, the former vice-president has also said he would "end our support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen".
Although he has said Trump's unilateral approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has made the two-state solution for
Israel that Biden backs more difficult, he has said he
would
keep the embassy
Trump moved to Jerusalem in 2018 where it is. Biden has welcomed the normalising of relations the Trump
administration helped negotiate
between
Israel and Gulf states
in recent months.
The Democrat has pledged to sustain "an ironclad commitment to Israel's security". He has also cautioned the country over its
treatment of the Palestinian territories,
saying
earlier this year
, "Israel needs to stop the threats of annexation and stop settlement activity because it will choke off
any hope of peace."
In terms of US military commitments in the region, Biden has advocated bringing home the vast majority of American troops in
the Middle East and Afghanistan, in favour of narrowing the focus to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State group. He wants to end the
"forever wars" the US has waged in the region.
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"We must maintain our focus on counter-terrorism, around the world and at home, but staying entrenched in unwinnable conflicts
drains our capacity to lead on other issues that require our attention, and it prevents us from rebuilding the other
instruments of American power," he wrote in Foreign Affairs.
No hard-border Brexit
It would be a misnomer to count
Brexit
as
among Biden's hot-button policy issues. Indeed, while Trump ally Boris Johnson and his Conservative leadership in London once
looked forward to negotiating an "ambitious" post-Brexit trade deal with the US, neither Biden's campaign website's outline of
his foreign policy priorities nor the former vice president's quasi-manifesto in Foreign Affairs makes any mention of the
United Kingdom per se or its divorce proceedings from the EU. What is clear is that Biden is not poised to cater to the
so-called "Special Relationship" at any cost.
"We can't allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit," the
president-elect, a noted Irish-American,
tweeted
in September
. "Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the
return of a hard border. Period."
Not quite Twitter diplomacy as Trump might conduct it, but the president-elect's sentiment won't have escaped Downing Street's
attention as it turns the page on Europe.
Independent commentator Caitlin Johnstone is raining on the parade of Liberals and
Progressives who are hailing "barriers being broken" merely because Joe Biden is expected to
pick a woman for the top Pentagon post in a historic first, blasting
the spectacle as "Imperialism in Pumps" given presumed top choice Michele Flournoy hails
from deep within the heart of the hawkish military-industrial complex .
"President-elect Joe Biden is expected to take a historic step and select a woman to head
the Pentagon for the first time, shattering one of the few remaining barriers to women in the
department and the presidential Cabinet," the
Associated Press reported gushingly this weekend.
Seen as a steady hand who favors strong military cooperation abroad , Flournoy, 59, has
served multiple times in the Pentagon, starting in the 1990s and most recently as the
undersecretary of defense for policy from 2009 to 2012. She serves on the board of Booz Allen
Hamilton , a defense contractor...
This word "moderate" which the AP news agency keeps bleating is of course complete
nonsense. Standing in the middle ground between two corporatist warmongering parties does not
make you a moderate, it makes you a corporatist warmonger. Flournoy is no more "moderate"
than the "moderate rebels" in Syria which mass media outlets like AP praised for years until
it became undeniable that they were largely Al Qaeda affiliates ; the
only reason such a position can be portrayed as mainstream and moderate is because vast
fortunes have been poured into making it that way.
She highlights the nauseating spectacle of MSNBC and others attempting to frame it as a
great achievement for feminism:
"White progressives training their fire on women and women of color who are under
consideration to lead the nat sec departments makes me deeply uncomfortable about their
allyship for those communities," tweeted MSNBC contributor
Mieke Eoyang. "Especially when the nat sec community is dominated by white men."
It's only going to get dumber from here, folks.
Let's clear this up before the girl power parade starts: the first woman to head the US
war machine will not be a groundbreaking pioneer of feminist achievement. She will be a mass
murderer who wears Spanx. Her appointment will not be an advancement for women, it will be
imperialism in pumps.
Glenn Greenwald also pointed out the obvious in terms of what's really going on here,
deriding "the neoliberal scam of exploiting identity politics" .
Greenwald came under attack for so much as daring to question Flournoy's potential
appointment on the mere basis that one supposedly can't possibly question the choice when
"barriers are being broken" (and nevermind that a woman, Gina Haspel, currently runs the most
powerful spy agency in the world).
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Greenwald wrote of this tactic: "It belongs as a Hall of Fame exhibit showing why Democratic
Party neoliberals and militarists are indescribably deceitful and repulsive."
During his election campaign, Biden has relied on foreign policy advisors from past
administrations, particularly the Obama administration, and seems to be considering some of
them for top cabinet posts. For the most part, they are members of the "Washington blob" who
represent a dangerous continuity with past policies rooted in militarism and other abuses of
power.
These include interventions in Libya and Syria, support for the Saudi war in Yemen, drone
warfare, indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo, prosecutions of whistleblowers and
whitewashing torture. Some of these people have also cashed in on their government contacts to
make hefty salaries in consulting firms and other private sector ventures that feed off
government contracts.
As former Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security Advisor to Obama,
Tony Blinken played a
leading role in all of Obama's more aggressive policies. Then he co-founded WestExec Advisors
to profit
from negotiating contracts between corporations and the Pentagon, including one for Google
to develop artificial intelligence technology for drone targeting, which was only stopped by a
rebellion among outraged Google employees.
Since the Clinton administration,
Michele Flournoy has been a principal architect of the U.S.'s illegal, imperialist doctrine
of global war and military occupation. As Obama's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, she
helped to engineer his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and interventions in Libya and
Syria. Between jobs at the Pentagon, she has worked the infamous revolving door to consult for
firms seeking Pentagon contracts, to co-found a military-industrial think tank called the
Center for a New
American Security (CNAS), and now to join Tony Blinken at WestExec Advisors.
Nicholas Burns
was U.S. Ambassador to NATO during the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since 2008, he
has worked for former Defense Secretary William Cohen's lobbying firm The Cohen Group, which is a major global
lobbyist for the U.S. arms industry. Burns is a hawk on Russia and China
and has condemned
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a "traitor."
As a legal adviser to Obama and the State Department and then as Deputy CIA Director and
Deputy National Security Advisor, Avril Haines provided legal cover and worked
closely with Obama and CIA Director John Brennan on Obama's
tenfold expansion of drone killings.
Samantha Power
served under Obama as UN Ambassador and Human Rights Director at the National Security Council.
She supported U.S. interventions in Libya and Syria, as well as the Saudi-led
war on Yemen . And despite her human rights portfolio, she never spoke out against Israeli
attacks on Gaza that happened under her tenure or Obama's dramatic use of drones that left
hundreds of civilians dead.
As UN Ambassador in Obama's first term, Susan Rice obtained UN cover for his
disastrous intervention in Libya. As National Security Advisor in Obama's second term, Rice
also defended Israel's savage
bombardment of Gaza in 2014, bragged about the U.S.'s "crippling sanctions" on Iran and
North Korea, and supported an aggressive stance toward Russia and China.
A foreign policy team led by such individuals will only perpetuate the endless wars,
Pentagon overreach and CIA-misled chaos that we -- and the world -- have endured for the past
two decades of the War on Terror.
Making diplomacy "the premier tool of our global engagement."
Biden will take office amid some of the greatest challenges the human race has ever faced --
from extreme inequality, debt and poverty caused by neoliberalism , to intractable wars and the
existential danger of nuclear war, the climate crisis, mass extinction, and the Covid-19
pandemic.
These problems won't be solved by the same people, and the same mindsets, that got us into
these predicaments. When it comes to foreign policy, there is a desperate need for personnel
and policies rooted in an understanding that the greatest dangers we face are problems that
affect the whole world, and that they can only be solved by genuine international
collaboration, not by conflict or coercion.
During the campaign, Joe
Biden's website declared, "As president, Biden will elevate diplomacy as the premier tool
of our global engagement. He will rebuild a modern, agile U.S. Department of State -- investing
in and re-empowering the finest diplomatic corps in the world and leveraging the full talent
and richness of America's diversity."
This implies that Biden's foreign policy must be managed primarily by the State Department,
not the Pentagon. The Cold War and American post-Cold War
triumphalism led to a reversal of these roles, with the Pentagon and CIA taking the lead
and the State Department trailing behind them (with only 5 percent of their budget), trying to
clean up the mess and restore a veneer of order to countries destroyed by
American bombs or destabilized by U.S. sanctions
, coups
and
death squads .
In the Trump era, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reduced the State Department to little more
than a
sales team for the military-industrial complex to ink lucrative arms deals with India,
Taiwan , Saudi
Arabia, the UAE and countries around the world.
What we need is a foreign policy led by a State Department that resolves differences with
our neighbors through diplomacy and negotiations, as international law in fact requires , and a
Department of Defense that defends the United States and deters international aggression
against us, instead of threatening and committing aggression against our neighbors around the
world.
As the saying goes, "personnel is policy," so whomever Biden picks for top foreign policy
posts will be key in shaping its direction. While our personal preferences would be to put top
foreign policy positions in the hands of people who have spent their lives actively pursuing
peace and opposing U.S. military aggression, that's just not in the cards with this
middle-of-the-road Biden administration.
But there are appointments Biden could make to give his foreign policy the emphasis on
diplomacy and negotiation that he says he wants. These are American diplomats who have
successfully negotiated important international agreements, warned U.S. leaders of the dangers
of aggressive militarism, and developed valuable expertise in critical areas like arms
control.
William
Burns was Deputy Secretary of State under Obama, the No. 2 position at the State
Department, and he is now the director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. As
Under Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs in 2002, Burns gave Secretary of State Colin Powell a
prescient and detailed but unheeded
warning that the invasion of Iraq could "unravel" and create a "perfect storm" for American
interests. Burns also served as U.S. Ambassador to Jordan and then Russia.
Wendy Sherman was
Obama's Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, the No. 4 position at the State
Department, and was briefly Acting Deputy Secretary of State after Burns retired. Sherman was
the lead
negotiator for both the1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea and the negotiations with
Iran that led to the Iran nuclear agreement in 2015. This is surely the kind of experience
Biden needs in senior positions if he is serious about reinvigorating American diplomacy.
Tom
Countryman is currently the Chair of the Arms Control Association . In the Obama administration,
Countryman served as Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs, Assistant
Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, and Principal Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs. He also served at U.S. embassies in
Belgrade, Cairo, Rome, and Athens, and as foreign policy advisor to the Commandant of the U.S.
Marine Corps. Countryman's expertise could be critical in reducing or even removing the danger
of nuclear war. It would also please the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, since Tom
supported Senator Bernie Sanders for president.
In addition to these professional diplomats, there are also members of Congress who have
expertise in foreign policy and could play important roles in a Biden foreign policy team. One
is Representative Ro
Khanna , who has been a champion of ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen, resolving the
conflict with North Korea, and reclaiming Congress's constitutional authority over the use of
military force.
If the Republicans hold their majority in the Senate, it will be harder to get appointments
confirmed than if the Democrats win the two Georgia seats that are
headed for run-offs (or than if they had run more progressive campaigns in Iowa, Maine, or
North Carolina and won at least one of those seats).
But this will be a long two years if we let Joe Biden take cover behind Mitch McConnell on
critical appointments, policies, and legislation. Biden's initial cabinet appointments will be
an early test of whether Biden will be the consummate insider or whether he is willing to fight
for real solutions to our country's most serious problems.
Conclusion
U.S. cabinet positions are positions of power that can drastically affect the lives of
millions of Americans and billions of our neighbors overseas.
If Biden is surrounded by people who, against all the evidence of past decades, still
believe in the illegal threat and use of military force as key foundations of American foreign
policy, then the international cooperation the whole world so desperately needs will be
undermined by four more years of war, hostility, and international tensions -- and our most
serious problems will remain unresolved.
That's why we must vigorously advocate for a team that would put an end to the normalization
of war and make diplomatic engagement in the pursuit of international peace and cooperation our
number one foreign policy priority.
Whomever President-elect Biden chooses to be part of his foreign policy team, he -- and they
-- will be pushed by people beyond the White House fence who are calling for demilitarization,
including cuts in military spending, and for reinvestment in our country's peaceful economic
development.
It will be our job to hold President Biden and his team accountable whenever they fail to
turn the page on war and militarism, and to keep pushing them to build friendly relations with
all our neighbors on this small planet that we share.
Daniel Kovalik teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School
of Law, and is author of the recently-released No More
War: How the West Violates International Law by Using "Humanitarian" Intervention to Advance
Economic and Strategic Interests. You might have noticed something curious following
Biden's apparent election win – liberal politicians and media are sounding the alarm that
Trump may use his remaining months in office to draw down our troops from Afghanistan.
For example, the New York Times ran a piece on
November 12 claiming that " both in Kabul and Washington, officials with knowledge of
security briefings said there was fear that President Trump might try to accelerate an all-out
troop withdrawal in his final days in office " before the more "responsible" Biden can take
over and try to stop or at least slow this. It is clear now that it is the liberal
establishment, and the Democratic Party, which is more wedded to war than their counterparts
across the aisle, and that should be disturbing to people hoping for progressive change with
the incoming Administration.
First of all, we must start with this discussion with the undisputed fact that our leaders
do not know, and have not known for some time, what the US' goals and strategy in Afghanistan
even are. One would be forgiven for not knowing, or for forgetting this fact because the
incontrovertible evidence of it – the so-called "
Afghanistan Papers " – received scant and only momentary attention when they were
exposed last year by the Washington Post.
As these documents, consisting of interviews with hundreds of insiders responsible for
prosecuting the war show, the American public was intentionally lied to about the alleged "
progress " of this war, even as our leaders were unsure what " progress "
meant.
As the Washington Post noted, the US government never even decided who it was really
fighting there: " Was al-Qaeda the enemy, or the Taliban? Was Pakistan a friend or an
adversary? What about Islamic State and the bewildering array of foreign jihadists, let alone
the warlords on the CIA's payroll? According to the documents, the US government never settled
on an answer ." Almost to a person, everyone involved in this morass agreed that the
billions of dollars spent, and thousands of lives lost, have been in vain. It has all been a
colossal waste.
Now, however, we are being told to panic that Trump may end this disastrous conflict. For
example, the quite liberal and almost blatantly pro-Biden news outlet, National Public Radio
(NPR) ran segments all last week about
female soccer teams in Afghanistan. The message of these segments was clear – these
soccer teams are (allegedly) proof of women's advances in Afghanistan as a result of the US'
intervention since 2001, and these advances are in jeopardy if Trump ends this
intervention.
Such manipulative stories of course obscure the real fact that the US has been undermining
women's rights in Afghanistan since it began intervening there in 1979, and Afghanistan
still
ranks at the very bottom of all countries for women's rights. But there is no doubt that
such stories will warm the hearts of many Biden supporters to continue war there.
Meanwhile, it is not only Afghanistan which is the focus of the liberal enthusiasm for war.
Thus, as the Grayzone
has reported , Dana Stroul, the Democratic co-chair of the Congressionally-appointed Syria
Study Group, recently outlined the plans for even deeper US intervention in Syria – an
intervention which Trump has at least paid lip service to ending.
Specifically, Stroul emphasized that " one-third of Syrian territory was owned via the US
military, with its local partner the Syrian Democratic Forces, " that this territory
happened to be the richest in Syria in terms of oil and agriculture, and that the US would
intensify its intervention in and against Syria to keep its control of this territory and its
resources. Of course, taking over other nations' resources is a violation of international law,
including the Geneva Conventions prohibition against "plunder," but that seems to be of no
concern.
The liberal media is also elated by the prospect of a Biden White House being more
aggressive in its foreign policy towards both Russia and China.
As CNBC explains
, " Now there is likely to be a change in the air when it comes to U.S.-Russia relations. At
the very least, analysts told CNBC before the result that they expected a Biden win to increase
tensions between Washington and Moscow, and to raise the probability of new sanctions on
Russia...Experts from risk consultancy Teneo Intelligence said they expected more cooperation
between Biden and Europe on global issues such as 'countering China, Russia' ."
While one might think that increased tensions with two major nuclear powers would not be a
welcome development, years of the false Russiagate narrative have groomed liberals for such
tensions.
Incredibly, Trump has been portrayed as being soft on Russia, even as he backed out of a
major
anti-proliferation treaty (The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty) which had been
signed with the Kremlin back in 1987, and even as he
sent the largest contingent of US troops (20,000) in a quarter of a century to train with
European soldiers on the Russian border. I must note here that the converse – Russia's
sending tens of thousands of troops to the border with the US – is simply inconceivable
and would indeed be seen in Washington as an occasion for war. I, for one, am quite alarmed to
think of what a Biden policy of "getting tougher" with Russia would look like, and what kind of
catastrophe it could bring about.
Regretfully, I now live in a country in which liberals outflanking conservatives in terms of
their tolerance and even eagerness for aggression and war, especially when that aggression and
war is being led by officials who, as I'm sure we will see in the new Biden Administration,
happen to be women or people of color. For the first time recently, I have seen the concept of
"intersectional imperialism" being used to describe this situation, and I believe this to be a
very real phenomenon; to be but another means of making war that much easier to swallow for
broad swaths of the American public.
The irony, of course, is that the bombs dropped by the US in war, no matter who happens to
be in charge of the US government at the time, disproportionately fall upon women and children
of a darker skin hue, and they maim and kill just as much as those dropped by old white male
Republicans. Sadly, few seem to understand or care about this.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
benalls 31 minutes ago 16 Nov, 2020 10:27 AM
It's not the "left" or "right", republicans or democrats, but a new American movement,,,,
CBM,,, wich usually means 'silent but deadly' but in this case it stands for "CEO's Bonus
Matters" . The movement congressional members from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing vowed to
support. Its time for us to grab our shields, helmets, and frozen water bottles and travel to
a new neighborhood to loot and burn. Israel has given Harris and JOJO their instructions.
razzims 49 minutes ago 16 Nov, 2020 10:10 AM
same ol empire of chaos and their eternal war. no matter which party wins election
HypoxiaMasks 1 hour ago 16 Nov, 2020 09:42 AM
Other than the Bush and lil Bush, every war from the beginning of the 20th century was
started with a Democrat president. Tell me again how the Republicans are the party of war
MarkG1964 5 minutes ago 16 Nov, 2020 10:54 AM
The democrats and republicans are two wings on the same bird.
Worth the Price? Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War is a documentary short
reviewing the role of then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) in leading the United States into the most
devastating foreign policy blunder of the last twenty years.
Produced and directed by Mark
Weisbrot and narrated by Danny
Glover , the film features archival footage, as well as policy experts who provide insight
and testimony with regard to Joe Biden's role as the Chair of the United States Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations in 2002.
Lawrence Wilkerson
, Former Chief of Staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell; Distinguished
Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William & Mary;
U.S. Army Colonel, Retired
https://www.youtube.com/embed/vhcuei8_UJM
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email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
The possibility of eased sanctions with Iran, while extremely important, is not guaranteed
and will be offset by Biden's own commitment to imperialist plunder in the region. One cannot
forget that Biden helped the Obama administration increase U.S. wars
from two to seven. In eight years, Biden assisted in the
coup of Honduras , the overthrow of Libya , and
the ongoing proxy
war in Syria . Biden's commitment to the WHO should not negate his firm opposition to any
single-payer model of healthcare and the large sums of
money he receives from the very healthcare industry which has ensured the U.S. is without a
public health system all together.
"Biden helped the Obama administration increase U.S. wars from two to seven."
Biden and the Democratic Party are joint partners with the GOP in the facilitation of the
ongoing Race to the Bottom for the working class. Wall Street
donated heavily to Biden with full knowledge that his administration will continue to
support the right of corporations to drive down wages, increase productivity (exploitation),
and concentrate capital in fewer and fewer hands. Boeing's CEO stated clearly clear that his
business prospects would be served
regardless of who won the election . Prison stocks rose after Biden announced Kamala Harris
as his
vice president . On November 4th, Reuters announced that the lords of capital were
quite pleased that
no major policy changes were likely under the new political regime elected to Congress and
the Oval Office.
Biden will inevitably rule as a rightwing neoconservative in all areas of policy. His big
tent of Republicans and national security state apparatchiks is at least as large as Hillary
Clinton's in 2016. Over 100 former GOP war hawks of the national security state endorsed
Biden in the closing weeks of the election. Larry Summers, a chief architect of the
2007-2008 economic crisis,
advised his campaign . Susan Rice and Michele Flournoy are likely to join Biden's
foreign policy team -- a key indication that trillions will continue to be spent on
murderous wars abroad.
The question remains whether Biden can effectively govern like prior Democratic Party
administrations. American exceptionalism is the Democratic Party's ideological base, but this
ideology is entangled in the general crisis of legitimacy afflicting the U.S. state. Biden's
ability to forward a project of "decency" that restores the "soul of the nation" is hampered by
his attitude that "nothing will fundamentally change" for the rich. Biden also lacks charisma
and talent. While millions were ready to vote for anyone and anything not named Donald Trump,
four years of austerity and war under a president with obvious signs of cognitive decline is
guaranteed to sharpen the contradictions of the rule of the rich and open the potential for
further unrest on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.
"Biden's big tent of Republicans and national security state apparatchiks is at least as
large as Hillary Clinton's in 2016."
To maintain social peace, Biden will use the Oval Office to consolidate its corporate forces
to suffocate left wing forces inside and outside of the Democratic Party. The graveyard of
social movements will expand to occupy the largest plot of political territory as possible. A
"moderate" revolution will be declared for the forces of progress in the ruling class. Perhaps
the best that can be summoned from a Biden administration is the advancement of consciousness
that the Democratic Party is just as opposed to social democracy and the interests of the
working classes as Republicans. Plenty of opportunities exist to challenge the intransigence of
the Democrats but just as many obstacles will be thrown in the way of any true exercise of
people's power.
The 2020 election is yet another reminder that social movements must become the focus of
politics, not the electoral process. This is where an internationalist vision of politics is
especially important. Social movements in Bolivia returned their socialist party to power after
a year living under a U.S.-backed coup. Massive grassroots mobilizations in Cuba, Vietnam, and
China contained the COVID-19 pandemic in a matter of months. Ethiopia and Eritrea have agreed
to forge peace rather than wage war. The winds of progress have been blowing toward the Global
South for more than a century. The most progressive changes that have ever occurred in the U.S.
have been a combined product of the mass organization of the U.S.' so-called internal colonies
such as Black America and the external pressures placed on the U.S. empire by movements for
self-determination abroad.
The 2020 election has come and gone. What we know is that Biden is a repudiation of
revolutionary change. Humanity will suffer many losses even if more of the oppressed and
working masses become aware of Biden and the DNC's hostile class interests. Trump was rejected
by a corporate-owned electoral process just as Clinton was rejected in 2016. Politics in the
U.S. remain confined to the narrow ideological possibilities offered by neoliberalism and
imperial decay. Oppressed people must create and embrace a politics that take aim at the forces
of reaction currently pushing humanity to the brink of total destruction. The only way this can
happen is if Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party become the primary target of the
people's fight for a new world.
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email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Danny Haiphong is co-coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace Supporter Network and
organizer with No Cold War. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American
Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News–From the
Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing). His articles are re-published
widely as well as on Patreon at patreon.com/dannyhaiphong. He is also the co-host with BAR
Editor Margaret Kimberley of the Youtube show BAR Presents: The Left Lens and can be reached on
Twitter @spiritofho, and email at [email protected].
Elephants in the Room: Why Do America and Britain Commit War Crimes? Neoliberalism and
Predatory CapitalismPart II By Rod Driver Global Research, November 15,
2020 Region: Europe ,
USA Theme: History ,
US NATO War
Agenda
"I spent 33 years being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the
bankers. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and
Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall
Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international
banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for
American Sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see that Standard Oil went its way
unmolested. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."(1) (Major-General Smedley D. Butler,
1931 , US Marine Corps)
Once people understand the extent of the crimes of the US and British governments, the next
question they ask themselves is 'Why?'
The quote above shows clearly that US war and economic exploitation are two sides of the
same coin. Military aggression by rich nations often supports the economic interests of a small
number of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people and corporations. Decisions about
wars and decisions about how the world's trading system is structured are each made by a small
number of powerful people.
This includes not only politicians, but also senior executives in industry, particularly
banking, oil, mining, food and weapons. Most of these people live in the world's advanced
nations, particularly the US. I shall use the phrase 'Western elites' to refer to these people.
Some of these elites have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to make sure that their position
of power and wealth in the world is maintained. In 1948 the US had only 6% of the world's
population but 50% of the world's wealth. A US official stated at the time that their aim was
"to maintain this position of disparity"(2). As will become clear throughout these posts, the
views of US planners have changed little in the last 70 years.
Control of Resources and Trade
What is important in the minds of Western elites can be summed up by the phrase 'control of
resources and trade'. This is a shorthand way of summarising a number of connected ideas.
Resources include things like land, oil, minerals, crops and human labor. Rich countries want
poor countries to allow global corporations to extract and process these resources, and to take
them overseas, without too much interference from national governments, whatever the downsides
for local people. Rich countries also want poor countries to have economic systems that will
allow global corporations to dominate trade, buying and selling in order to make substantial
profits, without being too restricted by local laws. Again, this applies even where there are
downsides for local people.
Western elites therefore want leaders in other countries who will implement the 'right'
economic system. This means a particularly exploitative version of capitalism, sometimes called
neoliberalism or predatory capitalism, including widespread privatisation, weaker regulations
for big companies, and decreases in government expenditure, known as austerity. (These economic
policies will be discussed in more detail in later posts). The global financial and trade
system is manipulated deliberately and systematically to create this outcome. This might sound
like a conspiracy, but it does not really work that way. Provided everyone just plays their
part (corporate executives and bankers pursue profit, politicians make laws that favor
corporations, and trade negotiators from rich countries try to create trading agreements that
benefit their corporations), the rich get richer and the poor stay poor.
Blocking Independent Development
If leaders in other countries want to determine their own economic systems, this is known as
independent development. This does not mean that a country cuts itself off from the rest of the
world, or does not engage in trade. It simply means that the leaders of a country refuse to
implement neoliberal economic policies that allow corporations from rich countries to dominate
their economies, to plunder their resources, or to exploit their people. Western elites have
tried very hard to block independent development, because it limits their control. Leaders who
object to being exploited by rich nations can be overthrown and replaced, often causing
devastating consequences for their people, particularly the poor. The new leaders are often
referred to as US clients. They usually cooperate with the US because this helps them gain
power and wealth in their own country. Getting these rulers into power can be quite tricky.
Techniques range from manipulating elections right up to full-scale military invasion.
US Dominance
The US in particular has two other key goals. It wants to maintain a global financial system
based around the US dollar, and it would like to ensure that no other country becomes strong
enough, either militarily or economically, to be a rival. In 2018 the US announced that its
main focus was no longer on the 'war on terror', but would focus on "inter-state strategic
competition"(3), meaning Russia and China.
Whenever the reasons for a war are discussed in the mainstream, there is a tendency to look
for a single explanatory factor. In practice there tend to be a cluster of factors, often
connected to each other, that all push in the same direction. As well as the reasons discussed
above, there are plenty of big corporations that frequently benefit from war. This includes the
weapons industry, financial companies, private military contractors (mercenaries), oil and
minerals companies, and more recently many companies that win contracts to participate in the
reconstruction process in war zones.(4)
The Importance of Oil
Oil in the Middle East has been described as
"a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the great material prizes in world
history."(5)
Without oil, most advanced economies would grind to a halt. Of all the resources that
American leaders want to control, by far the most important is oil. Their control of oil is not
so much about wanting it all for themselves. It is more about being able to deny it to
others.(6) Anything that a country cannot produce for itself, but needs badly, can be used as a
means of control. A shortage of oil for a country such as China would make life very difficult
for them. This is the main reason that the major wars of the 21 st century have been
in oil rich regions. Specific motives relating to recent wars will be discussed in later
posts.
How Do We Know The Real Reasons For British and US Wars
Until 2006 it was difficult to know what politicians and government decision-makers were
really saying to each other about their reasons for wars and other activities. The government
kept many files secret in order to hide their crimes. In the UK we had to wait for 30 years
(this has now been reduced to 20 years) until some of these files became declassified. During
that period, we had to rely on the word of politicians and journalists for information. The
declassified files show that politicians often lie, particularly about their reasons for war,
and that mainstream media are not sufficiently questioning.(7) Time and again, the mainstream
media would show clips of Prime Ministers and Presidents saying 'We want peace', while those
same individuals were responsible for major wars. The files also show that Politicians use
concepts like 'national security' or 'official secrets' to cover up their crimes.
In 2006 a man named Julian Assange set up a new organisation called Wikileaks. This enabled
whistleblowers (people who witness criminal or unethical activity, usually by their employers)
to make information available to the public without their identity becoming known. Millions of
documents were given to Wikileaks exposing widespread war crimes by the British and US
governments, and widespread criminal activity by other governments and big companies. All of
these documents are available online and can be examined by anyone.(8)
Key Points
US and British wars are about control of trade and resources in other countries.
Of all the resources that the US wants to control, oil is the most important.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
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Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking
modern-day US and British propaganda. This is the second in a series entitled Elephants In The
Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what's really going on in
relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream
media.
A pair of progressive House Democrats is urging President-elect Joe Biden not to nominate a Pentagon chief who has
previously worked for a defense contractor.
"Respectfully, and in full agreement with your past statements, we write to request that the
next secretary of Defense have no prior employment history with a defense contractor," Reps.
Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and
Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)
wrote in a letter to Biden released Thursday.
Pocan is the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Lee is the caucus's
chairwoman emeritus.
Flournoy's career has been marked by the unethical spinning of revolving doors between the
Pentagon and consulting firms that help businesses procure Pentagon contracts. In 2018, she
joined the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, an IT company that played an important role in Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman's 2015 drive to consolidate power. Booz Allen employs dozens of
retired American military personnel to train the Saudi Navy and provide logistics for the
Saudi Army. They deny helping the Saudi war in Yemen, and if you believe that
It's true – we probably won't like anyone appointed to Secretary of Defense.
But we must firmly oppose the fundamental conflict of interest that occurs when the official
selected to oversee the Defense Department is beholden to the same companies that stand to
gain enormous profit under their tenure. We oppose Michele Flournoy and any candidate for
Secretary of Defense with ties to revolving doors of the Pentagon because when the military
contractors calls the shots, we get:
The sale of even more weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, further fueling those
repressive regimes and their war on Yemen
More money wasted on the Pentagon – despite the country being in dire need of
resources to combat the pandemic, stop climate change, and guarantee universal
healthcare
An escalation of the US's reckless cold war with China – which could turn into a
hot war, endangering millions of people around the globe
More drones, more money for weapons contractors, more violence and more death, at home
and abroad.
With this new administration and new progressive voices in Congress – Cori Bush and
Jamaal Bowman, for example – we have a real chance to prioritize peace over war. We
already have efforts in the works to finally end U.S. support for the war on Yemen, slash the
Pentagon budget, de-escalate the growing conflict with China, and advocate for a New Good
Neighbor Policy in Latin America. But these campaigns for peace, especially the work to end
the war in Yemen, could be in serious trouble if Michele Flournoy, or anyone who shuffles
between the revolving doors of the Pentagon and military contractors, is appointed to lead
the Department of Defense. Tell
Congress: Americans don't want someone who has supported the war in Yemen running the US
military! Don't support Michele Flournoy or any candidate with ties to military companies as
Secretary of Defense!
We knew we'd have to hit the ground running with a Biden presidency, and it looks like our
first urgent call to action is here. Contact your
Senators now!
Joe Biden's campaign message focused almost entirely on Donald Trump, and on Biden's
supposed ability to "unify" a polarized electorate and "restore the soul of
America." Since he claimed victory last week, Biden's prospective administration has begun
to take shape, and the reality behind the rhetoric has started to emerge.
On matters of defense, restoring America's "soul" apparently means placing weapons
manufacturers back in charge of the Pentagon.
Biden announced his Department of Defense landing team on Tuesday. Of these 23 policy
experts, one third have taken funding from arms manufacturers, according to a report published
this week by
Antiwar.com .
A knot of hawks
Leading the team is Kathleen Hicks, an undersecretary of defense in the Obama
administration, and an employee of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), a think tank funded by a host of NATO
governments, oil firms, and weapons makers Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon,
and General Atomics. The latter firm produces the Predator drones
used by the Obama administration to kill hundreds of civilians in at least four
Middle-Eastern countries.
Hicks was a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw a number of US
troops from Germany, claiming in August that such a move "benefits our adversaries."
Two other members of Biden's Pentagon team, Andrew Hunter and Melissa Dalton, work for CSIS
and served under Obama in the Defense Department.
Also on the team are Susanna Blume and Ely Ratner, who work for the Center for a New
American Security (CNAS). Another hawkish think-tank, CNAS is funded by Google, Facebook,
Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Three more team members – Stacie
Pettyjohn, Christine Wormuth and Terri Tanielian – were most recently employed by the
RAND corporation, which draws funding from the US military,
NATO, several Gulf states, and hundreds of state and corporate sources.
Michele Flournoy is widely tipped to lead the Pentagon under Biden. Flournoy would be the
first woman in history to head the Defense Department, but her appointment would only be
revolutionary on the surface. Flournoy is the co-founder of CNAS, and served in the Pentagon
under Obama and Bill Clinton. As under secretary of defense for policy under Obama, Flournoy
helped craft the 2010 troop surge in Afghanistan, a deployment of 100,000 US troops that led to
a doubling in American deaths and made little measurable progress toward ending the
war.
'Forever war' returns
President Trump, who campaigned on stopping the US' "forever wars" in the Middle East
and remains the first US president in 40 years not to start a new conflict, has nevertheless
also staffed the Pentagon with hawkish officials. Recently ousted Defense Secretary Mark Esper
was a top lobbyist for Raytheon, while his predecessor, Patrick Shanahan, worked for Boeing.
Trump's appointment this week of National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller
as acting secretary of defense, coupled with combat veteran Col. Douglas MacGregor as senior
adviser, looked set to buck that trend, given MacGregor's vocal opposition to America's Middle
Eastern wars.
Yet Miller and MacGregor may not be in office for long, if Trump's legal challenges against
Biden's apparent victory fail. Should that happen, Biden's progressive voters may be in for a
rude reawakening when the former vice president returns to the White House.
Many of these progressives were supporters of Bernie Sanders during the Democratic
primaries, while others likely held their nose and voted for Biden out of opposition to Trump.
Reps. Barbara Lee (California) and Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), two notable progressives,
wrote to Biden on Tuesday asking him not to nominate a defense secretary linked to the
weapons industry.
Lee and Pocan cited President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address, in which he
warned of the "disastrous rise" of the "military-industrial complex."
Given Biden's fondness for Flournoy, whom he tapped in 2016 to head the Pentagon under a
potential Hillary Clinton administration, the former vice president appears unconcerned about
curtailing the influence of the armaments industry.
The industry apparently roots for Joe, too. As Donald Trump surged ahead of Biden on
election night, stocks in Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and the Carlyle Group
all plummeted. Only when counting in swing states stopped and resumed, giving Biden the
advantage, did they climb again.
Should a Biden administration make good on running mate Kamala Harris' post-election
promise to return to regime-change operations in Syria, these firms and their supporters in
the Pentagon stand to make a killing.
However, anti-war leftists, progressives, and Bernie Sanders supporters may soon realize
that voting for a Democrat who supported the Iraq War, instead of a Republican who
called it "the worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country," might just
benefit the military-industrial complex more than the "soul of America."
Many of the president-elect's potential picks for foreign policy positions -- including
Susan Rice and Michele Flourney -- have onlookers worried. "With a Biden administration, we can
expect a continuation of the Middle East wars and possible escalations in places like Syria.
Biden could be better than Trump on Iran and Yemen, but judging by his potential cabinet picks,
that should not be expected without significant pressure from antiwar activists and lobbyists
in Washington," Dave
DeCamp , assistant news editor of AntiWar.com told MintPress . "His administration will
likely be more successful than Trump at expanding the empire, with a more diplomatic and
coherent approach at building alliances to face Russia and China."
Rice, who was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor under
Obama, has amassed a fortune of around $40
million . After leaving office, she was given a spot on the board of Netflix, being paid
$366,666 as a base salary. On top of that, she was given $2.3 million worth of the company's
stock. However, it is her husband, former ABC News executive producer Ian O. Cameron
(whose father was a super-wealthy industrialist), who is the prime source of her wealth. She
was a key driver in U.S. action in Libya, and also successfully lobbied Obama to place harsher
sanctions on North Korea and Iran.
Flournoy, meanwhile, was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2009 to 2012 in the
Obama administration under Secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta. After "serving the
country," she received lucrative consulting contracts, joined corporate boards, and began her
own security think tank, WestExec Advisors. By 2017, she was making a reported $452,000
annually.
"Certainly the possible selection of Michele Flournoy and other WestExec advisors people is
concerning," Biden biographer Branko Marcetic told
MintPress .
This isn't just because of their corporate/financial ties, though of course that's
alarming -- can we be sure that people whose private sector career involved leveraging their
government experience and contacts to help multinationals secure favorable business
conditions will have their intentions calibrated toward good policy and not to their private
sector career?"
"Biden claims he wants an end to the Yemen conflict, but again, words are only so much. It's
highly likely that he will have Michele Flornoy as his Secretary of Defense who was one of the
voices that stated that weapons should continue to be sold to Saudia Arabia (during the Yemen
conflict), under certain conditions, as they have a right to protect themselves. This speaks
volumes," said Mariamne
Everett of the Institute for Public
Accuracy . Rice and Flournoy, she added, were vocal supporters of the disastrous Iraq
War, which does not bode well for those concerned with peace.
Marcetic agreed, noting that, while in office, Flourney was "a major liberal
interventionist hawk who not only wants U.S. troops deployed all over the world, but has also
publicly advocated for the U.S. to majorly exploit its fossil fuel reserves for global
dominance," something which would be a "disaster for containing climate
catastrophe."
The recycling of old faces (many of them considerably richer than before) into the new
administration suggests that there will be few breaks from the past on policy, and more in the
way of continuation. Biden himself has largely acknowledged this, tweeting , "When I'm speaking to
foreign leaders, I'm telling them: America is going to be back. We're going to be back in the
game." To many suffering under U.S. sanctions or hiding from U.S. bombs, these words will
likely not comfort them . DeCamp suggested that there will be no great difference in policy
between Trump and Biden administrations:
Despite Trump being painted as an 'isolationist,' his administration has actually
expanded NATO, shored up the support of some Asian countries to counter China, and
significantly increased Washington's military footprint in the Pacific. Biden will continue
this as he made clear in recent phone calls with Asian leaders and his tough talk on China's
claims to the South China Sea during the last presidential debate."
Flournoy meets with Afghan Army personnel during a tour of the Kabul Military Training
Center Aug. 7, 2010. Photo | DVIDS
Everett offered a similar analysis, suggesting that, with pro-Israel zealots like Rice
advising him, the Biden administration would "expand" on what Trump had done in Palestine as
well. Meanwhile, for Latin America, his foreign policy team intends
to revive the so-called "anti-corruption drives" of the Obama era, which ultimately overthrew
an elected government in Brazil and paved the way for the ascendency of far-right figure Jair
Bolsonaro.
Marcetic suggested that Biden would attempt to rejoin many of the international treaties and
organizations that the Trump administration had undermined or pulled out of, including NATO and
the Paris Climate Agreement.
I expect the prevailing direction of U.S. foreign policy over these last decades to
continue: more lawless bombing and killing multiple countries under the cover of "limited
engagement," continuing genocidal sanctions against countries like Iran and Venezuela,
ongoing treatment of Latin America as an American fiefdom, and militarism and conflict
continuing to be the dominant organising principle of U.S. foreign policy, rather than, say,
co-operation and stopping climate change," he added.
Independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone recently mockingly wrote that Biden
will have "the most diverse, intersectional cabinet of mass murderers ever assembled." If
representation is important, it is because it helps assure that people from all walks of life
will have a seat at the negotiating table. However, judging by Biden's wealthy picks, it
appears that yet again, no one will be representing the great majority of working-class
Americans.
"What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal," Jeffrey said.
" ... even as he praises the president's support of what he describes as a successful
"realpolitik" approach to the region, he acknowledges that his team routinely misled senior
leaders about troop levels in Syria.
"We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we
had there," Jeffrey said in an interview. The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is "a
lot more than" the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.
Defense One
-------------
"We?" Who are "We?"
State Department people? Well, certainly some of those were involved.
But ... IMO it would not have been possible to deceive or mislead the WH and specifically
the Commander in Chief without the active cooperation of CENTCOM, the JCS and OSD.
If they had not been participating in the lying, it would have been obvious in any number of
interactions with President Trump that the president's understanding of troop numbers in Syria
was not correct and that he was being deceived by "we." (whoever that was). That revelation
evidently did not happen. The NSC staff should have detected the lack of truth in reported
numbers. That it did not tells me that at least some of the NSC staff were disloyal to Trump.
Obvious? Yes, but that is worth re-stating.
James Jeffrey is quite proud of his achievement in maintaining a "realpolik" stalemate in
Syria, one that stymies both Russia and the Syrian government.
IMO opinion he is revealed by his own words as a treacherous back stabber. "Un hombre
sin honor." pl
This is exactly the result of Trump's lack of interest in fulfilling his original promise
of ending the "forever wars" in the middle east. This is exactly the result of putting
opelny-Democrat Jared Kushner (a lifelong member of Chabad-Lubavich network) and his ilk in
charge of the middle east geopolitics.
It also clearly proves that the State Dep. is a monsterous autonomous entity with its own
permanent objectives and agendas, independent of the WH. No matter what Trump wanted to
achieve in the ME, the so-called Blob (or as Col. Lang here has coined as the "BORG") do what
they will. You have to also remember that back in '17, career diplomats and high-ranking
State Dep. officials sounded the alarm that Rex Tillerson was down-sizing the Department so
much and that it was contrary to American interests abroad etc...fast forward to today, it
would not have mattered how much down-sizing Tillerson actually managed to do, they (people
like Jeffries) were still able to pursue their own agenda and undermine Trump's original
promise of ending the forever wars in the middle east.
The liberal elites managed to 'allegedly' manipulate the election against a sitting
president in favor of an highly unappealing candidate in Joe Biden. In all honesty, does
anyone think the Blob/Borg would NOT undermine the president's agenda and follow their own
permanent objectives aboard?
Trump should be furious about this. He should be firing everyone involved in the
deception. Those involved don't belong in ANY administration. Was convincing Trump that he
was getting the Syrian oil part of this despicable con? As you mentioned last night, this
deception is probably also going on in Afghanistan. This is a clear sign of a totally
dysfunctional nation security apparatus... Trump's national security apparatus. Could Trump
find no one he could trust to carry out his orders? Or did he just not even care? He
certainly wasn't up to the task.
However, our troop level in Syria has been widely and openly reported to be above the 200
level since Trump's initial announcement of a total pull out in December 2018. I thought it
was odd when shortly after that it was announced that more troops were being sent in to
facilitate the withdrawal of the 2,000 plus troops already there. We did reduce the level
somewhat, but then we brought in mech infantry with their Bradleys to secure the oil fields
and later more to counter the Russian patrols in northeast Syria. And isn't counting whatever
we have in Tanf.
"He should be firing everyone involved in the deception"
He just fired Esper. "Trump's national security apparatus." You mean America's natonal
security apparatus, the one that gave us LTC Vindman and that crew of Ambassadors, and the
'whistlebolower' Chief Justice Robert's wouldn't let any senator name nor ask questions about
during the impeachment. You remember all that don't you? I'm sure the same cast of characters
Biden would bring back if he succeeds in the rigged election would never do that to him.
COL(R) Mark Mitchell stated the following recently, regarding the duties and
responsibilities of the SECDEF in response to POTUS directives. The comments were in regard
to Acting SECDEF Miller (a longtime friend and colleague of Mitchell), but apply to any
Cabinet or sub-Cabinet post:
"He [POTUS] may make decisions that other people disagree with. They have two options:
they can do what he directs them to do, or after they've offered their advice, if they find
it illegal, immoral, unethical, unadvisable, they can step down," retired Col. Mark Mitchell,
who most recently served in the Pentagon as the principal deputy assistant defense secretary
for special operations/low-intensity conflict.
Mitchell added that he resented the implication at the defense secretary should be
expected to stand up to the president, or in his way, as the duly elected commander in
chief.
"You either carry out your lawful orders or you resign," he said. "We don't get the option
to 'stand up to him.' "(End of quote)
Unfortunately, President Trump made many poor personnel decisions, and selected people who
believed they had the duty and right to work against the President from within the
Administration. This has driven me nuts for the last four years, as I have watched senior
civilian and uniformed leaders actively undermining the Commander-in-Chief. They weren't
subtle about it. For whatever reason, they mostly got away with it.
To be clear, I am not writing this as a Trump supporter. As a career military
professional, I have a duty to support the Commander-in-Chief, and obey lawful orders from
the Commander-in-Chief.
It is very easy to play shell games with the BOG caps in the war zones.
Looking forward to a reprise of Trump's former starring role in The Apprentice, and
finally uttering yet again his immortal words: You're Fired!
The final days of Trump's first term are going to be awesome. Banish the Borg. BAMN. Put
Biden's fingerprints on any re-hiring.
Typically a new CEO will ask for everyone's resignation, and select and cull according to
new needs and new directions. Something Trump should have done, but he too was the apprentice
in this office when his term began.
Nothing to stop Trump from doing this now in reverse, and finally cleaning out the dross
that was dedicated to his administration's destruction. Better late than never. Our country
deserves nothing less. These insider traitors deserve to have their termination for cause
permanently be part in their career resumes.
It appears that POTUS Trump once his re-election is affirmed, urgently needs to fire a
large percentage of top-level ranks at the Pentagon, fire the CENTCOM CC and his staff, fire
the JCS, close down the NSC until it's thoroughly bleached, and charge all of them under the
UCMJ. Bust them down to slick-sleeves and show them the door. How many back-stabbing Vindman
types remain within the NSC? They need to be fired and prosecuted under the UCMJ as well.
As a citizen I am having great difficulty not concluding that the US is showing all the
signs of decline like the late Roman Republic.
James Jeffrey along with the rest of the herd that have run one agitprop disinformation
scheme after another since the 2016 election are like the roman senators that had the intent
to save the Republic but fatally weakened it by killing Caesar at its very center, in the
Senate.
Biden's people are openly calling for even more internet censorship and continuing to rush
out inherently dangerous mRNA vaccines without proper testing - and may force us to take it.
Groups are starting to create a database of Trump supporters to enable censoring them where
they work and live - what is this other than terrorism against half the voting population? If
just five percent of the 70M that voted for Trump moves together in resistance then the new
regime herd will be holding a tiger by is tail and with the election showing the people are
split right down the middle I fail to see how we can avoid even much worse chaos the next
four years. The American Republic is disintegrating while the herd is having a romp and
thinks it is winning while they are its assassins.
I am sick at heart of this and fear for the future of my children whose standard of living
opportunities are in free-fall.
We are shocked, SHOCKED! that military bureaucrats are acting in the same ways that they
always have. Come on now. The job of president is to get all these people to work in concert
to an extent adequate for getting things to come out mostly in our favor. None of this is
unique to Trump. Nearly every president in my lifetime has had to learn to deal with these
aspects of the military. Jimmy Carter trusted them to plan a rescue mission. They used navy
pilots for a mission over the desert! With no extra to enable adaptation to events! Ronald
Reagan sent a battleship to Lebanon and then found out the brass wouldn't take the risk of
actually using it for anything. Not to mention the superbly uncoordinated near simultaneous
invasion of Grenada. John Kennedy accepted a duplicitous projection of events for the bay of
pigs. Bill Clinton got caught in Somalia. George W. got sucked into a strategically unplanned
invasion of Iraq. Obama was told that an 18-month escalation would resolve Afghanistan. He
believed it! Boy were they shocked when he actually enforced the deadline. This is not a
criticism of any of those presidents. It is normal, however bizarre that may sound. My point
is that they mostly get bit once and learn not to trust the military's own estimates of what
they can or should do. Then they begin to do the job more adequately. They learn to pay
attention to goals and to manage their resources. Trump does not seem capable of this kind of
learning. The last months of an administration are not the time to suddenly discover the
nature of the organizations you are leading. And in any case, there is no time left for
learning how to get actual results.
JFK never should have unionized the government workforce.
Pits existential self-interests against patriotic national interest, should these
interests become in conflict. FDR warned against doing this. More attention needs to be paid
to this fundamental national turning point.
What ills were cured by this act (EO) and has the cure become worse than the perceived
disease. Must like term limits in California - the cure was 100 times worse than the original
disease.
Entrenched political personalities come and go; entrenched and corrupted political systems
are forever, because in the process they learned to self-perpetuate.
Name your favorite EO to strike down with an counter-mand EO, before a sitting president
leaves office:
1. Anchor baby citizenship triggering chain migration
2. Unionized government workforce
1. Use Democrat's standard politics of personal destruction to attack and harass any Trump
appointments; make working for the Trump administration so undesirable none dare even ask for
consideration.
2. Tie up the President's time with endless personal attacks, lies and investigations, so
Trump has no time as elected Chief Executive to oversee and clean up valid government
operations;
3. Take advantage of Trump's exclusively private sector experience to lull Trump into
thinking entrenched government BORGs are loyal government employees, who serve only to help
Trump carry out his Executive Office duties;
4. Leak like crazy; make things up if necessary that ensure the Trump administration
narrative appears chaotic and dysfunctional. Claim anonymous sources that undermine positive
functioning within Trump administration. Make everyone suspicious of everyone else.
5. Obliterate any recognition for the remarkable Trump administration accomplishments that
occurred, regardless of all of the above.
6. Pout relentlessly because regardless of the above, the President and the GOP Senate
appointed over 200 new federal judge and 3 new SCOTUS members.
7. In full public view, tear up the SOTU address listing remarkable administration
accomplishments mouthing - these are all lies -- laying down the gauntlet for all out
war.
8. Gin up pandemic hysteria to fill in any and all loopholes not yet covered by all of the
above.
Democrat skullduggery may have effectively destroyed an temporal administration, but Trump
Judiciary appointments are the equivalent of a very welcomed forever.
President Trump, you are missed already. But I suspect in short order it is you, who will
not miss the office. You are enshrined forever - #45 as President of the United States of
America. History will treat you far kinder than your current fellow citizens.
You broke up the Democrat plantation. You exposed the dark underbelly of the body politic.
Mission accomplished. There is no going back.
this sounds like the definition of a traitor to me - jeffery.... on the other hand one
could say he is working for wall st and the mil complex and has done a good job... which is
it??
I don't understand this. Trump is the Commander in Chief, at any time he could have asked
a straight-up question: How. Many. Troops. Do. We. Still. Have. In. Syria?
I find it astonishing that the military leadership would tell a lie to their Commander in
Chief when the question itself leaves no wriggle-room.
Heck, Trump could has asked for a list of every single one of those brave 200 boys, and
even if it included Name, Rank, and Serial Number that would still fit on a single
letter-sized printout.
I can't understand how Jeffrey's and his band of "we's" could get away with this unless
Trump wasn't paying any attention at all.
To those watching the drama unfolding in Washington, DC around the stalled efforts on the
part of nominal President-elect Joe Biden in forming a transition team, the parallels are
eerily familiar: a bitterly contested election between an establishment political figure and a
brash DC 'outsider', a controversial outcome delaying the implementation of the transition
between administrations, and an openly condescending atmosphere where the incoming team
postured as comprising a return to 'adult' leadership.
That time was December 2000, when a Republican team led by President-elect George W. Bush
stood ready to install a cabinet composed of veteran spies, diplomats, and national security
managers who had cut their policy teeth during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George
H.W. Bush. With Colin Powell as secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense,
George Tenet as director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza Rice as national security
advisor, the foreign policy and national security team that Dubya surrounded himself with upon
assuming the presidency was as experienced a team as one could imagine.
And yet, within two years of assuming their responsibilities, this team of 'adults' had
presided over the worst terrorist attack in American history, and the initiation of two wars
(in Afghanistan and Iraq) that would forever change both the geopolitical map of the world and
America's role as world leader.
Twenty years later, the roles have reversed, with an experienced team of veteran 'adults'
hailing from the eight-year tenure of President Barack Obama preparing to transition the US
away from four tumultuous years of the presidency of Donald J. Trump. While Biden has not
finalized his foreign policy and national security team, there is a consensus among experienced
political observers about who the top contenders might be for the 'big four' foreign and
national security policy positions in his administration.
While there is no doubting the experience and professional credentials of these potential
nominees, they all have one thing in common: a proclivity for military intervention on the part
of the US. For anyone who hoped that a Biden administration might complete the task begun by
President Trump of leading America out of the 'forever wars' initiated by the 'adults' of the
administration of George W. Bush, these choices represent a wake-up call that this will not be
the likely outcome.
Moreover, a potential Biden cabinet would more than likely complement the existing
predilection on the part of the president-elect for military intervention, pointing to a
foreign and national security policy which not only sustains the existing conflicts in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere, but increases the likelihood of additional military
misadventures. The Biden team will almost certainly seek to shoehorn the president-elect's
aggressive "America is back" philosophy into a geopolitical reality that is not inclined to
accept such a role sitting down.
So who's likely to fill what role?
Secretary of State
The hands-on favorite here is Susan Rice, who served as both national security advisor and
US ambassador to the United Nations under Barack Obama. Biden knows her very well, and they
have a great working relationship. With a history of promoting US intervention in Syria and
Libya, Rice would more than likely support any policy suggestions concerning a re-engagement by
the US in Syria in an effort to contain and/or overthrow Bashar al-Assad, and would be reticent
to withdraw US forces from either Afghanistan or Iraq.
She would also most likely seek hardline 'confrontational' policies designed to 'roll-back'
Russian influence in Europe and the Middle East, as well as China's claims regarding the South
China Sea. Rice would seek to strengthen the military aspects of NATO to better position that
organization against Russia in Europe, and China in the Pacific.
A Rice nomination could run afoul of a Republican-controlled Senate, where a source close to
the current Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has noted that a "
Republican Senate would work with Biden on centrist nominees " but would oppose "radical
progressives" or ones who are controversial among conservatives.
While Rice is not a "radical progressive," the Republicans continue to condemn her actions
while serving as the US ambassador to the UN in response to the 2012 terrorist attack on the US
Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans – including the US ambassador to
Libya – dead. This controversy prevented her from becoming secretary of state during
Obama's second term, and one can expect a very contentious Senate hearing if she is nominated,
with no guarantee that she would pass.
An equally qualified, but far less controversial, woman is the likely nominee for this
position. Michele Flournoy, if nominated and confirmed, would become the first female secretary
of defense in the history of the US. Given her extensive resume, which includes several
previous appointments in senior policy positions in the Department of Defense during both the
Clinton and Obama administrations, she would provide an experienced hand in the management of
the Pentagon.
Flournoy once famously told the New York Times that "
warfare may come in a lot of different flavors in the future. " In her previous postings
in the Pentagon, she took a hardline stance against both Russia and China, encouraged military
intervention in Libya and Syria, and sustained military operations in Afghanistan. Her
proclivity to seek military solutions to challenging foreign policy issues would reinforce the
similar inclinations of Biden. With Flournoy at the helm of the Pentagon, America can expect to
experience a full menu of war "flavoring."
While the above two positions represent the ostensible heads of US foreign and defense
policy, the reality is that the US has become increasingly reliant upon the covert action
capabilities of the Central Intelligence Agency when it comes to influencing diplomatic and
military outcomes. While news reports have on occasion lifted the veil of secrecy surrounding
covert CIA activities, allowing Americans and the world a small measure of insight into their
scope, scale and effectiveness, the reality is that the vast majority of the work of the CIA
remains classified, revealed only decades after the fact, if at all.
As the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and later as vice
president, Biden is intimately familiar with these covert activities, and of the potential of
the CIA to impact American foreign and national security policy. One of the names being bandied
about for the role of director is Michael Morell. He is a retired career CIA officer, having
worked his way up the ranks over the course of a 33-year career, finishing in 2013 having twice
served as the acting director under President Obama.
Morell would no doubt manage the agency in a professional manner. He is a CIA man, seeped in
the dark arts. Insight into how this experience might manifest itself in a Biden administration
was provided through comments Morell made about Syria
while appearing on PBS in 2016. " What they need is to have the Russians and Iranians
pay a little price ," he said. " When we were in Iraq, the Iranians were giving weapons
to the Shia militia, who were killing American soldiers, right? The Iranians were making us pay
a price. We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria. We need to make the Russians pay a
price ."
By "paying a price," Morell meant "killing." Russians and Iranians, he said, should be
killed " covertly, so you don't tell the world about it, you don't stand up at the Pentagon
and say 'we did this.' But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran ."
If state, defense and the CIA are the three principal tools available to Biden in the
conduct of foreign and national security policy, the person responsible for making these three
players – along with a host of other departments and agencies – come together as a
single team falls to the national security advisor. Here, Biden seems to be leaning toward
another experienced hand, Antony Blinken.
Blinken's resume includes stints at the State Department and National Security Council
during the Obama administration. Like the other potential nominees, Blinken possesses the kind
of experience necessary to hit the ground running. As someone who knows and is well known by
all the major policy players that could populate a Biden administration, including the
president-elect himself, Blinken would be able to coordinate policy formulation and
implementation in a seamless fashion.
Therein, however, lies the rub – Blinken would serve as a facilitator of
interventionist policy positions that he is inherently inclined to agree with. Like Biden's
other potential nominees, Blinken supported the Obama interventions in Syria and Libya, two
events that serve as a litmus test for ascertaining potential interventionist scenarios in the
future.
Whereas a national security advisor should insulate the presidency from the more focused,
hardline policy proposals put forward by state and defense, and provide balance when it comes
to considering covert action proposals from the CIA, Blinken would function more as a
superhighway of interventionist policy options between these entities and a president whose own
background can be defined as never having seen an opportunity for US intervention that he
didn't like.
As things stand today, one cannot predict the composition of a Biden cabinet with absolute
certainty; it is likely that one or more of the potential candidates listed here will fall by
the wayside, their path blocked by the unpredictability of a Senate confirmation at the hands
of a hostile Republican Party.
But the predilection for military intervention and covert action will define any Biden-led
cabinet, regardless of exactly who ends up seated there. In the end, the likelihood that this
iteration of 'adult' leadership ends up getting America embroiled in excessive interventions
that further disrupt the global geopolitical balance in the US's disfavor while costing its
people precious blood and treasure is high.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Joe Biden's campaign message focused almost entirely on Donald Trump, and on Biden's
supposed ability to "unify" a polarized electorate and "restore the soul of
America." Since he claimed victory last week, Biden's prospective administration has begun
to take shape, and the reality behind the rhetoric has started to emerge.
On matters of defense, restoring America's "soul" apparently means placing weapons
manufacturers back in charge of the Pentagon.
Biden announced his Department of Defense landing team on Tuesday. Of these 23 policy
experts, one third have taken funding from arms manufacturers, according to a report published
this week by
Antiwar.com .
A knot of hawks
Leading the team is Kathleen Hicks, an undersecretary of defense in the Obama
administration, and an employee of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), a think tank funded by a host of NATO
governments, oil firms, and weapons makers Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon,
and General Atomics. The latter firm produces the Predator drones
used by the Obama administration to kill hundreds of civilians in at least four
Middle-Eastern countries.
Hicks was a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw a number of US
troops from Germany, claiming in August that such a move "benefits our adversaries."
Two other members of Biden's Pentagon team, Andrew Hunter and Melissa Dalton, work for CSIS
and served under Obama in the Defense Department.
Also on the team are Susanna Blume and Ely Ratner, who work for the Center for a New
American Security (CNAS). Another hawkish think-tank, CNAS is funded by Google, Facebook,
Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Three more team members – Stacie
Pettyjohn, Christine Wormuth and Terri Tanielian – were most recently employed by the
RAND corporation, which draws funding from the US military,
NATO, several Gulf states, and hundreds of state and corporate sources.
Michele Flournoy is widely tipped to lead the Pentagon under Biden. Flournoy would be the
first woman in history to head the Defense Department, but her appointment would only be
revolutionary on the surface. Flournoy is the co-founder of CNAS, and served in the Pentagon
under Obama and Bill Clinton. As under secretary of defense for policy under Obama, Flournoy
helped craft the 2010 troop surge in Afghanistan, a deployment of 100,000 US troops that led to
a doubling in American deaths and made little measurable progress toward ending the
war.
'Forever war' returns
President Trump, who campaigned on stopping the US' "forever wars" in the Middle East
and remains the first US president in 40 years not to start a new conflict, has nevertheless
also staffed the Pentagon with hawkish officials. Recently ousted Defense Secretary Mark Esper
was a top lobbyist for Raytheon, while his predecessor, Patrick Shanahan, worked for Boeing.
Trump's appointment this week of National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller
as acting secretary of defense, coupled with combat veteran Col. Douglas MacGregor as senior
adviser, looked set to buck that trend, given MacGregor's vocal opposition to America's Middle
Eastern wars.
Yet Miller and MacGregor may not be in office for long, if Trump's legal challenges against
Biden's apparent victory fail. Should that happen, Biden's progressive voters may be in for a
rude reawakening when the former vice president returns to the White House.
Many of these progressives were supporters of Bernie Sanders during the Democratic
primaries, while others likely held their nose and voted for Biden out of opposition to Trump.
Reps. Barbara Lee (California) and Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), two notable progressives,
wrote to Biden on Tuesday asking him not to nominate a defense secretary linked to the
weapons industry.
Lee and Pocan cited President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address, in which he
warned of the "disastrous rise" of the "military-industrial complex."
Given Biden's fondness for Flournoy, whom he tapped in 2016 to head the Pentagon under a
potential Hillary Clinton administration, the former vice president appears unconcerned about
curtailing the influence of the armaments industry.
The industry apparently roots for Joe, too. As Donald Trump surged ahead of Biden on
election night, stocks in Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and the Carlyle Group
all plummeted. Only when counting in swing states stopped and resumed, giving Biden the
advantage, did they climb again.
Should a Biden administration make good on running mate Kamala Harris' post-election
promise to return to regime-change operations in Syria, these firms and their supporters in
the Pentagon stand to make a killing.
However, anti-war leftists, progressives, and Bernie Sanders supporters may soon realize
that voting for a Democrat who supported the Iraq War, instead of a Republican who
called it"the worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country," might
just benefit the military-industrial complex more than the "soul of America."
"... It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement has now been born again, though the enemy is now the unreliable Trumpean-dominated Republican Party rather than Saddam Hussein or Ayatollah Khomeini. ..."
"... The transition has also been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016. ..."
"... The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. ..."
"... That change has now occurred and the surge of neocons to take up senior positions in the defense, intelligence and foreign policy agencies will soon take place. In my notes on the neocon revival, I have dubbed the brave new world that the neocons hope to create in Washington as the “Kaganate of Nulandia” after two of the more prominent neocon aspirants, Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland. ..."
"... A Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protégé, Nuland openly sought regime change for Ukraine by brazenly supporting government opponents in spite of the fact that Washington and Kiev had ostensibly friendly relations. Her efforts were backed by a $5 billion budget, but she is perhaps most famous for her foul language when referring to the potential European role in managing the unrest that she and the National Endowment for Democracy had helped create. The replacement of the government in Kiev was only the prelude to a sharp break and escalating conflict with Moscow over Russia’s attempts to protect its own interests in Ukraine, most particularly in Crimea. ..."
"... A lot of the neocons are Russian Jews who grew up in households that were Bolshevik communists. They're idea of spreading democracy goes back to Trotsky who tried to spread communism through the Soviet Union. Their hatred toward Russia dates back to their ancestors feudal days under the Tsars and the pogroms they suffered and the ice pick Trotsky got to the head. ..."
"... Obama's deep state lied, people died: https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/ ..."
"... I've never quite figured out the "neocon" ideology, beyond the fact that neocons seem devoted to the sort of status quo present in Washington, D.C. during the three administrations prior to Trump. Military adventurism, nation-building, and interventionist foreign policy, all based on nebulous concepts which are applied unevenly around the world. ..."
"... The Neocon movement seems to have morphed into nothing more than a club for bullies trying to one up each other. ..."
"... "It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way." ..."
"... Neocons don't really prefer war, so much as they prefer overseas "engagements" that may look like war and smell like war. All that's missing in neocon military operations is a defined end state. ..."
Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump
banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and
Asia. Those individuals are generally described as neoconservatives but the label is itself somewhat misleading and they might more
properly be described as liberal warmongers as they are closer to the Democrats than the Republicans on most social issues and are
now warming up even more as the new Joe Biden Administration prepares to take office.
To be sure, some neocons stuck with the Republicans, to include the highly controversial Elliott Abrams, who initially opposed
Trump but is now the point man for dealing with both Venezuela and Iran. Abrams’ conversion reportedly took place when he realized
that the new president genuinely embraced unrelenting hostility towards Iran as exemplified by the ending of the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. John Bolton was also a neocon in the
White House fold, though he is now a frenemy having been fired by the president and written a book.
Even though the NeverTrumper neocons did not succeed in blocking Donald Trump in 2016, they have been maintaining relevancy by
slowly drifting back towards the Democratic Party, which is where they originated back in the 1970s in the office of the Senator
from Boeing Henry “Scoop” Jackson. A number of them started their political careers there, to include leading neocon Richard Perle.
It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement has now been born again, though the enemy is
now the unreliable Trumpean-dominated Republican Party rather than Saddam Hussein or Ayatollah Khomeini.
The transition has also
been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” being blamed
for the party’s failure in 2016. Given that mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets
have now opened wide to the stream of foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to U.S. national security
policy. Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum are favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at
the New York Times prior to Weiss’s recent resignation.
Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight
talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a frequent columnist for The Washington Post while both she and William Kristol appear regularly
on MSNBC.
The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and
everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia
serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. In the post-9/11 world, the neocon media’s leading publication The Weekly Standard
virtually invented the concept of “Islamofascism” to justify endless war in the Middle East, a development that has killed millions
of Muslims, destroyed at least three nations, and cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $5 trillion. The Israel connection has also resulted
in neocon support for an aggressive policy against Russia due to its involvement in Syria and has led to repeated calls for the U.S.
to attack Iran and destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon. In Eastern Europe, neocon ideologues have aggressively sought “democracy promotion,”
which, not coincidentally, has also been a major Democratic Party foreign policy objective.
The neocons are involved in a number of foundations, the most prominent of which is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
(FDD), that are funded by Jewish billionaires. FDD is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz and it is reported that the group takes direction
coming from officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Other major neocon incubators are the American Enterprise Institute,
which currently is the home of Paul Wolfowitz, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University.
The neocon opposition has been sniping against Trump over the past four years but has been biding its time and building new alliances,
waiting for what it has perceived to be an inevitable regime change in Washington.
That change has now occurred and the surge of neocons to take up senior positions in the defense, intelligence and foreign policy
agencies will soon take place. In my notes on the neocon revival, I have dubbed the brave new world that the neocons hope to create
in Washington as the “Kaganate of Nulandia” after two of the more prominent neocon aspirants, Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland.
Robert was one of the first neocons to get on the NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president
and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by
Trump. His wife Victoria Nuland is perhaps better known. She was the driving force behind efforts to destabilize the Ukrainian government
of President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych, an admittedly corrupt autocrat, nevertheless became Prime Minister after a free election.
Nuland, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, provided open support
to the Maidan Square demonstrators opposed to Yanukovych’s government, to include media friendly appearances passing out cookies
on the square to encourage the protesters.
A Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protégé, Nuland openly sought regime change for Ukraine by brazenly supporting government opponents
in spite of the fact that Washington and Kiev had ostensibly friendly relations. Her efforts were backed by a $5 billion budget,
but she is perhaps most famous for her foul language when referring to the potential European role in managing the unrest that she
and the National Endowment for Democracy had helped create. The replacement of the government in Kiev was only the prelude to a sharp
break and escalating conflict with Moscow over Russia’s attempts to protect its own interests in Ukraine, most particularly in Crimea.
And, to be sure, beyond regime change in places like Ukraine, President Barack Obama was no slouch when it came to starting actual
shooting wars in places like Libya and Syria while also killing people, including American citizens, using drones. Biden appears
poised to inherit many former Obama White House senior officials, who would consider the eager-to-please neoconservatives a comfortable
fit as fellow foot soldiers in the new administration. Foreign policy hawks expected to have senior positions in the Biden Administration
include Antony Blinken, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Samantha Power and, most important of all the hawkish Michele
Flournoy, who has been cited as a possible secretary of defense. And don’t count Hillary Clinton out. Biden is reportedly getting
his briefings on the Middle East from Dan Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who now lives in the Jewish state and is reportedly
working for an Israeli government supported think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies.
Nowhere in Biden’s possible foreign policy circle does one find anyone who is resistant to the idea of worldwide interventionism
in support of claimed humanitarian objectives, even if it would lead to a new cold war with major competitor powers like Russia and
China. In fact, Biden himself appears to embrace an extremely bellicose view on a proper relationship with both Moscow and Beijing
“claiming that he is defending democracy against its enemies.” His language is unrelenting, so much so that it is Donald Trump who
could plausibly be described as the peace candidate in the recently completed election, having said at the Republican National Convention
in August “Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing their dreams and the dreams of American workers, offshoring their jobs,
opening their borders and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars, wars that never ended.”
It should be noted that the return of "neocons" does not mean the return of people like Wolfowitz, Ladeen, Feith, Kristol who
are more "straussian" than "liberal/internationalist", but those like Nuland, Rice, Sam Powell, Petraeus, Flournoy, heck even
Hilary Clinton as UN Ambassador who are CFR-type liberal interventionist than pure military hawks such as Bolton or Mike Flynn.
These liberal internationalists, as opposed to straussian neocons, will intervene in collaboration with EU/NATO/QUAD (i.e. multilaterally)
in the name upholding human rights and toppling authoritarianism, rather than for oil, WMDs, or similar concrete objectives. In
very simple terms, the new Biden administration's foreign policy will be none other than the return to "endless wars" for nation-building
purposes first and last.
The name Kagan is the Russianized version of the name Cohen. He was going to be McCain's NSA had he been elected. They pulled
a stunt with the Bush admin to make Obama look weak by pushing Georgia into war with Russia in 2008. Sakaasvili, the president
of Georgia, was literally eating his own tie:
A lot of the neocons are Russian Jews who grew up in households that were Bolshevik communists. They're idea of spreading democracy
goes back to Trotsky who tried to spread communism through the Soviet Union. Their hatred toward Russia dates back to their ancestors
feudal days under the Tsars and the pogroms they suffered and the ice pick Trotsky got to the head.
I don't think they have that much influence. They pushed a lot of nonsense in the late 70/early 80s about how the Taliban were
George Washingtons and here we are today, they're worst than the Comanche. The last time I saw Richard Perle make a TV appearance,
he was crying like a baby. Robert Novak, the prince of darkness, was a Ron Paul supporter. The only ones really kicking around
are Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin, but Kristol was almost alone when he was talking about putting 50,000 boots on the ground
in Syria. Rubin is a harpie who only got crazier and crazier. Kagan had his foot in the door with Hillary only because of his
wife. Those two might get back in with Biden on Ukraine, but Biden would do well to keep them at a distance.
I've never quite figured out the "neocon" ideology, beyond the fact that neocons seem devoted to the sort of status quo present
in Washington, D.C. during the three administrations prior to Trump. Military adventurism, nation-building, and interventionist
foreign policy, all based on nebulous concepts which are applied unevenly around the world.
It seems now that there is a new breed of neocons, unified by opposition to Trump's messaging, but not much else. Odd to find
people like Samantha Power, John Bolton, Jim Mattis, and Paul Wolfowitz marching together in perfect step.
A good perspective by Philip Weiss on the same subject. Eliot A Cohen must be communicating a lot with the Kagan brothers ,
Dennis Ross and Perle to see who can be parachuted either to the WH or Foggy Bottom.
I've never quite figured out the "neocon" ideology
The revolutionary spirit (see E. Michael Jones' work). From communism to neoconservatism it's ultimately an attack on the Beatitudes
and Christ's Sermon on the Mount. "The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war" -- Servant of God Dorothy Day
I hold the Cold Warriors like Scoop a species distinct from those of the post-USSR era. The current version started at the
end of the cold war. We felt like kings of the world after Gulf War 1 and the shoe seemed to fit.
The HW Bush administration pondered how best to use this power for good. I've read some things which report there was a debate
within the administration on whether to clean up Yugoslavia or Somalia first. They got Ron to "do the honors" for the invasion
of Somalia at Oxford: About 20 minutes in.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?35586-1/arising-ashes-world-order
That was played as part of the pep-talk on the Juneau off the coast of Somalia. Stirring stuff.
In some small way I never stopped sipping that Kool Aid. It's hard to stand by and watch unspeakable evil go down when you
have the power to stop it...or think you do. Time will tell if the Neocons are capable of perceiving the limits of force. Certainly
had some hard lessons in the last few decades.
Hogs lining up for a spot at the trough? The Neocon movement seems to have morphed into nothing more than a club for bullies trying to one up each other.
I think its generally shocking that Trump or the republicans didn't make a bigger issue of Biden's history of supporting disastrous
intervention, especially his Iraq War vote. Maybe they felt like its not a winning issue, that they would lose as many votes as
they gain by appearing more isolationist. But overall, Trump favoring diplomacy over cruise missiles should have been a bigger point in his favor in the election.
It is distressing to read that we will have people in the government who are looking for a fight. That is especially true in
view of China's aggression in recent years and the responses we will have to make to that. I think we will have more than enough
to do to handle China. What do the neocons want to do about China?
Here is an article about China that really startled me and made me realize how much of a threat is was becoming. The Air Force
chief of staff talks about the challenges of countries trying to compete militarily with us in ways that have not occurred for
awhile. Here are two quotes that really got me:
"Tomorrow's Airmen are more likely to fight in highly contested environments, and must be prepared to fight through combat
attrition rates and risks to the nation that are more akin to the World War II era than the uncontested environments to which
we have since become accustomed," Brown writes."
And
"Wargames and modeling have repeatedly shown that if the Air Force fails to adapt, there will be mission failure, Brown warns.
Rules-based international order may "disintegrate and our national interests will be significantly challenged," according to the
memo."
The article doesn't say we will have another arms race but that is an obvious response to China's competition with us. I thought
all that was done and gone. I do not want to resume it. I don't want another period of foreign entanglements, period. We still
haven't paid for the War Against Terrorism. I look into the future and all I see is us racking up bills that we have no ability
to pay. And then there is the human cost of all this, I don't want to even think about that.
Snouts in the trough accounts for a certain amount of neocons, I'm sure. There is, however, a unifying vision beyond that which
puzzles me, given the very different political orientations of various neocons. Neocons are found in academia and the media as
well. Those types are less dependent on taxpayer dollars in exchange for their views (they'll get whatever tax money gets pushed
their way in grants, etc regardless).
I find Polish Janitor's "straussian" and "liberal/internationalist" flavors of neocon intriguing, as I hadn't considered that
before.
COL Lang's quote from Plato reminds me of another (from Cormac McCarthy): "It makes no difference what men think of war, said
the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The
ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
Neocons don't really prefer war, so much as they prefer overseas "engagements" that may look like war and smell like war. All
that's missing in neocon military operations is a defined end state.
I concur with your thoughts about standing by as evil occurs. We just have a habit of jumping into complex situations we don't
understand, and making things worse. I suspect you feel the same way.
The military misadventures during my career (Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria) were marked by our own black and white
thinking. The more successful adventures (Colombia, Nepal) were marked by our appreciation (to a certain extent) of the complex
nature of the environments we were getting involved in...and the fact that we weren't involved in nation-building in the latter
two locales. There were viable governments in place, and we weren't trying to replace them.
Here is another Biden clip that should have been exploited too - way back when - when the media was a little more trusted,
but no less pompous. However, Biden The Plagerizer had it coming.
Though I am warming more and more to Trump Media becoming the real soul of America. Plus someone, in time. will need to pick
up Rush Limbaugh's empire. America needs a counter-weight to fake news more than it needs the keys to the White House, with all
its entangling webs, palace intrigues, chains and pitfalls.
Godspeed President Trump. If someone with as few talents s Biden can rise like Lazarus, just think what you can do with your
little finger. No wonder the Democrats want Trump destroyed; not just defeated in a re-election. We have your back, Mr President.
Are the people of America up for another arms race and a more or less cold war with China? I think the Chinese will give us
a lot more trouble than the Soviets ever did.
And yet we allow their students to come here and learn all we know and their elites to bring their dirty money here and we
give them green cards and citizenship and protect the money they took from the Chinese people. Not so smart on our part.
What is the next theater of war that Biden's new friends will involve us in? I noticed lots of Cold War era conflicts are heating
up lately, Ethiopia Morocco Armenia being recent examples. IS in Syria/Iraq is still castrated due to the continued mass internment
of their population base in the dozens of camps, but they have established thriving franchises in Africa and their other provinces
continue to smolder.
During a July 19, 2020 appearance on Operation Freedom, General Mclnerney, referring to his
original March 19, 2017 interview about TFIE HAMMER, stated:
What we didn't know 011 that date in March 2017 was that's what was presented to President
Obama on the 5th of January [2017] just before he left office when they opened the
investigation and he directed the FBI to look into and the reason why the FBI sent two people
over to interview General Flynn. Aid that information 011 the Kislvak memo came from HAMMER. It
wasn't a normal NSA document.
Aid that's why Sally Yates wasn't aware of it until the president mentioned it and said put
the appropriate people. That's a dog whistle to put our special team on. Aid so, Biden was
sitting in that meeting. Biden. Biden has got Russian collusion all over him along with
President Obama.
This could not have happened unless Obama was letting it happen. So that's why we've got to
get John Durham's grand juries going and going on in a hurry, so the Anerican people know how
corrupt the entire Democratic party is, but also the media...
...The Obama Administration cabal waged a criminal campaign against General Flynn, including
attempting to frame General Flynn with Logan Act violations when General Flynn had done no such
thing. Peter Strzok's hand-written notes suggest that it was Vice President Joe Biden who came
up with the idea of prosecuting General Flynn for Logan Act violations. General Flynn, the
incoming National Security Adviser, had cut no deals or suggested any deals to Russian
Ambassador Kislvak, as they well knew.
Director Comey's announcement that the FBI was investigating whether President Trump had
connections to the Kremlin, issued less than 24 hours after the conclusion of General
Mclnerney's radio interview, proved that Admiral Lyons and General Mclnerney, with information
from Fanning and Jones of The Anerican Report, were right 011 target -- THE HAMMER is the key
to the coup.
A the FBI used to say, "There are no coincidences."
They had stolen the keys to the kingdom, and they wanted to keep their weapon.
Strzok and Page were aware of, and texting about, Dennis Montgomery. Both Strzok and Page
were intimately involved with the Russian Collusion Hoax. Both Strzok and Page were key
participants in the coup d etat -- a coup d etat against a duly-elected United States
president. This act of treason had never been seen before in America.
Regardless of whether Strzok and Page had Iranian family members or grew up in Iran, their
oath as public servants was to the United States Constitution. The actions of Strzok and Page
were the actions of an enemy.
"... Now I'm posing this as a serious question. What does the Duopoly gain from Biden
that it can't get from Trump?"
Surely the money pump that was dispensing largesse to the post-Maidan regime in Ukraine
via the contacts that regime has with the DNC (Crowdstrike, the Atlantic Council and the
media who take the Atlantic Council's money, like Bellingcat for example) before 2017, and
which must have dried up while Trump was President, will start up again should Biden last
long enough past his inauguration. After all, you know he did indeed push former Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko to sack his Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin for continuing to
investigate the activities of Mykola Zlochevsky and his company Burisma Holdings (at which
Hunter Biden was on the Board of Directors) and even
boasted about it.
With Biden at the helm, both Democrats and those Republicans (like Mitt Romney) who do not
support Trump can push for further neoliberal, military and other activity against Russia in
eastern Europe and Transcaucasia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia). They might also try to resurrect
their war in Syria and ensure Syria can never get the Golan Heights back.
But if Atlantic Council is onlyy a DNC tool, how do you explain that under YTrump
administration and Pompeo SoS it was Atlantic Council fellow Franak ViaÇorca who
helped organize the Belarusina color revolution, to the extent that now he figures in his
Twitter account as Tikhanovskaya´s personal advisor?
Thanks for your reply! IMO, there wasn't much drop-off in Color Revolution activity under
Trump, and he followed fairly closely the National Defense Directives against both Russia and
China. Perhaps its the blatant rejection of treaties since Biden has vowed to
rejoin/renegotiate, particularly New START. Maybe it's resistance to a currently secret
policy ploy like the Great Reset or Biden's announced very different approach to the pandemic
or some other secret schism we're not privy to yet. I don't doubt the vote result here in
Oregon since our system is extremely hard to violate in any massive manner--it was an
emotional contest thus the high turnout. The joined Media Narrative is cause for concern for
it signals another BigLie, and to go through that effort means a rather important motive.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Nov 12 2020 1:34 utc | 143
The history of the last three decades show that Republican's wage major wars while
Democrats wage small and/or covert wars (liberal interventions) and regime changes.
Republicans will never relinquish the patriotic mantle that allows them to trump (pun
intended) the left's aspirations.
I don't think this holds water. What I see is a clear pattern of decline:
1) George H. W. Bush directly invades Iraq with legitimate American forces. It a
full-fledged invasion, the first war declared for explicitly economic purposes by the USA.
Nobody finds it weird or contests it, because the USA had just emerged victorious from the
Cold War and is now the sole superpower;
2) Bill Clinton, in order to not rub American supremacy on everybody's faces, invades
Somalia and annihilates Yugoslavia with legitimate American forces behind a UN flag. He wins
Yugoslavia but doesn't manage to do a Communist Nürnberg Trial, and loses in Somalia.
The first chink in the armor of the sole hegemon;
3) George W. Bush wins through electoral fraud (Florida). 9/11 happens with his blessing.
He then has to do a kabuki in order to blame it all on Iraq and Afghanistan. Even then he
doesn't earn the UN's blessing. He invades Iraq and Afghanistan with legitimate American
forces and wins in Iraq. He takes Iraq's oil reserves, but the objective doesn't solve
America's economic problems. Afghanistan turns into a swamp. He fails to invade Iran and
fails to bomb North Korea. He loses against Russia in Georgia. The USA still is able to
invade other countries and destroy them with legitimate American forces, but with much more
difficulty and not always achieving what it wants. For the first time since the beginning of
the End of History invasions are halted before they even begin;
4) Obama has to begin his government with a mammoth USD 1.1 trn unconditional bailout to
America's big banks and other companies. He tries to make a profit from the occupation of
Iraq by recalling American troops and substituting them with drones and mercenaries
(Blackwater). Afghanistan continues to drain the coffers. Russia rises. China rises. He
pathetically tries to invade Syria with auxiliaries (ISIS) and fails utterly (Russia even
imposes a no-fly zone to NATO/USA). Invasions are then further scaled down to color
revolutions (Ukraine, etc.). South China Sea is lost without even a fight. Ukraine is
partitioned by Russia after the color revolution and NATO loses the Black Sea forever;
5) Trump cannot even begin a new war. He contents himself with color revolution in Latin
America, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Belarus and other Central Asian countries. For the first time
since the End of History, a POTUS tries to be friends with a previous enemy nation (North
Korea and Russia). For the first time, a color revolution is reverted in Latin America
(Bolivia), while a clandestine invasion of Venezuela also fails.
So, the pattern here is clearly one of decline. At the beginning of the End of History
(1991), the USA can invade anyone with its regular forces, legally and with the blessing of
the UN and NATO - and wins all those conflicts. Then, it begins to lose or at least not
completely win - but still do the whole thing legally, with regular forces and with
blessings. Then it still is capable of invading and winning - but not legally and not with
the blessing of even the main NATO allies (France and Germany); also, even when it wins, it
is clear it was not what the Empire needed to stay afloat. Then, it has to abandon any
prospects of invasion by regular forces, having to resort to color revolutions and
clandestine auxiliaries (terrorist armies). Then it is not even capable of doing those color
revolutions successfully anymore (except in Latin America - the Empire's historical little
bitch, so it doesn't really count).
The conclusion we can reach here is that Trump didn't initiate any new war for the simple
fact he couldn't: the Empire is overstretched, its resources dwindling.
With Biden, I think we'll witness this process deepening, but in another key:
"Political wisdom holds that Americans, the American public, doesn't vote on foreign
policy," he said in New York, speaking before a crowd that included some former diplomats.
"But I think that's an old way of thinking. In 2019 foreign policy is domestic policy in my
view. And domestic policy is foreign policy."
With Biden, we can see for the first time in American history the USA officially admitting
it is an empire. The American people will be directly involved and voting and supporting for
foreign policy, i.e. invasions and interventions. Domestic policy will fuse with foreign
policy, in a typical imperial metamorphosis. There will be no going back, it will be a war of
annihilation between the USA (I'm here including its provinces) and the rest of the world. As
the famous Soviet epic once said, it will be a battle not for glory, but "for life on
Earth".
"... You are what's called a usefull idiot. The GOP doesn't care about anyone but Israel and the elites on Wall street. Every 4 years the GOP pretends to care about poor white people and they show some colored people to show "look we are not racist." ..."
"... The problem with Magatards like you is the inability to separate fantasy with reality. ..."
"... Let's all just stop pretending we don't live in a fucking banana republic and move on. ..."
The former ambassador to Russia under the Obama Administration, Michael McFaul, presumably
knows a lot about Color Revolutions, since his boss used him in Ukraine in 2014. McFaul, who
was also instrumental in the Russia-Gate disinformation campaign against Trump, also
authored, "7 Pillars of ColorRevolution,"
As this historic election continues, reporting and further analysis will highlight daily
events and their parallels that already warn that these seven pillars are seemingly right in
place here in America, as they were in the examples Ukraine, Bolivia and Venezuela, at
least.
The initial step in each example has been to use a national election as the reason for a
razor-thin and disputed vote result, one that the media stirs into a frenzy on both sides: A
frenzy so viscous that the result becomes massive civil unrest followed next by violence.
And then military intervention.
In this, the first seventy-two hours of news from the election battleground of America 2020,
this first step of a media fabricated victor, of which the other side detests and alleges
criminal behavior, would seem in play.
You are what's called a usefull idiot. The GOP doesn't care about anyone but
Israel and the elites on Wall street. Every 4 years the GOP pretends to care about poor white
people and they show some colored people to show "look we are not racist."
But to say the GOP really cares what everyone thinks and is inclusive to a fault is
ridiculous. How brainwashed are you?
The problem with Magatards like you is the inability to separate fantasy with reality. You
really think Trump is the god emperor who is fighting pedophiles and you will believe
anything other Trumptards throw up on YouTube.
Lol at the GOP by definition being conservative. Trump is a liberal who grew the size of
the government.
As a Norwegian I can say with some authority that I know what the word "Quisling" means, and
Stoltenberg is following in that "proud" tradition. He is a puppet and collaborator of the
worst kind.
For those who don't know, Quisling was a member of the Norwegian pre-war government in the
1930's. When the German Nazis arrived in the morning of April 9, 1940 and the government and
King escaped northwards, Quisling performed a Coup d'Etat by going on state radio and
declared himself "Minister President", and collaborated with the Nazi occupation forces.
Everybody knew the meaning of the word "Quisling", even the Germans. The story goes that
during the occupation, in one of the illegal resistance pamphlets there was a cartoon showing
Herr Quisling going to Victoria Terasse (Nazi headquarters in Oslo) to visit Josef Terboven
(German Reichskommissar for Norway):
Quisling arrives at the gate and says to the German guard: "I am Quisling"
The guard replies: "And your name please?"
During his election campaign, Biden has relied on foreign policy advisors from past
administrations, particularly the Obama administration, and seems to be considering some of
them for top cabinet posts. For the most part, they are members of the "Washington blob" who
represent a dangerous continuity with past policies rooted in militarism and other abuses of
power.
These include interventions in Libya and Syria, support for the Saudi war in Yemen, drone
warfare, indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo, prosecutions of whistleblowers and
whitewashing torture. Some of these people have also cashed in on their government contacts to
make hefty salaries in consulting firms and other private sector ventures that feed off
government contracts.
– As former Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security Advisor to Obama,
Tony Blinken played a
leading role in all Obama's aggressive policies. Then he co-founded WestExec Advisors to
profit
from negotiating contracts between corporations and the Pentagon, including one for Google
to develop Artificial Intelligence technology for drone targeting, which was only stopped by a
rebellion among outraged Google employees.
– Since the Clinton administration,
Michele Flournoy has been a principal architect of the U.S.'s illegal, imperialist doctrine
of global war and military occupation. As Obama's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, she
helped to engineer his escalation of the war in Afghanistan and interventions in Libya and
Syria. Between jobs at the Pentagon, she has worked the infamous revolving door to consult for
firms seeking Pentagon contracts, to co-found a military-industrial think tank called the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and now to join Tony Blinken at WestExec
Advisors.
– Nicholas
Burns was U.S. Ambassador to NATO during the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since
2008, he has worked for former Defense Secretary William Cohen's lobbying firm The Cohen Group, which is a major global
lobbyist for the U.S. arms industry. Burns is a hawk on Russia and China
and has condemned
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a "traitor."
– As a legal adviser to Obama and the State Department and then as Deputy CIA Director
and Deputy National Security Advisor, Avril Haines provided legal cover and worked
closely with Obama and CIA Director John Brennan on Obama's
tenfold expansion of drone killings.
– Samantha
Power served under Obama as UN Ambassador and Human Rights Director at the National
Security Council. She supported U.S. interventions in Libya and Syria, as well as the Saudi-led
war on Yemen . And despite her human rights portfolio, she never spoke out against Israeli
attacks on Gaza that happened under her tenure or Obama's dramatic use of drones that left
hundreds of civilians dead.
– As UN Ambassador in Obama's first term, Susan Rice obtained UN cover for his
disastrous intervention in Libya. As National Security Advisor in Obama's second term, Rice
also defended Israel's savage
bombardment of Gaza in 2014, bragged about the U.S. "crippling sanctions" on Iran and North
Korea, and supported an aggressive stance toward Russia and China.
A foreign policy team led by such individuals will only perpetuate the endless wars,
Pentagon overreach and CIA-misled chaos that we -- and the world -- have endured for the past
two decades of the War on Terror.
Making diplomacy "the premier tool of our global engagement."
Biden will take office amid some of the greatest challenges the human race has ever faced --
from extreme inequality, debt and poverty caused by neoliberalism , to intractable wars and the
existential danger of nuclear war, to the climate crisis, mass extinction and the Covid-19
pandemic.
These problems won't be solved by the same people, and the same mindsets, that got us into
these predicaments. When it comes to foreign policy, there is a desperate need for personnel
and policies rooted in an understanding that the greatest dangers we face are problems that
affect the whole world, and that they can only be solved by genuine international
collaboration, not by conflict or coercion.
During the campaign, Joe
Biden's website declared, "As president, Biden will elevate diplomacy as the premier tool
of our global engagement. He will rebuild a modern, agile U.S. Department of State -- investing
in and re-empowering the finest diplomatic corps in the world and leveraging the full talent
and richness of America's diversity."
This implies that Biden's foreign policy must be managed primarily by the State Department,
not the Pentagon. The Cold War and American post-Cold War
triumphalism led to a reversal of these roles, with the Pentagon and CIA taking the lead
and the State Department trailing behind them (with only 5% of their budget), trying to clean
up the mess and restore a veneer of order to countries destroyed by
American bombs or destabilized by U.S. sanctions
, coups
and
death squads .
In the Trump era, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reduced the State Department to little more
than a
sales team for the military-industrial complex to ink lucrative arms deals with India,
Taiwan , Saudi
Arabia, the UAE and countries around the world.
What we need is a foreign policy led by a State Department that resolves differences with
our neighbors through diplomacy and negotiations, as international law in fact requires , and a
Department of Defense that defends the United States and deters international aggression
against us, instead of threatening and committing aggression against our neighbors around the
world.
As the saying goes, "personnel is policy," so whomever Biden picks for top foreign policy
posts will be key in shaping its direction. While our personal preferences would be to put top
foreign policy positions in the hands of people who have spent their lives actively pursuing
peace and opposing U.S. military aggression, that's just not in the cards with this
middle-of-the-road Biden administration.
But there are appointments Biden could make to give his foreign policy the emphasis on
diplomacy and negotiation that he says he wants. These are American diplomats who have
successfully negotiated important international agreements, warned U.S. leaders of the dangers
of aggressive militarism and developed valuable expertise in critical areas like arms
control.
William
Burns was Deputy Secretary of State under Obama, the # 2 position at the State Department,
and he is now the director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. As Under
Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs in 2002, Burns gave Secretary of State Powell a prescient
and detailed but unheeded
warning that the invasion of Iraq could "unravel" and create a "perfect storm" for American
interests. Burns also served as U.S. Ambassador to Jordan and then Russia.
Wendy Sherman was
Obama's Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, the # 4 position at the State
Department, and was briefly Acting Deputy Secretary of State after Burns retired. Sherman was
the lead
negotiator for both the1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea and the negotiations with
Iran that led to the Iran nuclear agreement in 2015. This is surely the kind of experience
Biden needs in senior positions if he is serious about reinvigorating American diplomacy.
Tom
Countryman is currently the Chair of the Arms Control Association . In the Obama administration,
Countryman served as Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs, Assistant
Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, and Principal Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs. He also served at U.S. embassies in
Belgrade, Cairo, Rome and Athens, and as foreign policy advisor to the Commandant of the U.S.
Marine Corps. Countryman's expertise could be critical in reducing or even removing the danger
of nuclear war. It would also please the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, since Tom
supported Senator Bernie Sanders for president.
In addition to these professional diplomats, there are also Members of Congress who have
expertise in foreign policy and could play important roles in a Biden foreign policy team. One
is Representative Ro
Khanna , who has been a champion of ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen, resolving the
conflict with North Korea and reclaiming Congress's constitutional authority over the use of
military force.
If the Republicans hold their majority in the Senate, it will be harder to get appointments
confirmed than if the Democrats win the two Georgia seats that are
headed for run-offs , or than if they had run more progressive campaigns in Iowa, Maine or
North Carolina and won at least one of those seats. But this will be a long two years if we let
Joe Biden take cover behind Mitch McConnell on critical appointments, policies and legislation.
Biden's initial cabinet appointments will be an early test of whether Biden will be the
consummate insider or whether he is willing to fight for real solutions to our country's most
serious problems.
Conclusion
U.S. cabinet positions are positions of power that can drastically affect the lives of
millions of Americans and billions of our neighbors overseas. If Biden is surrounded by people
who, against all the evidence of past decades, still believe in the illegal threat and use of
military force as key foundations of American foreign policy, then the international
cooperation the whole world so desperately needs will be undermined by four more years of war,
hostility and international tensions, and our most serious problems will remain unresolved.
That's why we must vigorously advocate for a team that would put an end to the normalization
of war and make diplomatic engagement in the pursuit of international peace and cooperation our
number one foreign policy priority.
Whomever President-elect Biden chooses to be part of his foreign policy team, he -- and they
-- will be pushed by people beyond the White House fence who are calling for demilitarization,
including cuts in military spending, and for reinvestment in our country's peaceful economic
development.
It will be our job to hold President Biden and his team accountable whenever they fail to
turn the page on war and militarism, and to keep pushing them to build friendly relations with
all our neighbors on this small planet that we share.
Biden has a long history of being deeply culpable in human rights abuses. Our instinct may
be to jubilantly proclaim that the suffering for vulnerable population will now end, but that
wouldn't be the case for, say, civilians in war zones. Biden's decision to actively advocate
for the disastrous war on Iraq and the crime bill, which imprisoned millions of
African-Americans, are rightly notorious.
Biden certainly also did not embolden Obama's more peaceful and internationalist
inclinations, which he demonstrated in his speech to the Muslim world and opposition to the
Iraq war, when he served as his vice-president. As the Guardian [2] reported about 2016, the
last year of the Obama administration, "the ( ) administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs.
This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas
with 72 bombs; that's three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day." Under Obama/Biden, ten times
more drone strikes were authorized than under Bush, and the US joined the coalition to bomb
Yemen, which has exacerbated a famine that had killed 84.701 by November 2018.[3]
Biden has never seriously reflected on the lives there were wrecked and the traumas that
were imposed during the post-9/11 wars, and there is no sign that he will deescalate US foreign
policy in 2021. But there is hope: In opposition to Trump, movements to bolster domestic human
rights in the US have been invigorated. The heroes of the last four years – the Dreamers,
as well as the BLM, anti-detention and Sanders activists – will not go away. Can their
call for moral transformation take on global dimensions?
None of our doubts about Biden should diminish our recognition of the racist horrors of the
Trump years. Some of his supporters claim that "Trump never started a war", and submit this
statement as proof that Trump is less damaging to the world than a centrist Democrat only tell
(or know) half the truth. The trend in US foreign policy has been to drop more and more bombs
since 09/11 – and the Trump administration, which was packed with notorious Islamophobes,
represented the sad, recent pinnacle of a trendline that will hopefully not be continued under
the Biden administration. In Afghanistan, warplanes dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions in
2019, which was the highest number since the Pentagon began tracking how many bombs it drops in
2006.[4] Consequently the US, and its allied Afghani forces, killed more than the Taliban
within 2019.[5] Trump would have certainly further undermined international humanitarian law in
war zones. After all, he pardoned a war criminal as an intentional symbolical gesture,[6] and
advocated for bombing the families of terror suspects, which is, of course, a crime per the
Geneva Convention.
If the past years have shown anything, it is how important it is to limit the war powers of
presidents no matter who is in office. The next in line usually turned out to be worse in
important respects when it comes to questions of war and peace. The only antidote is holding
Biden accountable on foreign policy, starting today.
With Joe Biden declared president-elect by a chorus of major networks in unison on Saturday,
the same mainstream media has suddenly dropped any notion of 'Russian interference' in the
election which for years had received wall to wall coverage.
Over the weekend an MSNBC host went so far as to declare without evidence
"This might be the cleanest election we have ever had." And conveniently apart from the
'sudden' unprecedented leap in vaccine development and with markets soaring on the news, the
foreign policy "wins" are conveniently pouring in even before Biden enters the White House on
January 20.
As a case in point NATO's official message of congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
underscored that a Biden White House will finally be able to confront "assertive Russia"
according to a statement by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
"I warmly welcome the election of Joe Biden as the next President of the United States. I
know Mr. Biden as a strong supporter of NATO and the transatlantic relationship," Stoltenberg's
written
statement began .
And here's where the NATO chief referenced "assertive Russia" and the "rise of China":
"We need this collective strength to deal with the many challenges we face, including a
more assertive Russia, international terrorism, cyber and missile threats, and a shift in the
global balance of power with the rise of China," Stoltenberg stated .
The suggestion is of course that Trump didn't exercise enough "strength" - though it seems
hard to make this argument especially in the case of China.
And it's further long been pointed out that US-Russia relations have actually been at a low
point in recent history under Trump , given the Trump administration withdrawal from key
weapons treaties like the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Open Skies, and
with New START set to expire early next year.
There's also the attempts to block completion of the Nord Stream 2 Russia to Germany gas
pipeline, which has included targeted sanctions against Western companies helping to construct
it. The Trump State Department has also done much to open up weapons sales to Ukraine.
Recall too that not only has Trump throughout his presidency demanded European allies do
more in terms of shouldering their fair share of the burden of defense spending for which they
are "delinquent", but has repeatedly called the Cold War era alliance "obsolete" and at some
points even hinted the US could withdraw.
But his ultimate purpose in this appeared geared toward strengthening the organization into
a true alliance and not merely Washington carrying the burden of major spending.
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We detailed last month that top NATO officials
appeared to be openly rooting for a Biden victory following four years of Trump being a
thorn in the side of Brussels. This is true enough, but in terms of Russia one could easily
argue Trump has been a greater hawk in terms of ignoring European demands that key nuclear and
weapons treaties be extended . 07564111 , 5 hours ago
ROFL .. idiot Stoltenberg thinks he is immortal.
cankles' server , 3 hours ago
Wasn't NATO literally designed for war?
teutonicate , 3 hours ago
NATO Declares Biden White House Will Finally Confront "Assertive Russia"
"the foreign policy "wins" are conveniently pouring in even before Biden enters the White
House on January 20."
The only reason any foreign power would prefer to work with Biden is that they know he is
a wimp, that he is corrupt and can be bought (as proven by his history with China) and that
for he will not look out for American interests (as opposed to theirs).
You see, Democrats define anything that takes down America as a win - including there own
contrived victories that will never materialize.
Biden would sit in his underwear and do what he's told to do, like any proper corpse.
That's why the dead (and blue-bots) voted for him.
LevelHeadedMan , 4 hours ago
As we say in Russia;
Собака лает, а
караван идёт.
The dog barks, yet the caravan moves on.
It means we will keep assembling more and more nukes while this idiot continues
bleating.
SMC , 3 hours ago
You have a lot of support from normal, productive Americans.
LevelHeadedMan , 3 hours ago
Thank you. We like regular Americans too!
richard_engineer , 1 hour ago
As an American, I think Russia has been legitimate in its attempts at peace while USA has
been continuously trying to provoke Russia. I think that the bolsheviks you kicked out are
trying to get revenge and use America as their pawn.
Seriously man, I'm legitimately afraid that Russia would launch a pre-emptive attack if
further cornered by USA & NATO. I live in Sacramento, CA - do you think this city would
be targeted by nuke?
I imagine Russia would focus on the defensive nukes placed in Europe first, and then
likely to target many large cities in USA & Europe. Russia has a lot of nukes so I
imagine it would launch full-scale attack to completely disable the opponent from future
attack.
EuroPox , 5 hours ago
So after Trump is sworn in on 20th January, NATO is finished. There is no way back from
this.
No1uNo , 5 hours ago
I support the sentiment, my fear is they've mobilised so much resources to constantly
attack Trump, I don't see those attacks ending only escalating. If you can see a way that the
CFR, Trilateral Commission, Atlantic Council, Soros NGO's etc all get disbanded and some
serious jail time thrown at them - then yes their pet projects will suffer. Without that
Trump needs to be very careful outside of the White House.
EuroPox , 5 hours ago
Trump could not take down the DS until everyone could see what was happening. The last 4
years have been all about this election - this is how people will finally SEE what has been
happening. There never were going to any arrests in the first term. Now there will be 4 years
to take down the DS... and another 4 years after that. No need to rush, one step at a time
will get us there.
Thurmonster , 3 hours ago
Riiiight.
philipat , 5 hours ago
LOL. And not a single example provided of Russia's "assertive" behavior towards Europe.
And I for one can't think of ANY yet I can think of many provocations against Russia by NATO.
And, of course, if NATO provokes Russia too hard and war does break out, Europe will be on
the front line and could, if Russia so wished, be reduced to rubble in short order. I can't
imagine why the Europeans would want to do this to themselves but there we have it. At least
it would mark the end of the awful EU!
East Indian , 5 hours ago
Russia has stealthily crawled to place itself just next to NATO's boundaries! Isn't
enough?
acementhead , 5 hours ago
And not a single example provided of Russia's "assertive" behavior towards Europe.
Come on man They're (Russia) building a pipeline to sell gas to Germany. How dare they,
that gas belongs to the US oligarchs.
xpxhxoxexnxixx , 1 hour ago
Isnt it funny that the MSM and Dems are completely fine glossing over the fact that half
the country voted against Biden. It's as if they think we're all united simply because of the
outcome. It's no wonder why we have the country we do, and why the dems continue to squeak by
year after year. There is no desire for them to understand the American people- they simply
figure 'we'll get just enough votes to do what we want' 100% of time. There is no desire for
them to actually want to work with others to improve the country. And year after year we
believe it simply in the 'name of democracy'- as if that actually means anything. So Trump is
the red flag commie garbage man to them, and literally anyone else is freedom. If you ever
see the MSM or social media start to talk about why we have a literal divide in this country,
I think i'll call it quits here on Earth. But it'll never happen.
GoldenDebt , 5 hours ago
These evil F-ers want nuclear war. Trump did it right. I suspect Trump was going to forge
a new peace, demonrats didnt want that. They want to kill us all with a nuke war. Democrats
are pure evil.
Jerzeel , 5 hours ago
More like the usual gang want to beat up again on some **** hole country.
Fireman , 5 hours ago
NATO, North Amerikan Terror Organ, that limp appendage dangling from the Pedophile
Politburo in Natostan capital of USSA's flaccid vassal Brussels, seat of the infamous albeit
collapsing EUSSR wants to be the global gangster sidekick of the Pentacon thugs but just
doesn't want to pay to play. Will the Germans get suckered for a third time into a global war
for their anglozionazi bankster masters and the Washing town thugocracy? Nah...they finally
seem to have figured it and STASI agent "Erika" out as the I$I$ "backed" Saudi Mercan IOU
petroscrip toilet paper dollah gets flushed from the global Ponzi sewer of the Potemkin
Village (idiot) Mercan "economy" of slaughter for the profit of the zero 1%.
Meanwhile the Dark Winter of financial collapse is upon US, on both sides of the
Atlanticist swamp, as the detritus of USSA'S Middle East judaic wars rapes, decapitates and
pillages its way across a seething Europe betrayed by the hag in Berlin and her Soros puppet
master. Syria is where the anglozionazi beast and Pentacon Murder Inc. finally bit off more
than they could chew in their serial judaic wars of terror and the rest of humanity sees it
for what it is. All the emasculated pedophile pawns in Natostan huff and puff at Mr. Bear's
doorstep but that is all these Brownstoned cretins will ever do. It is all over bar the
inevitable bankrupt collapse of €urolandia and the long awaited civil war reloaded in
Slumville, USSA. Bismarck was right more than a century ago, the only future Germany has and
Urupp by default is in the warm embrace of Mr. Bear and his vast supply of energy and
resources as USSA vainly squeezes gas from the "shale miracle" BS and hubris bloated turds in
the stinking Washing town swamp as the brand new cadaver in chief, Creepy Joe and his Camel
get ready to torch Slumville in the mother of all dumpster fires.
Onward to Leningrad with Onkel Adolf and the dancing fool of Natostan.
We need this collective strength to deal with the many challenges we face, including a
more assertive Russia...
Which is code for:
The EU is poorly run and incredibly weak, having to rely on other nations for resources
and subsidies, so please help us because the glory of Europe has pretty much completely
faded. -signed, little bitch Jens
Is-Be , 4 hours ago
"Mr. Gorbechov, you have my word that we will not advance one inch towards Russia."
They are not worthy of their ancestors. Real Northman are bound by their oaths.
Even Loki could not break his.
NorwegianKing , 5 hours ago
Jens Stoltenberg is a Quisling.
Alice-the-dog , 2 hours ago
So the extreme aggression of NATO is going to be used to attack the nonexistent Russian
aggression?
Fabelhaft , 1 hour ago
The plan ... is to minimize Putin and or his philosophy of 'Russian resources for Russia',
to the point that the Russian people will vote his method out and gladly surrender control of
their goods to the West. Then, be good servile Russians. Oh, and another thing, a big thing,
the West hates Russia's Cross. The Cross has to go, also.
Somewhat Unisex , 4 hours ago
The whole Russia tensions are nauseating.
Russia has a GDP similar to South Korea.
But the MIC always needs a boogeyman I suppose.
libfrog88 , 3 hours ago
NATO is so full of ****. They are the ones provoking Russia all the time. They need to
justify their worthless existence and it is costing far too much.
nanook007 , 4 hours ago
Yes of course......parasite globalist warmongers love the democrat pedophile hair
sniffer.
overmedicatedundersexed , 5 hours ago
"War is Peace.".some democrat leftist.
Stringer99 , 5 hours ago
Nato like many other organisations needs a threat, real or imaginary to exist. The US
spends more on weapon systems than the next 16 countries combined. Their usual reason is
things like 9/11. The same forces behind 9/11 include the same nato puppet masters and
connected think tanks who also profit from Nato funding. Its just another business model
involving trillions of dollars funded by taxpayers. Whether its the arms industry or big
pharma, fear is their currency of control.
TheySayIAmOkay , 4 hours ago
Great. When does ISIS funding kick back into full gear?
Bobby Farrell Can Dance , 4 hours ago
These Northern Atlantic Terrorists Orcs took out 2 secular leaders (Qaddafi, Saddam) and
tried taking out a third (Assad), and they wonder why radical Islam is filling in the void?
How the hell are these sub humans ever in charge of making such decisions? NATO HQ should be
wiped off the map.
They also made the refugee problem worse.
Haboob , 5 hours ago
Russia is no longer the USSR so why "confront" them.
Simpson , 5 hours ago
Resource rich country.
SadhakaPadma , 5 hours ago
its not case...you cant milk taxpayers for 750 bilions usd a year withouth enemies and
threat...so Military industry created terrorists camps and as it failed..now they wanna
encyrcle china and russia and spread ******** about them...danger is if you provoke around
these borders the war might come even as accident as Putin warned..its all only
softwares...
SadhakaPadma , 5 hours ago
DESPITE the all Trump faults he gave humanity four more years...HIlary would go
nuclear...same apply with Biden.
dog breath , 5 hours ago
Gaslighting is strong with EU. Trump wants NATO military spending to be 2% of GDP. Germany
wants gas pipeline with Russia. This is direct contradiction to this NATO *******
propaganda.
minoas , 1 hour ago
They won't be happy until they kill us all in a nuclear war. Russia is not a threat to
Europe. China does not send it's troops around the world overthrowing governments. Encircled
by US bases, it has built a small island off it's coast to protect it's seas lanes while we
have nearly a thousand military installations around the globe if we count our covert ones.
Russia and China is athreat to world hegemony by the US. That is their crime
Tom Angle , 1 hour ago
Who sponsored a Neo-Nazi coupe on the Russian border? Who continually holds war games on
the Russian border? Who does Russian natural gas keep who warm in the winter? Who creates and
sponsors terrorists to make way for a pipeline to Europe? Who builds bio labs on Russian
borders? So who is assertive?
MoreFreedom , 2 hours ago
Translation: Stoltenberg says he's glad Biden is president because that means they'll all
pocket more US taxpayer money, and the US taxpayer is the sheep. There's money to be made in
NATO deals and deployments, provided the US pays for it.
Theremustbeanotherway , 2 hours ago
In the UK, our politicians are corrupt beyond redemption.
Our legal system is becoming corrupt beyond redemption.
The current senior personnel in our armed forces are pansies and incapable of defending
our nation and only capable of attacking the indigenous population.
The current senior personnel in our police forces are bent out of shape determined to
victimise the indigenous population.
We are still under the cosh of the Bolsheviks in Europe intent on promoting war.
Most of the population of the UK are incapable of seeing through the BS and lies - I now
know what it is like to be held hostage in an asylum!!
Old Captain Hindsight , 5 hours ago
NATO outing themselves as enemies of the people?
It is funny watching all of these idiots jump the gun.
jnojr , 41 minutes ago
Maybe Joe Biden can get a Nobel Peace Prize even faster than Barack Obama did?
Promethus , 1 hour ago
I started in the US military during the cold War. It is so sad that people like me no
longer recognize this country and look to Russia as a bulwark of Christianity and western
civilization.
Stay strong Russia. The USA and western Europe have abandoned God and now are reaping what
they sewed..
"Let's bring decency and integrity back to the White House." I can't count the number of
times I have heard and read this phrase uttered by U.S. expats here in Paris, France. As one of
many American expats living here, of course I share in the desire for an end to a Donald Trump
presidency. But at what cost? And will a Biden presidency -- which promises a return to
"normalcy" -- really merit the sigh of relief that so many think it will? Below I summarise
some of the most troubling information I have uncovered about some of the most likely foreign
policy picks for key positions in a Biden cabinet.
Susan Rice for Secretary of State
Susan Rice, who was also reportedly being considered for the role of Biden's Vice President,
served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations and as National Security Advisor, both
under the Obama administration.
While Benghazi has been the focus of much criticism of Rice, she has received virtually no
scrutiny for her backing of the invasion of Iraq and claiming that there were WMDs there. Some
of her statements:
"I think he [then Secretary of State Colin Powell] has proved that Iraq has these weapons
and is hiding them, and I don't think many informed people doubted that." (NPR, Feb. 6,
2003)
"It's clear that Iraq poses a major threat. It's clear that its weapons of mass destruction
need to be dealt with forcefully, and that's the path we're on. I think the question becomes
whether we can keep the diplomatic balls in the air and not drop any, even as we move forward,
as we must, on the military side." (NPR, Dec. 20, 2002)
"I think the United States government has been clear since the first Bush administration
about the threat that Iraq and Saddam Hussein poses. The United States policy has been regime
change for many, many years, going well back into the Clinton administration. So it's a
question of timing and tactics. We do not necessarily need a further Council resolution before
we can enforce this and previous resolutions." (NPR, Nov. 11, 2002; requests for audio of
Rice's statements on NPR were declined by the publicly funded network.)
She has also been criticised extensively for her record on the African continent, which
judging by the following quote at
the beginning of the 1994 Rwandan genocide seems to have been to adopt a "laissez faire"
attitude : "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the
effect on the November [congressional] election?"
In a
speech given at the AIPAC Synagogue Initiative Lunch back in 2012, Rice boasted about
vetoing a UN resolution that would deem Israeli settlements on occupied Palsestinian land as
illegal, and further characterized the Goldstone Report as "flawed" and "insisted on Israel's
right to defend itself and maintained that Israel's democratic institutions could credibly
investigate any possible abuses." Her position has changed little since then, as recently as
2016,
she proclaimed that "Israel's security isn't a Democratic interest or a Republican interest
-- it's an enduring American interest."
Tony Blinken for National Security Adviser
Tony Blinken is also an old member of the Obama administration, having served first as VP
Biden's National Security Advisor from 2009 to 2013, Deputy National Security Advisor from 2013
to 2015 and then as United States Deputy Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017.
Blinken had immense
influence over Biden in his role as Deputy National Security Advisor, helping formulate
Biden's approach and support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"For Biden ", he argued , "and for
a number of others who voted for the resolution, it was a vote for tough diplomacy." He added
"It is more likely that diplomacy will succeed, if the other side knows military action is
possible."
The two of them were responsible for delivering on Obama's campaign promise
to get American troops out of Iraq, a process so oversimplified and poorly handled that it led
to even more
chaos than the initial occupation and insurgency.
Blinken seems to be
of the view that it is upto the US, and only the US, to take charge of world affairs : "On
leadership, whether we like it or not, the world just doesn't organize itself. And until this
[Trump] administration, the U.S. had played a lead role in doing a lot of that organizing,
helping to write the rules, to shape the norms and animate the institutions that govern
relations among nations. When we're not engaged, when we don't lead, then one or two things is
likely to happen. Either some other country tries to take our place – but probably not in
a way that advances our interests or values – or no one does. And then you get chaos or a
vacuum filled by bad things before it's filled by good things. Either way, that's bad for
us."
Blinken also appears to be steering
Biden's pro-Israel agenda, recently
stating that Biden "would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions
that it makes, period, full stop." which includes an all out
rejection of BDS , the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Movement against Israel's
occupation of Palestine.
Michèle Flournoy for Secretary of Defence
Michele Flournoy was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2009 to 2012 in the Obama
administration under Secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta.
Flournoy, in writing the
Quadrennial Defense Review during her time as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy
under President Clinton, has paved the way for the U.S.'s endless and costly wars which prevent
us from investing in life saving and necessary programmes like Medicare for All and the Green
New Deal. It has effectively granted the US permission to no longer be bound by the UN Charter's
prohibition against the threat or use of military force. It declared that, "when the interests
at stake are vital, we should do whatever it takes to defend them, including, when necessary,
the unilateral use of military power."
While working at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a "Top
Defense and National Security Think Tank" based in Washington D.C., in June 2002, as the
Bush administration was threatening aggression towards Iraq, she
declared , that the United States would "need to strike preemptively before a crisis erupts
to destroy an adversary's weapons stockpile" before it "could erect defenses to protect those
weapons, or simply disperse them." She continued along this path even in 2009, after the Bush
administration, in
a speech for the CSIS : "The second key challenge I want to highlight is the proliferation
– continued proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, as
these also pose increasing threats to our security. We have to respond to states such as Iran,
North Korea, who are seeking to develop nuclear weapons technologies, and in a globalized world
there is also an increased risk that non-state actors will find ways to obtain these materials
or weapons."
It is extremely important to note that Flournoy and Blinken co-founded the strategic
consulting firm, WestExec Advisors, where the two use their large database of governmental,
military, venture capitalists and corporate leader contacts to help companies win big Pentagon
contracts. One such client being Jigsaw, a technology incubator created by Google that
describes itself on its website as "a
unit within Google that forecasts and confronts emerging threats, creating future-defining
research and technology to keep our world safer." Their partnership on the AI initiative
entitled Project Maven led to a rebellion by
Google workers who opposed their technology being used by military and police
operations.
Furthermore, Flournoy and Blinken, in their jobs at WestExec Advisors, co-chaired the
biannual meeting of the liberal organization Foreign Policy for America. Over 50
representatives of national-security groups were in attendance. Most of the attendees
supported "ask(ing)
Congress to halt U.S. military involvement in the (Yemen) conflict." Flournoy did not. She said
that the weapons should be sold under certain conditions and that Saudi Arabia needed these
advanced patriot missiles to defend itself.
Conclusion
If a return to "normalcy" means having the same old politicians that are responsible for
endless wars, that work for the corporate elite, that lack the courage to implement real
structural change required for major issues such as healthcare and the environment, then a call
for "normalcy" is nothing more than a call to return to the same deprived conditions that led
to our current crisis. Such a return with amplified conditions and circumstances, could set the
stage for the return of an administration with dangers that could possibly even exceed those
posed by the current one in terms of launching new wars.
Mariamne Everett is an intern at the Institute for Public Accuracy currently living in
France.
There's a 'good chance' that the US will return to the policy of foreign wars under Joe
Biden, which will make its reconciliation with the EU impossible, Willy Wimmer, former
vice-president of the OSCE, warned.
The main reasons why the Americans voted for Donald Trump four years ago were their
tiredness of constant wars waged by their country and collapsing economy and infrastructure in
the US, Wimmer told RT.
Trump has kept his promise and didn't start any new foreign conflict, but that may well
change if a member of the Democratic Party is in the White House, former Vice President of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly said.
Joe Biden isn't an empty white sheet – he represents the Democratic Party, who in
the 1990s destroyed the Charter of the UN.
The German political veteran recalled the US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia under Democratic
President, Bill Clinton, in 1999. He also pointed out that "in the presidency of [Barack]
Obama, Biden was Vice President and he was in absolute accordance with Obama's drone wars and
the wars in the Middle East, therefore there's a good chance that Joe Biden continues in the
same way as the Democratic Party did it in the 1990s and under Obama" before 2016.
"And going back to before 2016 means going back to war" for the US, Wimmer
argued.
Relations between Washington and Brussels have deteriorated under Trump over his demands for
the EU nations to make larger financial contributions to NATO as well as political and economic
pressure on the block to stop dealing with Russia and China.
Hopes that things would improve under Biden will be dashed, "as long as the US and NATO
don't return to the Charter of the UN," the 77-year-old, who also served as State Secretary
to Germany's Defense Minister, said.
However, he pointed out that it remains a question if the current US economy, which was
heavily hit by the coronavirus, would even allow Biden to return to the aggressive policy,
which the Democrats used to pursue.
Unlike German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who already congratulated Biden over beating
incumbent Trump in the US presidential election, Wimmer believes that others "should be
very-very careful with congratulations."
The Democratic candidate declared himself the winner on Saturday after several major
television networks projected that he was on a path to take more than 270 electoral votes
needed to win the presidency after four days of tense vote counts in several battleground
states.
"It's quite unusual that the result of an election is announced by a news agency or a
news channel. We're used in all our countries, which belong to the OSCE, that we have Election
Committees, who announce results. And this hasn't been done yet in the US," he pointed out,
describing the events surrounding the American election as "unbelievable."
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Distinguished Russiagate disciple Michael McFaul upset that Putin hasn't congratulated Biden
for presumed election win
Former US envoy to Russia Michael McFaul is unhappy that Moscow hasn't declared Joe Biden
the election winner without official results, apparently tossing aside years of hysteria about
Kremlin "meddling" in US internal affairs.
McFaul, who became one of the most outspoken proponents of the debunked theory that Moscow
"colluded" with the Trump campaign in 2016, expressed his disappointment on Twitter that
Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to offer his congratulations to the Democratic
nominee, who declared himself president-elect on Saturday.
"Has Putin joined the chorus of world leaders in congratulating Biden yet? I haven't see
(sic) the statement. Do post if its (sic) out," he wrote. ... Earlier in the day, Fijian Prime
Minister Frank Bainimarama became the first world leader to offer his congratulations to the
former vice president, expressing hope that Biden would help the world navigate a "climate
emergency." Reditus_sum 7 hours ago No doubt that President Putin will be in touch with
Biden if and when he wants to and feels that it is warranted, I really can't imagine how Biden
would cope in any negotiations with one of the sharpest analytical and political minds in the
world today. orseface11 Reditus_sum 6 hours ago Good Lord, that would be a sad state of
affairs. RadicalGoat 8 hours ago So far, only the vassal states have acknowledged Biden's
victory.
"... Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular , is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft . His most recent book is The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory . ..."
The so-called Age of Trump is also an age of instantly forgotten
bestselling books, especially ones purporting to provide the inside scoop on what goes on within Donald Trump's haphazard and
continuously shifting orbit. With metronomic regularity, such gossipy volumes appear, make a splash, and almost as quickly
vanish, leaving a mark no more lasting than a trout breaking the surface in a pond.
Remember when Michael Wolff's
Fire and
Fury: Inside the Trump White House
was all the rage? It's now available in hardcover for
$0.99
from
online used booksellers. James Comey's
Higher
Loyalty
also sells for a penny less than a buck.
An additional forty-six cents will get you Omarosa Manigault Newman's "
insider's
account
" of her short-lived tenure in that very White House. For the same price, you can acquire
Sean
Spicer's memoir
as Trump's press secretary, Anthony Scaramucci's
rendering
of
his tumultuous 11-day stint as White House communications director, and Corey Lewandowski's "
inside
story
" of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Bibliophiles intent on assembling a complete library of Trumpiana will not
have long to wait before the tell-all accounts of John Bolton, Michael Cohen, Mary Trump, and that journalistic amanuensis Bob
Woodward will surely be available at similar bargain basement prices.
All that said, even in these dismal times genuinely important books do
occasionally make their appearance. My friend and colleague Stephen Wertheim is about to publish one. It's called
Tomorrow,
the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy
and if you'll forgive me for being direct, you really ought to read it.
Let me explain why.
The "Turn"
Wertheim and I are co-founders of the
Quincy
Institute for Responsible Statecraft
, a small Washington, D.C.-based think tank. That
Quincy
refers
to John Quincy Adams who, as secretary of state nearly two centuries ago, warned his fellow citizens against venturing abroad
"in search of monsters to destroy."
Were the United States to do so, Adams predicted, its defining trait -- its
very essence -- "would insensibly change from
liberty
to
force.
"
By resorting to force, America "might become the dictatress of the world," he wrote, but "she would be no longer the ruler of
her own spirit." While his gendered punchline might rankle contemporary sensibilities, it remains apt.
A privileged man of his times, Adams took it for granted that a WASP male
elite was meant to run the country. Women were to occupy their own separate sphere. And while he would eventually become an
ardent opponent of slavery, in 1821 race did not rank high on his agenda either. His immediate priority as secretary of state
was to situate the young republic globally so that Americans might enjoy both safety and prosperity. That meant avoiding
unnecessary trouble. We had already had our revolution. In his view, it wasn't this country's purpose to promote revolution
elsewhere or to dictate history's future course.
Adams was to secretaries of state what Tom Brady is to NFL quarterbacks:
the Greatest Of All Time. As the consensus GOAT in the estimation of diplomatic historians, he brought to maturity a pragmatic
tradition of statecraft originated by a prior generation of New Englanders and various slaveholding Virginians with names like
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. That tradition emphasized opportunistically ruthless expansionism on this continent, avid
commercial engagement, and the avoidance of great power rivalries abroad. Adhering to such a template, the United States had,
by the beginning of the twentieth century, become the wealthiest, most secure nation on the planet -- at which point Europeans
spoiled the party.
The disastrous consequences of one European world war fought between 1914
and 1918 and the onset of a second in 1939 rendered that pragmatic tradition untenable -- so at least a subsequent generation
of WASPs concluded. This is where Wertheim takes up the story. Prompted by the German army's lightning victory in the battle
of France in May and June 1940, members of that WASP elite set about creating -- and promoting -- an alternative policy
paradigm, one he describes as pursuing "dominance in the name of internationalism," with U.S. military supremacy deemed "the
prerequisite of a decent world."
The new elite that devised this paradigm did not consist of lawyers from
Massachusetts or planters from Virginia. Its key members held tenured positions at Yale and Princeton, wrote columns for
leading New York newspapers, staffed Henry Luce's
Time-Life
press empire, and
distributed philanthropic largesse to fund worthy causes (grasping the baton of global primacy being anything but least among
them). Most importantly, just about every member of this Eastern establishment cadre was also a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR). As such, they had a direct line to the State Department, which in those days actually played a large
role in formulating basic foreign policy.
While
Tomorrow, The World
is not a
long book -- fewer than 200 pages of text -- it is a
tour de force
. In it, Wertheim
describes the new narrative framework that the foreign-policy elite formulated in the months following the fall of France.
He shows how Americans with an antipathy for war now found themselves
castigated as "isolationists," a derogatory term created to suggest provincialism or selfishness. Those favoring armed
intervention, meanwhile, became "internationalists," a term connoting enlightenment and generosity. Even today, members of the
foreign-policy establishment pledge undying fealty to the same narrative framework, which still warns against the bugaboo of
"isolationism" that threatens to prevent high-minded policymakers from exercising "global leadership."
Wertheim persuasively describes the "turn" toward militarized globalism
engineered from above by that self-selected, unelected crew. Crucially, their efforts achieved success
prior
to
Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, may have thrust the United States into the ongoing world war,
but the essential transformation of policy had already occurred, even if ordinary Americans had yet to be notified as to what
it meant. Its future implications -- permanently high levels of military spending, a vast network of foreign bases stretching
across the globe, a penchant for armed intervention abroad, a sprawling "national security" apparatus, and a politically
subversive
arms
industry
-- would only become apparent in the years ahead.
While Wertheim is not the first to expose isolationism as a carefully
constructed myth, he does so with devastating effect. Most of all, he helps his readers understand that "so long as the
phantom of isolationism is held to be the most grievous sin, all is permitted."
Contained within that
all
is a
cavalcade of forceful actions and grotesque miscalculations, successes and failures, notable achievements and immense
tragedies both during World War II and in the decades that followed. While beyond the scope of Wertheim's book, casting the
Cold War as a
de facto
extension of the war against Nazi Germany, with Soviet dictator
Josef Stalin as a stand-in for Adolf Hitler, represented an equally significant triumph for the foreign policy establishment.
At the outset of World War II, ominous changes in the global distribution
of power prompted a basic reorientation of U.S. policy. Today, fundamental alterations in the global distribution of power --
did
someone
say
"the rise of China"? -- are once again occurring right before our eyes. Yet the foreign-policy establishment's response
is simply to double down.
So, even now,
staggering
levels
of military spending, a vast network of foreign bases, a penchant for armed intervention abroad, a sprawling
"national security" apparatus, and a politically subversive arms industry remain the taken-for-granted signatures of U.S.
policy. And even now, the establishment employs the specter of isolationism as a convenient mechanism for self-forgiveness and
expedient amnesia, as well as a means to enforce discipline.
Frozen Compass
The fall of France was indeed an epic disaster. Yet implicit in
Tomorrow,
The World
is this question: If the disaster that befell Europe in 1940 could prompt the United States to abandon a
hitherto successful policy paradigm, then why have the serial disasters befalling the nation in the present century not
produced a comparable willingness to reexamine an approach to policy that is obviously failing today?
To pose that question is to posit an equivalence between the French army's
sudden collapse in the face of the Wehrmacht's assault and the accumulation of U.S. military disappointments dating from 9/11.
From a tactical or operational perspective, many will find such a comparison unpersuasive. After all, the present-day armed
forces of the United States have not succumbed to outright defeat, nor is the government of the United States petitioning for
a cessation of hostilities as the French authorities did in 1940.
Yet what matters in war are political outcomes. Time and again since 9/11,
whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or lesser theaters of conflict, the United States has failed to achieve the political purposes
for which it went to war. From a strategic and political perspective, therefore, the comparison with France is instructive,
even if failure need not entail abject surrender.
The French people and other supporters of the 1930s European status quo
(including Americans who bothered to pay attention) were counting on that country's soldiers to thwart further Nazi aggression
once and for all. Defeat came as a profound shock. Similarly, after the Cold War, most Americans (and various beneficiaries of
a supposed
Pax Americana
) counted on U.S. troops to maintain an agreeable and orderly
global status quo. Instead, the profound shock of 9/11 induced Washington to embark upon what became a series of "endless
wars" that U.S. forces proved incapable of bringing to a successful conclusion.
Crucially, however, no reevaluation of U.S. policy comparable to the "turn"
that Wertheim describes has occurred.
An exceedingly generous reading of President Trump's promise to put
"America First" might credit him with attempting such a turn. In practice, however, his incompetence and inconsistency, not to
mention his naked dishonesty, produced a series of bizarre and random zigzags. Threats of "
fire
and fury
" alternated with expressions of high regard for dictators ("
we
fell in love
"). Troop withdrawals were announced and then modified or forgotten. Trump
abandoned
a
global environmental agreement,
massively
rolled back
environmental regulations domestically, and then
took
credit
for providing Americans with "the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet." Little of this was to be
taken seriously.
Trump's legacy as a statesman will undoubtedly amount to the diplomatic
equivalent of
Mulligan
stew
. Examine the contents closely enough and you'll be able to find just about anything. Yet taken as a whole, the
concoction falls well short of being nutritious, much less appetizing.
On the eve of the upcoming presidential election, the entire national
security apparatus and its supporters assume that Trump's departure from office will restore some version of normalcy. Every
component of that apparatus from the Pentagon and the State Department to the CIA and the Council on Foreign Relations to the
editorial boards of the
New York Times
and
Washington
Post
yearns for that moment.
To a very considerable degree, a Biden presidency will satisfy that
yearning. Nothing if not a creature of the establishment, Biden himself will conform to its requirements. For proof, look no
further than his vote in favor of invading Iraq in 2003. (No isolationist he.) Count on a Biden administration, therefore, to
perpetuate the entire obsolete retinue of standard practices.
As Peter Beinart
puts
it
, "When it comes to defense, a Biden presidency is likely to look very much like an Obama presidency, and that's going
to look not so different from a Trump presidency when you really look at the numbers." Biden will increase the Pentagon
budget, keep U.S. troops in the Middle East, and get tough with China. The United States will remain the world's
number-one
arms
merchant, accelerate efforts to militarize outer space, and continue the
ongoing
modernization
of the entire U.S. nuclear strike force. Biden will stack his team with CFR notables looking for jobs on the
"inside."
Above all, Biden will recite with practiced sincerity the mantras of
American exceptionalism as a summons to exercise global leadership. "The triumph of democracy and liberalism over fascism and
autocracy created the free world. But this contest does not just define our past. It will define our future, as well." Those
uplifting sentiments are, of course, his from a recent
Foreign
Affairs
essay
.
So if you liked U.S. national security policy before Trump mucked things
up, then Biden is probably your kind of guy. Install him in the Oval Office and the mindless pursuit of "dominance in the name
of internationalism" will resume. And the United States will revert to the policies that prevailed during the presidencies of
Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama -- policies, we should note, that paved the way for Donald Trump to win the
White House.
The Voices That Count
What explains the persistence of this pattern despite an abundance of
evidence showing that it's not working to the benefit of the American people? Why is it so difficult to shed a policy paradigm
that dates from Hitler's assault on France, now a full 80 years in the past?
I hope that in a subsequent book Stephen Wertheim will address that
essential question. In the meantime, however, allow me to make a stab at offering the most preliminary of answers.
Setting aside factors like bureaucratic inertia and the machinations of the
military-industrial complex -- the Pentagon, arms manufacturers, and their advocates in Congress share an obvious interest in
discovering new "threats" -- one likely explanation relates to a policy elite increasingly unable to distinguish between
self-interest and the national interest. As secretary of state, John Quincy Adams never confused the two. His latter-day
successors have done far less well.
As an actual basis for policy, the turn that Stephen Wertheim describes in
Tomorrow,
The World
has proven to be nowhere near as enlightened or farseeing as its architects imagined or its latter day
proponents still purport to believe it to be. The paradigm produced in 1940-1941 was, at best, merely serviceable. It
responded to the nightmarish needs of that moment. It justified U.S. participation in efforts to defeat Nazi Germany, a
necessary undertaking.
After 1945, except as a device for affirming the authority of
foreign-policy elites, the pursuit of "dominance in the name of internationalism" proved to be problematic. Yet even as
conditions changed, basic U.S. policy stayed the same: high levels of military spending, a network of foreign bases, a
penchant for armed intervention abroad, a sprawling "national security" apparatus, and a politically subversive arms industry.
Even after the Cold War and 9/11, these remain remarkably sacrosanct.
My own retrospective judgment of the Cold War tends toward an attitude of:
well, I guess it could have been worse. When it comes to the U.S. response to 9/11, however, it's difficult to imagine what
worse could have been.
Within the present-day foreign-policy establishment, however, a different
interpretation prevails: the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War ended in a world historic victory, unsullied by any
unfortunate post-9/11 missteps. The effect of this perspective is to affirm the wisdom of American statecraft now eight
decades old and therefore justify its perpetuation long after both Hitler and Stalin, not to mention Saddam Hussein and Osama
bin Laden, are dead and gone.
This paradigm persists for one reason only: it ensures that statecraft will
remain a realm that resolutely excludes the popular will. Elites decide, while the job of ordinary Americans is to foot the
bill. In that regard, the allocation of privileges and obligations now 80 years old still prevails today.
Only by genuinely democratizing the formulation of foreign policy will real
change become possible. The turn in U.S. policy described in
Tomorrow, The World
came
from the top. The turn needed today will have to come from below and will require Americans to rid themselves of their habit
of deference when it comes to determining what this nation's role in the world will be. Those on top will do all in their
power to avert any such loss of status.
The United States today suffers from illnesses both literal and
metaphorical. Restoring the nation to good health and repairing our democracy must necessarily rate as paramount concerns.
While Americans cannot ignore the world beyond their borders, the last thing they need is to embark upon a fresh round of
searching for distant monsters to destroy. Heeding the counsel of John Quincy Adams might just offer an essential first step
toward recovery.
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Russia has consistently stressed its willingness to work with either candidate -- late last
month, the Kremlin's press secretary Dmitri Peskov rebuffed suggestions that Moscow prefers the
incumbent: "it would be wrong to say that Trump is more attractive to us."
But Russia's political commentary sphere has proven more polarized. Some cite
Biden's readiness to extend the New START treaty without additional conditions as evidence that
Biden is someone that the Kremlin can do business with; others have expressed concern over the
Democratic candidate's "Russophobic" cabinet picks and predict that, under a Biden presidency,
Washington's policy of rollback will escalate to an unprecedented level. But there is also an
overarching belief that Washington's Russia policy is so deeply embedded across U.S.
institutions that not much is likely to change in U.S.-Russian relations.
As Peskov put it, "there is a fixed place on the altar of US domestic policy for hatred of
Russia and a Russophobic approach to bilateral relations with Moscow." Still other commentators
are interested in the process as much as the outcome, drawing attention to ongoing mass unrest and
allegations of electoral misconduct in order to argue that Washington has forfeited its moral
authority to lecture others on proper democratic procedure and the orderly transition of
power.
"@realDonaldTrump election night 800,000 lead was wiped out by hundreds of thousands of
mail in ballots counted without any Republican observer," Giuliani tweeted on Sunday
morning, a day after Associated Press called Pennsylvania and the entire election in favor of
Joe Biden.
"Why were Republicans excluded?," he continued, before asking his followers to
"tweet me your guess, while I go prove it in court."
Like his boss, Giuliani has insisted that Biden's apparent victory was the result of fraud.
Republican observers say they were denied access to counting centers, which allowed staff
inside to do "bad things" with the ballots, in Trump's words. At least one postal worker
has claimed that he was ordered to backdate mail-in ballots, while the Trump campaign has
alleged that droves of dead people voted in Philadelphia, and that staff there illegally
counted late-arriving mail ballots.
Giuliani called the "Philadelphia Democrat machine" "brazen," and claimed that the
late heavyweight boxer Joe Frazier and actor Will Smith's grandfather both voted in previous
elections in the city after their deaths.
"I bet Biden dominated this group," he tweeted. "We will find out."
Just an example of how brazen the Philadelphia Democrat machine is.Former heavyweight
champion Joe Frazier voted in the 2018 election. He died on 11/7/18.Will Smith's grandfather
voted in 2017, 2018. He died in 2016.I bet Biden dominated this group. We will find
out.
Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania by around 40,000 votes, or 0.6 percent of the total vote,
though a small number of ballots remain to be counted. Though Republicans in the Keystone State
have not outright called Biden's win fraudulent, State House Speaker Bryan Cutler called on
Friday for Governor Tom Wolf to launch a "full audit" of the vote there before
certifying the result.
In a
letter to Wolf, Cutler cited the widespread use of mail-in ballots without signatures, the
exclusion of Republicans from polling places, and the extension of the mail-in deadline as
"issues that cannot be overlooked."
Based on how the vote was run in Pennsylvania, "no matter who wins, you're going to have
50 percent of the population, no matter which side, that is not going to have faith in the
result," State Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman told reporters on Friday.
Quizzed by reporters about her handling of the vote, Pennsylvania's Secretary of State,
Kathy Boockvar said that she had done everything "to make sure every voter, every candidate
and every party has access to a fair, free, safe and secure election."
Biden has vowed to regain the world's respect for the Outlaw US Empire, which begs this
question: When did the world actually respect it? "Leaders" who uttered the word respect were
paid to do so as it was painfully clear for those at the top levels of governments that after
WW2 what was the USA was now the Outlaw US Empire since it had no compunction violating
International Law and thus its own fundamental Law--a nuclear armed outlaw is something you
fear, not respect. And even before WW2, FDR had to make clear his foreign policy toward those
in the Western Hemisphere was to be that of a Good Neighbor, not Loan Shark. Again, the Loan
Shark is feared, not respected. So, what respect is it that Biden seeks to regain since none
has existed for over a century? We'll need to wait and see what he does immediately after
he's sworn in on 20 January for he must first show respect for the Constitution he'll swear
to defend and uphold, and that means obeying the edicts of International Law as directed by
the UN Charter which is part of said Constitution. IMO, that would need to be a mandatory
first step if he wants to gain respect. Otherwise, he'll signal the USA will remain the
Outlaw US Empire.
Viewing Biden as a cannula to insert Harris and all that would imply, I ask how such a
weak person as Harris might seek to increase consent for her rule. Mrs Thatcher sought this,
as did Bush 43, Truman with Korea, and as many others have classically done, by making a war
and a victory. It does seem sure that the "election" has failed materially to achieve the
basic goal of creating consent. In the example of Thatcher, Robert Green tells us that in the
Belgrano affair the war went very nearly to atomic explosives. One is inclined, in the matter
of atomics, to speculate on how many times luck will prevent nukewar. Of course Korea also
came quite close to nukewar too, and remains there.
The glorious (if hypothetical so far) Harris War may not go well, as Martyanov tells us,
the US has in fact lost military supremacy, and the weak unconsented Harris is not liable, I
judge, to have the strength or understanding to avoid defeat.
Defeat, at this stage of empire, may be akin to the wizard of oz being seen to be a fake.
Indeed, Harris herself seems to be a fake "black" and also a fake champion.
When empires lose wars and are seen to be insane, the several satrapies begin to depart.
Only today, they say, Germany decided not to buy F35's... Therefore, considered as a whole
from this moment in History, it seems to me that we shall have a glorious atomic defeat, will
all that follows.
That would seem to satisfy the Deagle prediction of a mere 54 million persons in USA circa
2025.
When discussing weak people in the White House, don't forget the Bush Baby. Weak
presidents serve a purpose, which is to allow their handlers in the CIA/deep state to work
unimpeded. What this means is that Harris has no bearing on whether the US will go kinetic
again. That decision will be up to committees in the CIA/deep state. Unfortunately, the CIA
is a distillation of the very most violently psychotic and delusional freaks from American
society, which is itself a society that produces more than its share of violently psychotic
and delusional freaks.
Neoliberal fascists continue the purge of the real Left and give us a small taste of what
will happen under a Biden presidency
Posted by: killwallstreet | Nov 8 2020 13:37 utc | 3
------------------------------------------------------
Neoliberals and Neocons are both supporters of the Empire! The only difference is Neocon
don't hide their Empire agenda behind some nice words/slogans like the Neoliberals.
Mao once said he'd prefer to deal with the right party.
I ask how such a weak person as Harris might seek to increase consent for her rule.
I think you are failing to see the continuity of EMPIRE policy. Biden, Harris, Trump,
Hillary, Obama, GWBush, Clinton all did or will do what the Deep State EMPIRE managers want
them to. Harris is no any more prone to war-making than any of her predecessors and will not
take risks that the Deep State have not thoroughly examined.
This confirms my hypothesis that stated the liberals didn't like Trump merely because he's
vulgar - not because of his policies.
This is the "confidence thesis", which states that the sole factor for the success of any
given liberal system (not socialism - socialism is failed by design...) is merely the people
in it to make it work and trust blindly it will work. Guess where this thesis is dominant?
The financial sector.
The logic of finance is impregnating in every facet of American life and politics. The USA
is consolidating itself more and more as an exclusively financial superpower.
If he's smart, the likely President-elect will stop the unpopular endless wars and use the
money to help our domestic economy.
...Lunch Pail Joe was supposed to win back the support of white, blue-collar workers who had
defected to the Republicans. Campaign organizers said he would energize Black and Latinx
voters. But there wasn't much of a shift among non-college educated men. And those folks who
did go Democratic largely voted against Trump, notfor Biden. It's as if
Biden had undergone an enthusiasm bypass.
Trump's populist appeal has strong racist and misogynist elements, but also reflects a
genuine anger at economic inequality and endless wars. If Biden simply returns to mainstream
Democratic Party governance, it won't satisfy the Democratic Party base nor those Trump
supporters with legitimate complaints.
So what is to be done?
Biden will have his hands full reversing Trump's disastrous domestic policies. But he can
also make serious changes in US foreign policy.
Biden can implement progressive and popular policies during his first 100 days in office, in
many cases, programs that he already promised and which don't require Congressional approval.
These include:
Stop the war in Yemen : This years-long conflict, which benefits no one but the
oil-rich rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has killed more than 100,000
people and caused the preventable deaths of 113,000 children .
Biden could immediately freeze weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, forcing them to stop
bombing civilians and withdraw their troops. It would be one step toward ending unpopular,
endless wars.
Earlier this year, Democrats and anti-interventionist Republicans in the Senate voted to
invoke the War Powers Act to stop funding the Yemen war. It was vetoed by Trump.
To his credit, Biden supported the war powers resolution. His campaign spokesperson Andrew
Bates
toldThe Washington Post , "Vice President Biden believes it is past time to end US
support for the war in Yemen and cancel the blank check the Trump Administration has given
Saudi Arabia for its conduct of that war."
Lift Trump's unilateral oil blockade of Cuba and restore normal diplomatic relations:
Trump has gone further to economically attack Cuba than any other President. He cut off much of
Cuba's oil supplies from Venezuela by
applying sanctions against international shipping companies. This, combined with a halt in
foreign tourism, has wrecked the Cuban economy. Public transport doesn't have enough gasoline;
trucks can't bring produce from the countryside.
The people of Cuba pose no danger to the US. During the later part of Barack Obama's
presidency, people from the US freely visited Cuba, to the benefit of both countries.
During the campaign, Biden
said , "As President, I will promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have inflicted
harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights."
With a stroke of the pen Biden could lift the oil embargo, re-open US visits to Cuba, and
fully staff the Embassy in Havana, which is now operating with a skeleton crew.
Rejoin the Iran nuclear accord: Trump unilaterally withdrew from the internationally
binding Iran
nuclear accord and imposed harsh economic sanctions on the Iranian people. This policy of
"maximum pressure" has failed to change Iranian domestic or foreign policy. Biden should
immediately rejoin the accord and lift all sanctions related to nuclear issues.
In September, Biden wrote
, "If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the US would rejoin the
agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations." He added that the new administration
would lift the "disgraceful" ban that prohibits Iranians and people from other Muslims nations
from entering the US.
But Biden's promises were couched
in bellicose, Cold War rhetoric about Iran's alleged threats to the US. Democratic and
Republican hawks will certainly pressure Biden to take a hard line against Iran. But both
countries would benefit from re-implementing the accord and lowering tensions.
End attacks on China: Trump initiated a trade war against China. He tried to ban
Chinese technology from being used in the US and even
sought the arrest of a top Chinese corporate executive. But, of course, China retaliated.
Trump's policy against China has been a massive failure, with the US losing nearly
300,000 jobs as of September 2019.
China poses no military threat to the people of the US. China has one military base outside
its territory; the US has about 750. China now has also developed the world's second largest
economy and competes successfully with US corporations. The trade war is aimed at promoting US
corporate profits at the expense of Chinese competitors.
With executive action, Biden could end the trade war quickly. Unfortunately, Biden has
"drunk the Kool-Aid" when it comes to China. He said , "My focus will be on rallying our friends in
both Asia and Europe in . . . joining us to get tough on China and its trade and technology
abuses."
Biden must shift policies on China as part of recognizing that the world has changed a lot
in recent years.
Joe Biden is a mainstream Democrat who supported many of the foreign policy disasters
of past presidencies. He backed the occupation of Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq War, and he
strongly supports Israel against the Palestinians.
But today, the US is considerably weaker, wracked by recession, and politically divided.
People are fed up with endless wars. Regional powers such as Turkey, Russia, and Iran are
exerting influence in areas formerly under US domination.
If he's smart, Biden will recognize the new reality, stop US interventions, and use the
money being spent on foreign wars to help our domestic economy. I'm confident he will make some
promised changes but progressives will have to build grass roots pressure to make the changes
we really need.
Foreign Correspondent appears every other week. Reese Erlich is an adjunct professor in
International Studies at the University of San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter , @ReeseErlich; friend him on Facebook ;
and visit his webpage .
The world Vice President Biden knew at the end of the Obama administration no longer exists.
In four years, President Trump reshaped the geopolitical reality around the globe, making
Biden's dreams of "normalization" impossible.
If the press reports are true, it appears that much of the world joined the roughly 50
percent of Americans who celebrated the news that Joe Biden had passed the Electoral College
threshold of the 270 votes needed to become president-elect. While America struggles to find a
path where Biden will be able to restore domestic tranquility to a deeply divided nation, the
world will likewise need to get to grips with how it will respond to an administration whose
thinking is rooted in a world that no longer exists.
The geopolitical reality that existed in 2016, following eight years of the Obama
administration, has been radically transformed after four years of a Trump administration which
broke with virtually every previously held diplomatic norm, tradition, and precedent. It was
not just US policy that had been altered – the world also changed, forced to adapt to
Trump's unconventional approach toward international affairs. A Biden administration which
seeks to recreate the world that existed in 2016 will find itself ill-prepared to deal with the
harsh new realities of a post-Trump world.
Repairing the US economy will be a top domestic priority for a Biden administration, and
this cannot be without consideration being given to the contentious state of US-China
relations. Policies
seeking to bring an end to the ongoing US-China trade war will collide with
Biden's tough rhetoric regarding China's military presence in the South China Sea and
elsewhere. It is hard to see how either can be done in isolation, meaning the status quo
inherited from the Trump administration will likely remain for some time to come.
Hollow
climate rhetoric
Joe Biden has promised that he would re-enter the Paris Climate Accord immediately upon
assuming the presidency. When the Trump administration formally withdrew the US from the Paris
Accord on November 4, 2020, Joe Biden responded by tweeting"Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly
77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it."
Re-entering the Paris Climate Accord will not pose much of a problem – the US never
treated it as a treaty, with then-president Obama bypassing constitutional requirements for
Senate advice and consent by simply signing an executive order. But is unlikely that Biden will
be able to get Congress to fund a
multi-trillion-dollar initiative at a time when the US economy is reeling from the economic
downturn brought on by the Civd-19 pandemic. In short, Biden's plan to rejoin the Paris Accord
is little more than political theater with no chance of meaningful success.
Repairing the
Iran deal or not
Another "day one" priority for Biden is to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal). President Trump precipitously withdrew from this
Obama-legacy agreement in May 2018 (another agreement enshrined not as a treaty, but rather
through executive order).
Biden has committed to rejoining the deal "once Iran returns to compliance," and then use
the JCPOA as the basis upon which to negotiate a broader and longer-lasting deal with Iran.
One of the first challenges confronting a Biden administration is to navigate the issue of
what constitutes "returning to compliance." It was the US, not Iran, that withdrew from the
JCPOA, and today the JCPOA framework continues to exist, sans America. As such, the first step
that must be taken is for the US to rejoin without pre-conditions. Then and only then would
Iran consider the possibility of resuming negotiations about any post-JCPOA agreement.
However, some of Biden's key foreign policy advisers
appear to have re-thought their position on Iranian sanctions , which would be lifted if
the US rejoined the JCPOA. There is a feeling that the Trump policy of "maximum pressure" might
be on the verge of paying dividends. Void of any up-front commitment regarding future nuclear
policy, ballistic missiles or regional interference, there is a feeling in the Biden camp that
keeping sanctions in place might be the best policy option vis-a-vis Iran.
Further complicating any future Biden Iran policy will be how a Biden
administration deals with the issue of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria,
and the Trump Arab-Israeli "peace offensive" which has seen several Gulf Arab States normalize
relations with Israel as part of an effort to solidify an anti-Iranian coalition in the Persian
Gulf. It is highly likely that Biden will seek to solidify the US military presence in the
region, thereby threatening the peace agreement with the Taliban, and provoking pro-Iranian
militias in Iraq. Likewise, Biden will seek to use the US military presence inside Syria as a
means of strengthening US-Kurdish ties. In short, a Biden administration will find itself
rapidly bogged down in the forever wars in the Middle East, with no plan on how to either win
or get out.
US-Israeli relations during the Obama administration were at an all-time low, primarily
because of Israel's handling of the issue of Palestinian rights and statehood. With the Trump
administration all but writing Palestine out of any Arab-Israeli framework for peace, the Biden
administration will be immediately confronted by the issue of
how to re-engage on the issue of Palestine , knowing that in doing so it could upset the
trajectory of Arab-Israeli normalization that had been begun under Trump.
Turkey and
NATO
Likewise,
the issue of Turkey looms large . Turkey's involvement in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and now
Azerbaijan has changed the geopolitical landscape in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Levant,
and the southern Caucasus in the four years since the Obama administration. Any effort to
aggressively confront Turkey would need to be taken in conjunction with Biden's plans to
"repair" America's relationship with NATO and the rest of Europe. This is especially the case
regarding Turkey's contentious relations with both France and Greece.
NATO itself is a major issue confronting a Biden administration.
Biden has said he will renew good relations between the US and its NATO allies strained by
four years of the Trump administration. But what does this mean exactly? Will Biden keep US the
forces in Germany that Trump had begun to withdraw? And what will Biden do about US forces in
Poland? Does Biden's pledge to "get tough" with Russia extend to doubling down on demanding new
elections in Belarus? Providing more lethal aid to Ukraine? Further encouraging Georgian
membership in NATO? What will Biden's policy be regarding intermediate-range missiles in Europe
following Trump's withdrawal from the 1987 landmark INF Treaty? The reality is Trump has left a
potential Biden administration a tangled mess in Europe, where any policy initiative in one
area raises a host of problems in another.
And then there is the issue of Russia. Biden spent
his entire campaign promoting how "tough" he was going to be on Russia , and in particular
its president, Vladimir Putin. Two major decisions that will be confronted by a Biden
administration early on, however, would require more finesse than muscle. The most pressing
will be the extension of the Obama-era New START treaty, set to expire on February 21, 2021
– exactly a month and one day after President Biden would be sworn into office. Russia
has indicated that it is ready to extend the New START treaty without preconditions, and
it is likely that a Biden administration would seek to do just this in order to preserve
the last reaming arms control framework between the US and Russia. The next step, however
– negotiating a follow-on treaty – requires an atmosphere of trust that, on the
surface at least – appears to be lacking on the part of a new Biden administration,
especially if it is simultaneously seeking to appear "tough."
Another problem is that of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, connecting Russia with Europe.
The Trump
administration has put in place strong sanctions designed to kill the project. Germany, a
critical NATO ally and one of the nations with which a Biden administration would logically be
seeking to repair relations (especially after the particularly contentious relationship between
Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel), has taken umbrage over what it deems to be US
interference in its sovereign economic interests.
When Biden was vice president under Obama,
he called the Nord Stream 2 project"a bad deal for Europe." Every indication is
that Biden continues to embrace this stance. Even if Biden were to soften his position on Nord
Stream 2 as an olive branch to Germany, however, it would not mean that Biden would be willing
to soften the US policy on sanctioning Russia over Ukraine. The fact is, Biden does not much
care for Putin, and it is hard to see how the kind of personal relationship that preceded most
meaningful US-Russian diplomatic breakthroughs could be engendered, let alone prosper.
There are many other critical foreign policy challenges facing a potential Biden
administration, including the issue of North Korean nuclear weapons, Venezuela, the war in
Yemen, and the growing ISIS presence in Africa, to name but a few. A Biden administration would
most likely seek to bring into its ranks foreign policy and national security experts who had
been weaned on eight years of the Obama administration. But the world these experts left in
2016 no longer exists. Moreover, these experts have been virtually shut out from any advisory
role during the Trump administration. A new Biden foreign policy team will be seeking to
rebuild relations with a world based upon an outdated game plan, creating the potential for a
disconnect between expectations and results that could further strain America's relationship
with the global community.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
The prevailing view is that a victory for Biden would be bad for Russia, because a
Democratic administration is expected to impose new economic sanctions on Moscow as punishment
for its bad behavior -- first and foremost, for its interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election. This view is widely shared by pro-Kremlin pundits, senior officials and the
executives of state-owned enterprises, and is even promoted by the few remaining independent
Russian media outlets such as the Bell newsletter, a daily staple in the information
diet of the Russian upper-middle class.
A more nuanced view on Biden is held by some people working on U.S. issues in the Russian
government. A president who is not tainted by suspicion of being a Russian asset -- and who
knows how to organize a normal process for national security discussions -- will be able to
restore some guardrails to the U.S.-Russia relationship and prevent further deterioration,
those people argue. A President Biden would not be able to pay close attention to Russia, since
he and his senior advisers will be overwhelmed by domestic issues and otherwise focusing on
China. But a possible new Democratic administration appears to be open to retaining some
pillars of the arms control regime and discussing rules of competition in cyberspace. And it
could be more clear-eyed -- and therefore skeptical -- about the side effects and efficiency of
sanctions as the United States' major tool in Russia policy. Much will depend on who is put in
senior positions such as secretary of state and national security advisor, and on the midlevel
bureaucrats controlling the Russia portfolio.
After U.S.-Russian relations nearly hit rock bottom on Trump's watch, nobody in Russia
believes that four more years of Trump could be good for Moscow. If Trump is reelected, the
only silver lining will be the even deeper level of disarray in the Western alliance and U.S.
disengagement from its partners that a second Trump term would likely bring. For the Kremlin,
schadenfreude over the gradual demise of Pax Americana would simply sugarcoat the risks and
downsides of Trump remaining in the White House.
Alexander Gabuev is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Twitter:
@AlexGabuev
The Amerikastani Empire, no matter who controls it, may have lost the hypersonic missile
war. So what? They're very effectively using the second method to wage war against Russia,
which is strangulating it steadily because of the neoliberal capitalist Putinist regime's
famous "restraint".
Russia is increasingly surrounded by enemies and the more it exercises "restraint" the
worse the situation gets for it. I do not see a "Harris" (it would actually be a Killary
Clinton) regime make any difference to that at all.
"To be sure, it was Russia's intervention in Syria in 2015 that sealed the deal, proving
that the US did not have the omniscient capability to launch attacks anywhere, anytime
without impunity – '
Ad homenims against Martyanov fail to persuade me that Martyanov's views are in error. I
am disappointed to see such tactics, as they imply that his logic and assessments are
valid.
However I believe you have not addressed my central point. That is that a politically weak
unconsented naif "leader" is classically prone to make war for domestic "authority". Wars can
be lost.
Collapse of Empire often is attended by military defeat. Harris would be terribly tempted
to try to prevent defeat by any means.
So, obviously, would the mooted opponents some of which my colleague has named for us as
Russia.
President Putin has explained what happens if Russia is attacked by the US. "No one would
survive".
To repeat. The essential feature of Harris is weakness, that tends to a pattern of war,
which, at every step, is liable to catastrophic failure.
Anatol Lieven
explains how strategic empathy is supposed to work:
This kind of empathy has very valuable consequences for foreign policy. It makes for an
accurate assessment of another state establishment's goals based on its own thoughts, rather
than a picture of those goals generated by one's own fears and hopes; above all, it permits
one to identify the difference between the vital and secondary interests of a rival country
as that country's rulers see them.
A vital interest is one on which a state will not compromise unless faced with
irresistible military or economic pressure. Otherwise, it will resist to the very limit of
its ability, including, if necessary, by war. A statesman who sets out to challenge another
state's vital interests must therefore be sure not only that his or her country possesses
this overwhelming power, but that it is prepared actually to use it.
American policymakers are notoriously bad at understanding how other governments perceive
things and the reasons why they act in the way that they do, and we have seen on many occasions
how this failure to understand the other side's thinking has led us into one crisis after
another. Our leaders often fail to grasp that they are threatening another country's perceived
vital interests, because they frequently deny that the other government has any legitimate
interests at all. Instead of trying to see an issue from the other side, our leaders will often
insist that there is only one acceptable way of seeing it and it is invariably the same as
ours. If the other government responds angrily to this approach, they are then deemed hostile
and "revisionist" rather than a normal state reacting as any other state would. Practicing this
kind of empathy does not mean agreeing that the other government is right, but it does mean
acknowledging what their actual position is rather than projecting one onto them.
H.R. McMaster likes to talk a lot about practicing strategic empathy, but in fact he refuses
to understand how other governments see the world. He prefers instead to imagine that they are
all driven to achieve ideological, expansionist goals just as he is, and then he warns about
the aggressive intentions that he has imputed to them. This is exactly the opposite of what
Lieven is talking about, and it is nothing more than reading his own hawkish inclinations into
everyone else's worldview. If McMaster were willing to see things as the Russian government or
Chinese government did, he would understand that they perceive aggressive U.S. foreign policy
since the end of the Cold War as a threat, and at least some of their conduct over this same
period has been in reaction to American overreaching. But McMaster doesn't understand this at
all. Instead, he insists that the behavior of other states has nothing to do with U.S. actions
whatsoever, because to admit this would be to acknowledge that an interventionist foreign
policy can create more problems than it solves.
Lieven points out how this lack of empathy has particularly poisoned our dealings with
Russia over the last thirty years:
Straightforward Western prejudices (now dignified with the abominable euphemism of
"narratives") are part of the reason for these false perceptions derived from the Cold War.
The collapse of Communism, however, also led to a growth in Western hubris that led Western
policymakers to fail either to listen to their Russian colleagues when they stated Russia's
vital interests, or to study Russia in sufficient depth to understand that they were not
bluffing but really meant what they said. Instead, you had the tragicomic picture of American
officials lecturing Russian officials on the "real" interests of Russia.
This failure to listen and failure to understand account for a lot of the deterioration in
U.S.-Russian relations. While Russia has contributed to this deterioration, the U.S. has
repeatedly taken actions that our government knew would be perceived as provocations and
threats and went ahead with them anyway. Promoting NATO expansion and promising that Ukraine
and Georgia would eventually become members were some of the big provocations, but beyond
specific issues there is the overarching conceit that Russian interests end at their border
while ours are seemingly limitless. If we were in their position, we would have found this
intolerable as well. Eventually, Russia was bound to push back, and that is what it has been
doing for the last twelve years. Predictably, the pushback has been interpreted in the West as
irrational aggression, and this is just more of the same failure to understand why other states
act as they do.
If we would avoid unnecessary crises and clashes with other states, especially nuclear-armed
major powers, our government has to begin paying closer attention to what other states say
their vital interests are. There needs to be an understanding that the U.S. cannot cajole or
sanction them into giving up those interests, and these interests will always matter far more
to them than they do to us. Our leaders need to start understanding that and then adjusting our
policies accordingly.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in
the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics
Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The
American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in
history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
Note that an ICBM is not an easy target. In the "boost phase" in can be launched somewhere
near place where the borders of Russia, China and Kazakhstan meet, thousands of kilometers
from any NATO (or allied) installation. Up there in vacuum, ICBM may be decoyed with aluminum
foil balls or something like that. But when landing their course can be accurately calculated
and intercepted (at least, plausibly so). Note that an ICBM is damn fast, so you need to send
a fast missile.
Here LITERALLY comes a twist. Construct a warhead with ability to zigzag while landing.
Turns at that speed (7km/s?) are a technological challenge, but you do not need to turn a lot
to make the future precision sufficiently unpredictable. So Chinese and Russians work on
that. As a counter, Americans are working on hypersonic weapons that would be better in
destroying opponent missiles on the ground before launch, that is a more difficult goal and
thus they "are behind".
The bottom line is that Americans spend many billions (annually) on futile programs
forcing Russia and China to spend resources on counter measures. Would Americans, at long
last, develop stealthy accurate hypersonics for the first strike, a conceptually simple
counter measure is to build thousands of launching sites, each with a decoy of a strategic
nuclear weapon (but some with the real things). They would need to reduce the cost per a
decoy site, more precisely, the ratio between the cost of "launching site destroyer" and
"launching site decoy". Notably, current treaties do not allow for that, so Americans rely on
limitations of the current treaties while breaking them one after another.
2. Actual developments like Syria, Ukraine etc. Biswapriya is notably reticent in
description what a better Russian conduct would be, so the criticism of "neoliberal
capitalist Putinist regime" is not convincing. What a better regime could do?
1. Hypersonic missiles will only ever be used in an all out war, de facto WW III. Which is
overwhelmingly the least likely kind of war. Short of that no use of them is going to happen
except perhaps China-Taiwan. They will certainly not be employed by Russia. Can anyone
imagine Putin using hypersonic missiles in response to a trade blockade by Amerikastan on a
par with the Amerikastani trade blockade of Iran?
2. I have already said exactly what Russia should have done, repeatedly and in great
detail, but if you missed it you can see some of it here:
A few years ago I wrote an article in which I had compared Putin's "restraint" against
Amerikastani provocations not just failures in and of themselves, but direct encouragement to
more provocations. Back in 2014, I had said, Putin was so single issue focussed on the Sochi
Olympics that what even the Amerikastani imperialists STRATFOR called the "most blatant coup
in history" played out in full public view in Kiev, without Russia lifting a finger. I had
written that Putin could have sent in two battalions of Spetsnaz, overthrown Obama's Ukranazi
coup regime, reinstated Viktor Yanukovych, and withdrawn, with the clear statement that if
there were any more coups Russia would return and this time to stay. I remember that when the
militias of the Donbass were desperately raiding museums to secure WWII weapons to take on
Ukranazi armoured columns, when Russian military blogs were demanding "Putin, dai prikaz!"
(Putin, give the order!), Putin kept silent. When the defenders of Donbass had to withdraw
from Slovyansk and were nearly cut into two, when the Ukranazis were at Donetsk airport, when
defeat was only a matter of hours, it was then that Putin allegedly did something. What that
something was I'm not clear about. It was certainly not the dispatch of Russian forces, or
else Russian tanks would have been rolling down the Kiev streets in two days. It may have
been finally sending weapons, allowing volunteers to go to the front to fight (including more
than a few brave and laudable Americans; not all of them are brain-dead imperialists), and
possibly limited artillery support. At any rate, when the defenders of the republics crushed
the Ukranazis at Debaltsevo and were well on the way to liberating Mariupol on the Black Sea,
Putin again withdrew support to them, leaving them without a port and stuck in a frozen war
interrupted by sniping and shelling.
...
But let's ignore the people of the two Donbass republics for the moment and look at the
result of this "restraint". Today, Amerikastani B52 bombers and RC135 reconnaissance planes
fly freely through Ukranazi airspace right up to the Russian border, compelling Russian air
defence systems to turn on their electronic defences, exposing their signatures for analysis
and jamming by said Amerikastanis. Ukranazistan, not being a NATO member officially, is even
more valuable to Amerikastan than it would have been as a NATO member, since it can be used
for staging actions that could not involve NATO without risk of a world war. How's that for
"restraint", Putinoids?
In fact, with the one shining exception of the war against Georgia in defence of South
Ossetia in 2008, when Medvedev – not Putin – was president, Russian foreign
policy has always been criminally defensive and reactive, never proactive. In 2011 Russia
permitted Libya to be destroyed, turning an ally into a jihadi hellhole where a slave trading
human trafficking regime and a CIA asset fight for control. In 2015 Syria was on the verge of
collapse when Putin belatedly and reluctantly sent just enough planes and troops to save
Damascus and help the legitimate government of Dr Assad liberate Aleppo, but failed to do a
thing to stop the north and east turn into, respectively, an Ottoman colony and a Kurd
Quisling puppet state under Amerikastani protection. In 2020 in Belarus it was only the
personal courage and genuine popularity of President Aleksandr Lukashenko that prevented a
colour revolution that would have turned the country into another NATO stooge. The same 2020
saw the Putin regime allow the racist right wing "liberal" Alexei Navalny to be sent to
Germany, and predictably a fake "Novichok poisoning" was immediately manufactured to wreck
EU-Russian relations, which were just about beginning to mend, beyond repair.
"...how war is actually fought in the 21st century - by information control, economic
strangulation, colour revolution, and armed rebellion by proxy..."
Wars were fought like that in the 20th, 19th century, etc. probably all the way back in
history. The purpose of such tactics is to avoid direct conflict, to weaken your oponent, to
draw them into expending resources on debilitating conflicts.
Quotes from "The Art of War" (Sen Zhui, 5h Century BC):
"The greatest victory is that which requires no battle"
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war
first and then seek to win"
The western war against Russia goes back 100s of years.
The point Walter is making is that the US indirect war against Russia is failing and that
the defeated US may seek to "win" by going to a direct conflict with Russia and that a week
person, Harris, may lack the wisdom to prevent, moderate such desires.
Harris is a weak character and it is believed that she is overly fond (reliant) on
alcohol. It seems obvious that she was originally intended to be the democratic nominee but
despite preplanned set pieces (the evisceration of the "racist" Biden) she messed it up and
disappeared in the polls only to resurrected as Biden's running mate. For some reason it
seems very important to have Harris as the VP.
... so the criticism of "neoliberal capitalist Putinist regime" is not convincing. What
a better regime could do?
I think this is correct.
But it doesn't detract from Biswapriya Purkayast's argument that Russia's advantage in
conventional arms is not indicative of Russia's ability to prevail in conflict with the
Empire which engages in 4th-generational warfare.
My own view is that IMO Russia's "answer" to the Empire's 4-gen warfare has been
demonstrated in Ukraine and Syria and their ability to counter 4th-gen warfare will only
improve via Russia's alliance with economic powerhouse China and the SCO military
alliance.
This is consistent with the consensus view at moa that the Empire has a limited time to
smack-down China and/or break up the Russia-China lovefest.
The Task before "Sleepy Joe" is to put Liberal America Right Back to Sleep
by Jonathan Cook / November 6th, 2020
At birth, all of us begin a journey that offers opportunities either to grow – not
just physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually – or to stagnate. The journey
we undertake lasts a lifetime, but there are dozens of moments each day when we have a choice
to make tiny incremental gains in experience, wisdom and compassion or to calcify through
inertia, complacency and selfishness.
No one can be engaged and receptive all the time. But it is important to recognise these
small opportunities for growth when they present themselves, even if at any particular moment
we may decide to avoid grasping them.
When we shut ourselves into the car on the commute to work, do we use it as a moment to be
alone with our thoughts or to silence them with the radio or music? When we sit with friends,
do we choose to be fully present with them or scroll through the news feed on our phones? When
we return from a difficult day at work, do we talk the issues through with family or reach for
a glass of wine, or maybe bingewatch something on TV?
Everyone needs downtime, but if every opportunity for reflection becomes downtime then we
are stagnating, not growing. We are moving away from life, from being human.
Dried-out husk
This week liberal Americans reached for that glass of wine and voted Joe Biden. Others did
so much more reluctantly, spurred on by the fear of giving his opponent another four years.
Biden isn't over the finishing line quite yet, and there are likely to be recounts, court
challenges and possibly violence over the result, but he seems all but certain to be crowned
the next US president. Not that that should provoke any kind of celebration. The rest of the
world's population, future generations, the planet itself – none of us had a vote –
were always going to be the losers whichever candidate won.
The incumbent, Donald Trump, miscalculated, it seems, if he thought dismissing his opponent
as "Sleepy Joe" would be enough to damage Biden's electoral fortunes. True, Trump was referring
to the fact that Biden is a dried-out husk of the machine politician he once was. But after
four years of Trump and in the midst of a pandemic, the idea of sleeping through the next
presidential term probably sounded pretty appealing to liberals.
Most of them had spent their whole political lives asleep, but four years ago they were
forcibly roused from their languor to protest against Donald Trump. They grew enraged by the
symptom of their corrupted political system rather than by the corrupt system itself. For them,
"Sleepy Joe" is just what the doctor ordered.
But it won't be Biden doing the sleeping. It will be the liberals who cheerlead him. Biden
– or perhaps Kamala Harris – will be busy making sure his corporate donors get
exactly what they paid for, whatever the cost to the rest of us.
In this analogy, Trump is not the opposite of Biden, of course. He represents stagnation
too, if of a different kind.
Trump channels Americans' frustration and anger at a political and economic system they
rightly see as failing them. He articulates who should be falsely blamed for their woes: be it
immigrants, minorities, socialists, or the New World Order. He offers justified, if
misdirected, rage in contrast to Biden's dangerous complacency.
But however awful Trump may be, at least some of those voting for him are grappling, if
mostly unconsciously, with the tension between stagnation and growth – and not of the
economic kind. Unlike most liberals, who dismiss this simplistically as "populism", some of
Trump's supporters do at least seem to recognise that the tension exists. They simply haven't
been offered a constructive alternative to anger and blame.
Ritually disappointed
Unlike the liberals and the Trumpists, many in the US have come to understand that their
political system offers nothing but stultifying stagnation for ordinary Americans by
design , even if it comes in two, smartly attired flavours.
They see that the Trump camp rages ineffectually against the corporate elite, deluded into
believing that a member of that very same elite will serve as their saviour. And they see that
the Biden camp represents an ineffectual rainbow coalition of competing social identities,
deluded into believing that those divisions will make them stronger, not weaker, in the fight
for economic justice. Both of these camps appear resigned to being serially – maybe
ritually – disappointed.
Failure does not inspire these camps to seek change, it makes them cling all the more
desperately to their failed strategies, to attach themselves even more frantically and
fervently to their perceived tribe.
That is why this US election – at a moment when the need for real, systemic change is
more urgent, more evident than ever before – produced not just one but two of the worst
presidential candidates of all time. We are looking at exactly what happens when a whole
society not only stops growing but begins to putrefy.
Enervating divisions
Not everyone in the US is so addicted to these patterns of self-delusion and self-harm.
Large swaths of the population don't bother to vote out of hard-borne experience. The system
is so rigged against them that they don't think it matters much which corporate party is in
power. The outcome will be the same for them either way.
Others vote third party, or consciously abstain in protest at big money's vice-like grip on
the two-party system. Others, appalled at the prospect of Trump – and before him the two
Bushes, and before that Ronald Reagan – were forced once again to vote for the Democratic
ticket with a heavy heart. They know all too well who Biden is (a creature of his corporate
donors) and what he stands for (whatever his corporate donors want). But he is slightly less
monstrous than his rival, and in the US system those are the meaningful electoral options.
And among Trump's supporters too, there are many desperate for wholesale change. They voted
for Trump because at least he paid lip service to change.
These groups – most likely a clear electoral majority – could redirect the US
towards political, social, even spiritual growth, if they could find a way to come together.
They suffer from their own enervating divisions.
How should they best use their numerical strength? Should they struggle to win the
presidency, and if so should it be a third-party candidate or should they work within the
existing party structures? What lesson should they draw from the Democratic leadership's
sabotaging – twice over – of Bernie Sanders, a candidate offering meaningful
change? Is it time to adopt an entirely different strategy, rejecting traditional politics? And
if so, can it be made to work when all the major institutions – from the politicians and
courts, to the police, intelligence services and media – are firmly in the hands of the
corporate enemy?
Terrible reckoning
There is no real way to sleep through life, or politics, and not wake up one day –
usually when it is too late – realising catastrophic mistakes were made.
As individuals, we may face that terrible reckoning on our death-beds. Empires rarely go so
quietly. They fall when it is time for their citizens to learn a painful lesson about hubris.
Their technological innovations come back to haunt them, as ancient Rome's lead water-pipes
supposedly once did. Or they over-extend with ambitious wars that drain the coffers of gold, as
warrior-kings have discovered to their cost through the ages. Or, when the guardians of empire
least expect it, "barbarians" – the victims of their crimes – storm the city
gates.
The globe-spanning US empire faces the rapid emergence of all these threats on a planetary
scale. Its endless wars against phantom enemies have left the US burdened with astounding debt.
Its technologies, from nuclear weapons to AI, mean there can be no possible escape from a major
miscalculation. And the US empire's insatiable greed and determination to colonise every last
inch of the planet, if only with our waste products, is gradually killing the life-systems we
depend on.
If Biden becomes president, his victory will be a temporary win for torpor, for complacency.
But a new Trump will emerge soon enough once again to potentise – and misdirect –
the fury steadily building beneath the surface. If we let it, the pendulum will swing back and
forth, between ineffectual lethargy and ineffectual rage, until it is too late. Unless we
actively fight back, the stagnation will suffocate us all.
The emergence in recent weeks of a coalition of neoconservative Republicans and former US
national-security officials who have thrown their support behind the Democratic candidacy of
Joe Biden is an ominous development to those who believe US foreign policy should be guided by
the principles of realism and military restraint, rather than perpetual wars of choice.
In early June, a group of former officials from the George W Bush administration launched a
political action committee (PAC) in support of Biden's candidacy. The group,
43 Alumni for Biden , boasts
nearly 300 former Bush officials and is seeking to mobilize disaffected Republicans
nationwide.
The mobilization appears to be having an impact: More recently, "more than 100 former staff
of [the late US senator John] McCain's congressional offices and campaigns also endorsed Biden
for president,"
according to NBC News , as well
as dozens of former staffers from Senator Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.
That Republican support comes in addition to the more than 70 former US national-security
officials who teamed up
and issued a statement urging Biden's election in November.
Citing what they believe is the grave damage President Donald Trump has done to US national
security, the group does include some mainstream Republicans like Richard Armitage and Chuck
Hagel, but also features notable neocon hardliners like Eliot Cohen, John Negroponte and David
Kramer, who, perhaps not incidentally, played a
leading role in disseminating the utterly discredited Steele dossier prior to Trump's
inauguration.
These are not merely grifters or desperate bids for attention by unscrupulous and avaricious
Beltway swamp creatures. Though there are those too: the so-called
Lincoln Project , helmed by neocon operative Rick Wilson, which is an outside group of
Republicans (including former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele)
devoted to defeating Trump in November.
As historian David Sessions recently
tweeted , "Basically nobody in liberal circles is taking seriously the consequences of the
fact that the exiled cadre of the Republican Party are building a massive power base in the
Democratic Party."
The merger between Democrats and neocons is not merely confined to the world of electoral
politics; it is already affecting policy as well.
Over the summer, in response to The New York Times'
dubious "Russia bounty" story , Democratic congressman Jason Crow
teamed up with Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney (daughter of former US vice-president
Dick Cheney) to prohibit Trump from withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.
Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives Armed Services
Committee also collaborated to pass an amendment that
imposed restrictions on Trump's plan to withdraw troops from Germany , showing, if nothing
else, that the bipartisan commitment to the new cold war is alive and well.
It is noteworthy that while there has been considerable pushback to economic neoliberalism
within the Democratic Party in recent years, thanks, mainly, to the candidacy of Bernie
Sanders, the advocacy of reformers like Elizabeth Warren and the increasing popularity of
economists like
Stephanie Kelton , the same cannot be said for foreign policy.
Biden has evinced an openness to being "pushed left" on social and economic policies if he
is elected president, but on external affairs he still largely operates within the standard
Washington foreign-policy playbook.
If anything, on foreign policy Democrats have moved rightward in recent years, having fallen
not only under the spell of "Russiagate" but also increasingly under the influence of neocons
and other former Bush officials who have pushed that discredited narrative for their own
ends.
The Democrats have also displayed a rather supine obeisance in regard to the country's
intelligence community, in spite of a
multiplicity of well-documented lies or half-truths that would at the very least justify
some skepticism about their claims or motivations.
Nobody should be surprised.
The neocons had been signaling their intention to flee the Republicans as early as 2016 when
it was widely reported that Robert Kagan had decided to endorse Hillary Clinton for president
and speak at a Washington fundraiser alongside other national-security fixtures worried about
the alleged isolationist drift within the Republican Party.
Indeed, the Democrats welcomed the likes of Kagan and fellow neocon extremist Max Boot with
open arms, setting the stage for where we are today: a Democratic presidential nominee running
to the right of the Republican nominee on foreign policy.
Missing: whither the progressives?
Over the past few US election cycles, progressive Democrats have increasingly challenged the
party's prevailing neoliberal bias on domestic economic policy. Equally striking, however, is
that they have been delinquent in failing to provide an alternative to the hegemonic influence
of militarists and interventionists growing within their party regarding foreign policy.
As it stands today, the so-called progressive foreign-policy alternative is really no
alternative at all. To the contrary, it evokes Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's seminal work,
The Leopard , whose main character, Tancredi,
sagely observes to his uncle , "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to
change."
So it is with much of what passes for a genuine foreign-policy alternative: The rhetoric
slightly changes, the personnel certainly change, but in substance, the policy status quo
largely remains.
Consider a
recent interview with the socialist Jacobin magazine featuring Matt Duss, a foreign-policy
adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. Duss, who seeks to articulate the foundations of a new
"progressive" foreign policy, told the Quincy Institute's Daniel Bessner:
"We have neither the right nor the ability to transform other countries, but we should do
what we can to protect and expand the political space in these countries for local people to
do that work. We can also provide funding or resources for American civil society actors to
work in solidarity with their international counterparts ." [emphasis ours]
That sounds anodyne enough, but in reality, it is nothing but a form of liberal
imperialism. Historically, seemingly benign initiatives conducted under the aegis of local
people backed by so-called democracy-building programs have often planted the seeds for more
malign military intervention later.
Who makes the decision as to which local people to support? How does one (purportedly)
protect and expand that political space? We have seen how well that worked out in Afghanistan,
Iraq, or, indeed, in the mounting human tragedy that is Syria today.
Comments like that of Matt Duss amount to this: "We don't have the right to transform other
countries but we're going to try anyway." Forswearing pre-emptive military action (wars of
choice) isn't enough. Change will only come about when US foreign policy adheres to the
principles of the UN Charter, and above all, the ancient Westphalian principle of
non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. American policymakers need to
learn that less is more.
That used to be a guiding principle of Democrats, for example, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "
good neighbor policy " that repudiated intervention in the domestic affairs of Latin
America.
Of course, as subsequent events such as World War II illustrated, there may be a point at
which external assistance/intervention in other parts of the world might become necessary; but
the United States should not perpetually arrogate to itself the role of sole judge and jury in
determining when that line should be crossed, no matter how benign its intentions might
appear.
The broader point is that explicating a foreign policy somewhat less hawkish and merely
paying lip service to international law that transcend the norms established by the Bush-Cheney
neocons isn't enough.
That is the foreign-policy equivalent of the Republican-lite economic agenda embraced by "
New Democrats " such as Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Barack Obama and Timothy Geithner,
whereby the Democrats internalize the Republican Party's market-fundamentalist paradigm, but
simply promise to implement it more fairly, rather than do away with it altogether.
That appears unlikely to change under a future Biden administration. As American
Conservative editor Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
has noted , "Democratic interventionists and Blob careerists now [sit] at the right hand of
[Biden] like [Antony] Blinken, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice, Samantha Power and
Michele Flournoy , who has been touted as a possible secretary of defense.
"They would sooner drag the country back into Syria, as well as position aggressively
against China if the military pushed hard enough and there was a humanitarian reason to justify
it."
Nowhere in Biden's foreign-policy ambit do we find mainstream figures warning about the
dangers of a new cold war with Russia or China, nor to the broader problems posed by America's
overall propensity toward militarism. In fact,
Biden does just the opposite .
The shape of things to come?
With the notable exceptions of a few anti-war Democrats like Barbara Lee, Tulsi Gabbard, Ro
Khanna and Jeff Merkley, the opposition party has spent much of the Trump era turning itself
into the party of war.
Meanwhile, one could envisage a future where the Republicans, under the influence of
"national conservatives" such as Josh Hawley, Rand Paul, or even Trump advisers such as
retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor (recently nominated to be US ambassador to Germany),
becomes the party of realism and restraint abroad.
To the limited extent that President Trump has been guided by any kind of restraint (which
has been
capricious at best ), it has paid dividends for the United States. In the Middle East, for
example, given that the United States is now largely energy-self-sufficient, it no longer needs
to play policeman in that part of the world.
I would also add Bolton to complete the list of crazy-hawk Trump appointees.
While some credit is due to Trump not starting any wars, I have to think it was
unintentional on Trump's part, as evidenced by the same list of ultra aggressive foreign
policy advisors he appointed.
More likely, the subpar crop of new wars was the result of the foreign policy apparatus
refusing to give his administration the authority to launch any original policy of their own.
Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria were continuations of existing policy, and sponsored by
"respected" interests (respectively: by the Oil Industry, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and all of
the above).
The biggest foreign policy initiative of all, cold war with China, is a long term
bipartisan project.
RSH's warning that Trump could still start a war should be taken very seriously. Trump has
vowed that he will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Will he leave office without
ENSURING that they cannot?
I don't think for a minute think that Zionist Biden will do anything to upset Israel. But
the election of Biden is a convenient excuse for Trump to start a war (probably based on a
false flag of some sort) that Biden (or Kamala-Hillary) will "inherit".
@ pnyx #43 . . .on Biden. Just think of the warmongering role he played for the Iraq war. The Neocons
would have an easier time with Biden than with Tronald
Yes. Biden is a Clintonite, Trump was anti-Clinton.
The US war in Iraq - Operation Iraqi Freedom - with its death, destruction and displacement
has been rightly called the worst US foreign policy move ever.
The Clintons started it, and then promoted it with Biden's assistance as Chair of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee.
President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law on October 31, 1998.
On December 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton announces he has ordered air strikes against
Iraq because it refused to cooperate with United Nations (U.N.) weapons inspectors.
Trump's foreign policies were remarkably different? How? He assassinated an Iranian
general, which nearly had the US enter into a hot war with Iran, bombed Syria twice, put
additional sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, Russia and the DPRK. Trump's State Department has
successfully enacted regime change in Zimbabwe, Sudan, El Salvador, Chile, Honduras, Bolivia
(Mike Pompeo congratulating Luis Arce on his win -- very suspicious), and is trying regime
change in Hong Kong, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe again, and as
of late, Nigeria.
You could argue that Trump wants Iran to be somewhat stronger so he can sell more weapons
to his MIC buddies and profit that way, therefore he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, and
the weapons import/export sanctions on Iran expired. But that's a different and more brash
method of managing Empire. It's different from Biden's "strategic de-escalation" policy with
Iran via the Iran nuclear deal, but not that one that necessarily yields better results for
Iran in the long term.
Calm down folks, the elected officials in the US have been puppets of the elite for the
entire history of the country.
The problem we're facing is within the elite community and far above any government's
control.
They didn't legalize drone striking "terrorists" any where on the globe by accident.
This means the elite are terrified of the fact that the internet and Trump both have exposed
them for the morally bankrupt, greedy, mass murdering psychopaths they truly are.
The accidental presidency of Trump made them realize that their useful idiots(elected
officials) where more idiots than useful and that they had to use the state sponsored
monopolies in the press as well as their privately controlled publicly funded covert
community to steer the narrative away from actual reality into their alternative commoditized
version of reality.
Trump was never trying to defend America from the elite for the common man. He was trying
to exploit the elite who had rejected him and his father for decades as well as cash in on
their predicament in order to pay off his debts and start his own reality TV network.
I agree Trump was useful and informative but in the end he, like us is just along for the
ride.
Don't do anything rash and don't for one second think a regime change in America is a rare
occurrence. Remember the Kennedy's ?
The only way to win is to not become one of the elite's useful idiots by lashing out
against another citizen. Poor and middle class only get the illusion they help decide
policy.
The policy is decided and auctioned off within the billionaire funded think tanks and sent to
the useful idiots in DC to be rubber stamped in order to trick you into thinking the
legislative branch is legitimate. These people could f*ck up a two car parade and prove it
over and over again.
Stay sane folks, the motives haven't changed in centuries and the elite are far more
scared of us than they are the other elite's because they all know they're all cowards.
In addition, considering Trump was supposedly a Russian puppet, Congress under his admin
passed a bill which allowed the US to arm Ukraine against Russia even more.
Wonderful and thought provoking analysis of current political affairs b. However I would
like to add that Biden and Trump are the products of political trends that have deep roots in
modern US and world political affairs that have been ongoing for some 100 years or more.
Biden and Trump did not occur in a vacuum. Both are products of the two world wars that were
fought in the last century. More recently, the US since 1940 and continuing to the present
day, has been actively preparing or fighting a major war somewhere on this planet. This
development has in turn created a vast military and civilian bureaucracy that constantly
needs to be fed a diet of real or imagined threats in order to survive.
The world recognizes what U.S. elites don't: the utter, total American failure to contain
Covid-19 has damaged U.S. standing and will do so until the virus is controlled. Meanwhile,
regional powers, China and Russia, cooperate and share resources, particularly vaccines. Cuba
provides treatments, but the U.S. turns up its nose at Cuban medicine, even if it means more
American covid patients die – this, though Cuba's pharmacopeia for this plague appears
superior. China sends doctors and medicines across the globe. Russia opts for sane herd
immunity – through vaccination. These countries act like adults. Not a good look for the
U.S.
The Obama regime's deplorable trade and military "pivot to China," along with its sanctions
against high-ranking Russians and Russian energy, financial and defense firms and the Trump
regime's provocations, sanctions and insults aimed at both countries have now born fruit: There
is talk of a military alliance between China and Russia. Both countries deny that such is in
the offing, but the fact that it is even discussed reveals how effectively U.S. foreign policy
has created enemies and united them. Even if they would have drawn closer anyway, China and
Russia cannot ignore the advantage of teaming up in the face of U.S. hostility. A more idiotic
approach than this hostility is scarcely imaginable. Remember, not too long ago the U.S. had
little problem with its chief trading partner, China, and there were even reports some years
back of actual military cooperation in Syria between the U.S. and Russia. All that is gone now,
dissolved in a fog of deliberate ill-will.
So what are some of the absurd U.S. policies that have reaped this potential whirlwind? An
utterly unnecessary trade war with China, with tariffs that were paid, not by China, but by
importers and then passed on to American consumers. There is the Trump regime's assault on
China's technology sector and its attempt to lockout Huawei from the 5G bonanza. Then there are
the attacks on Russian business, like its deal to sell natural gas to Germany, attacks in which
the U.S. insists Germany buy the much more expensive U.S. product to avoid becoming beholden to
Russia. And of course, there are the constant mega-deals involving sales of U.S. weapons to
anyone who might oppose China, Russia, North Korea or Iran.
Aggravating these economic assaults, the U.S. navy aggressively patrols the South China Sea,
the Black Sea and more and more the Arctic Ocean, where Russia has already been since forever.
Russia has a lengthy Siberian coast, making U.S. talk of Russia's so-called aggressive posture
there just plain ludicrous. And now a NATO ally, Turkey, stirs the pot by egging on Azerbaijan
in its war against Armenia, which has a defense treaty with Russia. Azerbaijan is famous for
the oil fields of Baku.
Never has it been clearer that the U.S. deploys its military might to advance its
corporations' interests, international law be damned. As General Smedley Butler wrote of his
military service way back in the early 20 th century, he was "a high-class muscle
man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster
for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make
Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in," and on
and on. Nothing has changed since them. It's only gotten worse. Indeed now we're in a position
where it is Russia that abides by international law, while the U.S. flouts it, instead
following something bogus it calls the "rules of the liberal international order."
The biggest and most consequential U.S. foreign policy failure involves nuclear weapons.
Here the Trump regime has outdone all its predecessors. It withdrew the U.S. from the
Intermediate Range Nuclear treaty, which banned land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles
and certain missile launchers and which it first signed in 1987. It withdrew from the Open
Skies Treaty, inked in 1992. That agreement allowed aircraft to fly over the signatories'
territory to monitor missile installations.
Trump has also made clear he intends to deep-six the 2010 New Start Treaty with Russia,
which limits nuclear warheads, nuclear armed bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and
missile launchers. The Trump regime has made the ridiculous, treaty-killing demand that China
participate in START talks. Why should it? China has 300 nuclear missiles, on a par with
countries like the U.K. The U. S. and Russian have 6000 apiece. China's response? Sure we'll
join START, as soon as the U.S. cuts its arsenal to 300. Naturally that went over like a lead
balloon in Washington.
And now, lastly, the white house has urged nations that signed the Treaty on the Prohibition
of Nuclear Weapons – which just recently received formal UN ratification – to
withdraw their approval. The U.S. spouted doubletalk about the TPNW's dangers, in order to head
off international law banning nuclear weapons, just as it has banned – and thus
stigmatized – chemical weapons, cluster bombs and germ warfare. Doubtless the Trump
regime's panic over the TPNW derives from its desire to "keep all options on the table"
militarily, including the nuclear one.
What is the point here? To make the unthinkable thinkable, to make nuclear war easier to
happen. The Pentagon appears delighted. Periodically military bigwigs are quoted praising new
smaller nuclear missiles, developed not for deterrence, but for use. Indeed, scrapping
deterrence policy – which has, insofar as it posits no first use, arguably been the only
thing keeping humanity alive and the planet habitable since the dangerous dawn of the atomic
era – has long been the dream of Pentagon promoters of "small, smart nuclear weapons" for
"limited" nuclear wars. How these geniuses would control such a move from escalating into a
wider nuclear war and planetary holocaust is never mentioned.
Before he assumed office, Trump reportedly shocked his advisors by asking, if we have
nuclear weapons, why can't we use them? Only someone dangerously ignorant or profoundly lacking
in basic human morality could ask such a question. Only someone eager to ditch the
human-species-saving policy of no-first-strike nuclear deterrence but willing to risk nuclear
extinction could flirt with such madness. Later in his presidency, Trump asserted that he could
end the war in Afghanistan easily if he wanted, hinting that he meant nukes, but that he did
not incline toward murdering 10 million people. Well, thank God for this shred of humanity.
Some assume a Biden presidency would chart a different course, but they may be counting
their chickens before they're hatched. Biden has made very hostile noises about Russia, China
and North Korea and has surrounded himself with neo-con hawks. He has so far made no promise to
return to the nuclear negotiating table for anything other than START. Would he try to
resuscitate the INF and Open Skies treaties? Would he end Trump regime blather aimed at
scotching TPNW? Maybe. Or he may have imbibed so much anti-Russia and anti-China poison that
he, like Trump, sees the absence of treaties as a green light for nuclear aggression.
Biden's official Foreign Policy Plan says that he regards the purpose of nuclear weapons as
deterrence, thus endorsing this at best very flawed compromise for survival. That he,
apparently unlike Trump, abjures a nuclear first strike is a huge relief, but how long will it
last? The Pentagon has been very persuasive over many decades of center-right rule and there is
no reason to assume that it will suddenly adopt a hands-off policy with Biden just because he
favors nuclear deterrence. Some military-industrial-complex sachems regard the no-first-use
principle as a mistake. Also, remember, Obama okayed a trillion-dollar nuclear arms upgrade.
Biden was his vp. What about that? This is no minor, petty concern. Russia is armed to the
teeth with supersonic nuclear weapons and China has concluded from U.S. belligerence that it
better arm up too. We are in dangerous waters here. Let's hope they don't become
radioactive.
The US is essentially another colony to the multinationals who can set up domiciles in tax
havens, bribe politicians to enact favorable laws, and lobby for spending to enrich
themselves. That's the reality, not the liberals versus conservatives. They also have the
benefit of an unelected body that can enrich them through printing money which gives them
more power to stop other fiscal stimulus. It's evident in much of the world where this is
going on in the West. It is a variation of the Economic Shock Therapy applied by the West,
except that the oligarchs are spared from the economic shock.
Yes, the earth keeps spinning no matter who "wins" the election.
Armenia, apparently the skies are clear of turkish drones with a little help from Russian EW,
so the Artsakh army is deploying armor again to defend Shusha, they almost lost control of
the road to their capital Stepanakert.
Another relevant piece of information, the Ukros smelling victory by their satrap Biden
last night heavily attacked Donetsk, a taste of things to come.
Posted by: vk | Nov 6 2020 16:33 utc | 76
That's a good one, Evo calling for Almagro, the OAS will take care of Georgia and
Pensilvania.
And this is also another opportunity of all the other stuff the US could have demanded
their allies should do as well as the USA that they haven't done because it would have caused
extreme autof/kery, sic banning the sale of airliners, engines, electronics etc. Russia could
simply have pulled its titanium supply. Guess who's share prices would tank first and all the
consequences?
As we have pointed out here before, while the US is exhorting u-Rope to 'take on for the
team,' mega-corps (though weakening) like GE has arrange full localization of its turbine
(power/mineral extraction) business with a local Russian partner. Yes. GE, Microsoft and
others told the White House to f/k off. Not in public.
What we see is salami slicing sanctions (SSS) where the west adds small slices here and
there that do add up, the latest being on suppling microelectronics to the Russian aviation
industry. This is to hobble Russia's investment in its current rebuilding of its civil
airliner industry or what's left of it. These sanction are a dick move precisely because they
are easy and get support from both american political parties.
We have also covered on this blog many times before, cutting Russia off from the Joy of
Sex West, they've cut their own markets off (retail/food produce etc.) which Russia
has in turn finally massively self-invested for domestic products and also up market
equivalents. That's cost u-Rope billions not only in lost sales, but in future sales share
that will not return to where it once was.
So, cutting off western microelectronics for aircraft looks even more weak p*ss
considering Russia's state strategic program of Russianizing its aircraft programs despite
the obvious up front cost. Russia was doing this anyway because it was obvious which way the
wind was blowing. Either they get on with it or they will be forced to do it.
The west is running out of any meaningful sanctions they can enact without causing futher
blowback. How stupid is that? It's the product of thirty years of 'Do Something'
policy however dumb or short sighted because the West has to be seen to do something. The
concept of Leave it Alone has never crossed their minds. It really is an ad dick tion!
😉 Just don't expect to finding them in a self-help group admitting to all the nasty
s/t they've done and as part of their step program, reaching out and apologizing for any of
it. Neither them nor their media supporting hamsters.
In Lavrov's interview with Kommersant which was mostly about the conflict between
Armenia and Azerbaijan, he was asked about the US Election and then about the dire state of
relations with the EU. Lavrov reiterates Russia's position:
"I repeat once again that Russia will respect the choice of the American people, and that
we are ready to establish constructive cooperation with the winner of the race for the White
House, regardless of his party affiliation. However, considering the current circumstances,
we realistically assess the prospects of bilateral cooperation and do not expect too much.
Anyhow, let's wait for the voting results. We don't have long to wait."
Yes, the interview was done prior to the vote counting anarchy. IMO, we can substitute the
Outlaw US Empire for the EU in Lavrov's answer about the current crisis in relations:
"Russia's relations with the European Union are in crisis – and it is not our fault.
The EU bureaucracy and individual member states are using any, even the most absurd, reasons
to enhance something they call 'containment' of Russia.
"New sanctions, illegitimate from the international law perspective, are being imposed.
Considering the number of sanctions imposed on our citizens under far-fetched pretexts, the
EU is second only to the United States. The European media continue a broad anti-Russia
campaign. In trade and economy, the Brussels bureaucracy is stepping up various protectionist
policies, violating WTO rules and introducing its openly politicised rules of the game as
they go.
"At the same time, we are being told that Russia can "earn" the right to have normal
relations with the EU by changing its behaviour. This cynicism is absolutely off the
scale."
Lavrov repeats it's up to the EU to alter its behavior:
"[O]ur European colleagues must clearly understand that any interaction is only possible
on an honest and equal basis and respect for each other's interests. We will not allow any
one-sided games here. There will be no unilateral goodwill gestures on our part. We still
hope that a rational approach and common sense will prevail, both in Brussels and in member
capitals. We are ready to wait for that as well."
Western hypocrisy revealed 10 years after the event in today's Independent:
"Tony Blair and Iraq: The damning evidence" . And they go on and on about those wicked,
evil Russians and their tyrannical leader causing death and destruction Syria by their
"support" of the Assad government whilst the West arms the "freedom fighters" there.
The partisan swallowing of ridiculous anti-Russia conspiracy theories by Democrats in
Congress added to Hunter Biden's truly sleazy business adventures in Ukraine have created an
exceptionally dangerous brew to threaten and demonize Russia if former Vice President Joe Biden
wins the U.S. national election on November 3. All the curses and bungles of America's past 20
years will rise up anew to threaten the nation's entire future,
If Joe Biden wins the election, we face an unprecedented situation in U.S. and global
affairs since the beginning of the Atomic Age in 1945-49:
The problem is far deeper and more dangerous than any personal problem with Biden or his
apparently sleazy son (Hunter Biden's business dealings with both Ukraine and China cry out for
serious honest congressional inquiries in the interests of sane and disinterested U.S. future
relations with China and Ukraine – as well as with Russia.)
The real problem is that for eight years the Obama administration, in which Joe Biden was
the putative Number Two figure engaged on a Helter-Skelter, crazed descent towards mindless
confrontation with Russia and also institutionalized a reckless and plain wicked policy of
toppling governments around the world in straight defiance of international law.
The true architect of these policies was neither Obama nor Biden but their first secretary
of state Hillary Clinton. It was she who ordered the CIA to collect DNA samples of Latin
American national leaders, an unprecedented seven of whom contracted cancers, some of them
exceptionally rare and virulent, including two democratically elected presidents of Brazil and
the late democratically elected president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez who died of his.
Clinton also unleashed the dogs of chaos and war across the Middle East by approving the
undermining and successful toppling of the government of Libya and the undermining although
unsuccessful efforts to topple the government of Syria. This unleashed a ferocious civil war,
the greatest catastrophe the Middle East has seen since Iraq's attack on Iran in 1980, also at
the time recklessly supported by an ignorant and incompetent president Jimmy Carter.
Carter, like Obama after him was ludicrously ignorant of international affairs. Both
presidents allowed themselves to be led by the nose through the region by Zbigniew Brzezinski
who served as Carter's national security adviser. Brzezinski's eagerness to embrace and support
the very worst Islamist genocidal extremist groups was exceeded only by his lifelong,
unwavering hatred of Russia and all Russians.
Clinton was succeeded as secretary of state in Obama's second term starting in January 2013
by a far more experienced, restrained and responsible figure, Senator John Kerry. Kerry rightly
worked hard and well with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to prevent the reckless and
destructive policies of the rest of the administration from totally destroying constructive
communications between Washington and Moscow.
But Kerry could not control even his own State Department. He proved utterly unable to rein
in the neo-conservative and neo-liberal super-hawks with whom Clinton had seeded the State
Department led by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria
Nuland. They joined forces with crazed right wing warmongers like the late Senator John McCain
(now sanctified, but whose uncontrollable screaming rages were legendary in his days on Capitol
Hill).
Together with ambitious plotters in the European Commission in Brussels they manipulated the
toppling of the stable, democratically elected government of Ukraine in the 2014 violent Maidan
coup in Kiev. McCain and Nuland actually addressed the violent revolutionaries and openly
exhorted them to topple their own democratic and previously peaceful government.
The Kremlin moved – in reality with careful and considered restraint – to
safeguard the democratically expressed wishes of the population of Crimea to rejoin Russia, and
of the Russian ethnic majorities in the eastern provinces of Ukraine. But the Obama
administration joined forces with the openly neo-Nazi movements that had seized undemocratic
control in Kiev.
Over the following six years to the present, successive U.S. congresses have voted enormous
sums of financial aid and sophisticated weapons systems to be sent to Ukraine with the express
purpose of killing Russian soldiers and Russian-supported forces. It is no wonder that false
and entirely undocumented reverse accusations have now been against Russia by the very same
individuals who have supported the forces of violence, revolution and aggression for so long in
Ukraine.
President Donald Trump, to his great credit, ran on for election in 2016 on a policy of
reducing tensions with Russia and restoring a state of stable coexistence with the other main
thermonuclear power on the planet. At no point did he advocate stripping the United States of
its defenses.
On the contrary, Trump doubled up on Obama's unprecedented more than $1 trillion nuclear
weapons modernization program. He expanded spending on both conventional and strategic weapons
on the biggest scale seen since the Reagan-Caspar Weinberger buildup 40 years before.
Nevertheless, Trump was then subjected to the most unfounded, ridiculous political witch
hunt against a sitting national leader in U.S. history – at least since President John
Kennedy was openly and repeatedly accused of treason for seeking to reduce the dangers of
nuclear confrontation after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Through all of this, hatred and unreasoning accusations against Russia were accompanied by
attempted efforts even to destroy the property and economic security of the Russian people.
Congress imposed punitive sanctions (they failed completely) with Democrats taking the
lead.
Why revisit all this history? It is because, as the great and wise American novelist William
Faulkner understood, "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."
If the Democrats regain power in Washington, they will return with all the dire and insanely
dangerous policies and obsessions they displayed for eight years under Obama and Biden. But
those hatreds and prejudices will be superheated by four years of Russiagate fantasies and
raving accusations against Russia unsupported by any serious evidence. Indeed, they have been
coolly exposed and refuted indeed by many courageous and principled former senior U.S.
officials and scholars.
Nevertheless, this Undead Past will rise up, more terrible and destructive than any fantasy
of werewolves and zombies, to demolish our Present and horrifically curse our Future.
I have argued that Russia
is not a "European country" ; my argument stands on the fact that Russia and Europe had
quite different histories and little contact until the Emperor Peter became a major player in
European history by knocking Sweden out of the running. I have argued that, whatever they may
have wished in the past, an
increasing number of Russians today don't want to be "Europeans" : they view Europe –
the West – with increasing distaste and bewilderment. "Europe" is, of course, a word with
many meanings: here I mean a culture/civilisation/society that, over the past half millennium,
has spread around the world and now is commonly called "the West". These days, the capital
power of the West is the USA but the USA, Canada, Australia, much of South America and many of
the other outposts of European settlement are children of the original European
civilisation.
Russia's relationships with the West have gone through many ups and downs – ally, for
example, with Britain in 1812, 1914 and 1941, enemy in 1853, 1918, opponent during the
so-called Great Game and the Cold War. Russians often see the relationship as one of ungrateful
rejection: take, for example, the long-forgotten important service Russia did for the
Union in
1863 . In my mind this feeling stems from Russia's unusual history as a predator
fish which remembers its long time as a prey fish – its neighbours remember the
first, itself the second – the prey fish feeling was, of course, strongly reinforced by
the death struggle of 1941-45.
Be that as it may, since the fall of the USSR and the end of communism, Russia has been
rejected by the West. After a short-lived period in the very early 1990s when there was talk of
" A new era of
Democracy, Peace and Unity" "a time for fulfilling the hopes and expectations our peoples have
cherished for decades" , the rejection has been unmistakable, brutal and direct. NATO
expansion, in whatever platitudes it was wrapped, now stands clear as what Moscow always
thought it was – an anti-Russia enterprise moving military forces ever closer to Russia.
Russians are quite right to see colour revolutions in their neighbourhood as moves against
them. Russia is under a permanent sanctions regime – the excuse changes but the sanctions
remain and Jackson–Vanik was
instantly replaced by the Magnitsky Act . Washington continually adds
new sanctions and ensures that its lackeys do as well. And, even though a strong argument can
be made that the sanctions have benefited Russia because Moscow was smart enough to deal with
them like a judo master, the fact remains that sanctions are hostile acts short of war.
So, many people wondered how much longer Moscow would keep on making offers to its
"partners" and seeing them thrown back at it. Some think Putin is too soft – it's a
generally accepted estimate that about half of the 25% or so of Russians that do not approve of
his performance in office do so because they think him too obliging.
Well, maybe it's happening at last. We will take the remarks by Foreign Minister Lavrov
noting that he is not a man who has ever spoken lightly or without thought: whatever he says is
to be taken seriously. At Valdai he said:
we must stop considering our Western colleagues, including the EU, as a source of assessment
of our behaviour that we need to follow, or measuring ourselves with the same yardstick.
And
if the EU is arrogant enough to declare, with this sense of unconditional superiority, that
Russia must understand there will be no "business as usual," well, Russia wants to understand
whether there could be any business at all with the European Union under these conditions.
That's pretty plain – Russia rejects the West's self-awarded role of judge and will
not be its liegeman. It strongly suggests that Moscow is thinking about giving up. It has,
however, made one last offer – perhaps the last offer, even a test: Moscow will not deploy certain missiles if the West
does not .
The Navalniy affair seems to have been the one step too many. Aleksey Navalniy is an
anti-Putin activist much beloved in the West but mostly ignored by Russians: his poll rating is
around the margin of error and only occasionally has he had much of an effect. In August 2020
he fell sick on an airplane which turned back and landed in Omsk where he was hospitalised. A
few days later, still in a coma, he was flown to a hospital in Germany. We have only recently
learned that the transfer to Germany was at
Putin's direct urging .
So, to recap. Navalniy falls sick, receives treatment in Russia, is moved to Germany,
"novichok" is found, Russia "fails to explain", Russia is blamed and sanctioned. No facts, no
data, no believable or consistent story. Where was the "proved guilty according to law"
there?
Very much of a pattern this and we've seen it with the Skripals, Nemtsov, MH17, Magnitskiy,
Moskalenko (I wonder
if anyone remembers that one? How about
Patarkatsishvili ?), Litvinenko, Politkovskaya – blame Putin immediately and declare
him guilty when he fails to prove the negative and huff "
Russia's contempt for the international norm against chemical weapons use must stop ". Add
to this NATO expansion, colour revolutions, endless accusations of submarine incursions or
election interference and all the rest. Year after year after year. Even the dullest muzhik in
deepest Siberia should have got the point that, as far as the West is concerned, Russia, the
ever-enemy, is guilty of any charge you want to make. Russia is guilty just because it is. And
anyone who asks about
ducks or children can only be a Putinbot spewing fake news.
So is Moscow about to say it's had enough? If so, it has somewhat of a problem. At the
moment and for the foreseeable future, depending on how serious the civil
disorder is after its election , the United States is the principal power in the world if
for no other reason that it has far more destructive power than anyone else. Moscow must tread
carefully here; cutting relations with Washington would cost more than it's worth. London is
probably lost to Moscow but Berlin, Paris and Rome are not necessarily lost. And, as they go,
many other Europeans will follow. Therefore Moscow can hope that, in the reasonable near term,
more normal relations with some of the principal European powers may be possible. Thus it would
be a bad move to cut relations with them.
Where's the "close and comprehensive partnership", where's the "equality, mutual benefit and
respect"? And the next sentence in the website is not true: "Russia and the EU enjoy intensive
trade and economic relations." No they don't: the only entities to trade with the EU qua EU are
manufacturers of office supplies, paper and red tape. Russia has trade with Germany, Italy et
al – with members of the EU, not the EU itself. What's the point?
So, if Moscow has had its fill of three decades of insults, offences and calumnies and wants
to make a point, cutting relations with the EU structure would be the place to start: easy and
cheap. Pull out the permanent mission and stop all doings: deal with the individual countries
one by one. Brussels might even welcome the savings now that
it's lost a chunk of its budget .
Neoconservatives are flocking to the Biden campaign. The DC braintrust that believes in
using US military power to aid Israel in the Middle East has jumped parties before– to
Clinton in '92, and back to Bush in 2000– and now they're hopping aisles to support
Biden, with Bill Kristol leading the way.
Last night on an official Biden campaign webinar led by "Jewish Americans for Biden", and
moderated by Ann Lewis of Democratic Majority for Israel, two prominent neocon Republicans
endorsed Biden, primarily because of Trump's character posing a danger to democracy. But both
neocons emphasized that Biden would be more willing to use force in the Middle East and
reassured Jewish viewers that Biden will seek to depoliticize Israel support, won't
necessarily return to the Iran deal and will surround himself with advisers who support
Israel and believe in American military intervention.
Eliot Cohen, a Bush aide and academic , echoed
the fear that Israel is being politicized. "A lot of Jews made a big mistake by taking
something I was in favor of, moving the embassy to Jerusalem and obsessing about that," he
said. But there was huge political risk in that: if the United States is internally divided,
at war with itself, and "Israel has become a partisan issue, which it should never ever be .
That's not in Israel's longterm security interest."
Biden will reverse that trend by appointing strong supporters of Israel, Cohen said.
"Joe Biden has a long record as a friend of Israel. I think we're both quite familiar
with the kinds of people who will go into a Biden administration and I think we feel very
comfortable that they will have a deep and abiding concern for Israel which is not going to
go away."
Edelman also said that Trump has created many "dangers" in the region by not being
aggressive:
"By withdrawing or threatening to withdraw US forces, by repeatedly not replying or
dealing with Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf or against Saudi oil infrastructure,
he's created a sort of vacuum that is being filled in Libya by Russia and by Turkey "
Biden will work with allies and be ready to use U.S. military in the region– or as
Edelman said, "to play."
"The region is a mess," Edelman said. "And yet the president continually says he wants the
U.S. to withdraw from the region. The reality is that the withdrawal of US power form the
region has helped create this morass of threats."
He cited three war zones in which the U.S. or proxies' bombing is essential to U.S.
security, Libya, Yemen and Syria.
In Syria, "The Trump administration pulled out and said, we don't want to play here,"
Edelman said.
"Other forces are going to fill the vacuum created by the absence of US leadership and
they won't be benign forces," Edelman said. Iran, Russia, or Turkey will come in and create a
"vortex of instability that can potentially come back to haunt us" -- with terrorist attacks
or the disruption of energy markets.
Cohen and Edelman opposed Obama's Iran deal, and both predicted that Biden will be hawkish
on Iran.
In other words, Trump has failed the Israel Lobby because he has tried to pull our US forces
from the Middle East and, although he has laid down sanctions against Iran, he has not gone to
war. Of course, these are the people who promoted the ongoing disaster of the Iraq war. They
are probably right that Russia and Turkey would benefit from US pulling out completely
(Libya??), but where are legitimate US interests in all this? Trump ran on ending Middle East
wars and getting out of the region–the original reason the neocons jumped ship (in
addition to fears of a nascent Orange Hitler). Despite being president he has been unable to do
so. He has been strongly
opposed by the foreign policy establishment and the Pentagon -- a testament to the extent
to which the US security establishment is Israel-occupied territory.
Lurking in the background of the attitudes of Cohen and Edelman is the idea that Biden would
tame the forces on the left that have been so critical of Israel in recent years. With Biden
they get it all: Strongly pro-Israel even to the point of initiating a war with Iran, taming
the anti-Israel voices on the left (Kamala Harris with her Jewish husband s not among them),
and perhaps a Senate led by Israel operative Chuck Schumer. Meanwhile the Republican Party
would default to the Chamber of Commerce and the remaining neocons, and the hope of a
nationally competitive GOP, much less a truly populist GOP, would die. Bill Kristol loves the
prospect of a long-term Democrat domination.
And of course, all of these bellicose proposals are cloaked in a veneer of "Jewish values"
-- not so ironic if one assumes, as is certainly the case, that promoting war for specifically
Jewish interests is indeed a Jewish value.
Cohen spoke about Jewish values. He and his family belong to an orthodox synagogue and
have raised four children with a religious education. "I've tried to live my life by Jewish
values. One thing that's very important for Jewish Republicans. Obviously the issue of Israel
is important, it's the only Jewish state, it's important to look after it and for it to
thrive, but what is our approach to politics?" Jews don't believe that you Render unto God
the things that are God and render unto Caesar the thing that are Caesar's and therefore not
take issue with a politician's character "so long as they do what we want them to do." He
said, "That's not the Jewish way." In the Book of Samuel, the king engages "in despicable
behavior," and the prophet storms into his bedroom. "We believe that character matters." And
this election is about character.
Okay, Trump is not a saint. But given that Biden is up to his eyeballs in scandal doesn't
bother Cohen at all -- despite overwhelming documentation. So we are not supposed to care that
the Biden family raked in millions by using Biden's influence to alter US foreign policy or
that China could easily blackmail him into doing their bidding on trade and military issues. So
in the end, it's really about what Cohen, Edelman, Kristol, et al. think is good for Israel
(Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot jumped the GOP ship even before Trump was elected). Again, count
me unsurprised.
And of course, the other thing is that neocons have always been on the left
within the Republican Party. One might say they have attempted to not only make Israel a
bi-partisan issue (their first priority) but also promoting the liberal/left social agenda,
such as replacement-level non-White immigration, as a bipartisan issue -- both values strongly
promoted by the mainstream Jewish community. They jumped ship mainly because Trump was
promising to undo the liberal/left social agenda as well as disengage from foreign wars and US
occupation of the Middle East. During the 2016 campaign, some of the strongest denunciations of
Trump came from neocons ("
Jewish Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump: Neocon Angst about a Fascist America" ).
If you haven't seen it, Carlson's interview with Bobulinski is damning, and the documents he
refers to have been thoroughly authenticated.
Trump has been dealing with jews all of his life and knows what they are like. This is a
double-edged sword for jews as he is wise to their dishonest criminality and double-dealing
and is able to work around their machinations and dishonesty.
This s why (some) jews hate him. If he wanted to, he could expose them for what they truly
are
To Trump's credit, he has his own security detail interspersed within his Secret Service
protection team making possible harm or actions against him difficult if not impossible. A
good thing
I truly believe that Jews are the strongest assets Satan has. They are constantly forcing
us super-stupid Gentiles into wars for Israel. We have Gentile-American soldiers (Jews don't
serve) facing off against my white Christian brothers, mainly to be a counter-balance to
Iranian forces in the country who are battling U.S.-backed terrorists. Jews hate Russians
because they are white Christians and they actually hate us white-Christians in America, too.
(For now, we are simply useful idiots for them.) It is time that we Gentiles wake up and kick
every single last Jew out of this country before the Jews get us all killed!
DJT has done a good job of separating the J wheat from the chaff so to speak.
Unfortunately, it's the chaff that seems to have all the power money and influence. For
now.
Who paid for all this peace in the Middle East?
American tax money was used to
De-stabilize Iraq
De-stabilize Libya
De-stabilize Syria
Only Iran is left as a major power in the Middle East.
Let's get the draft going to get our brave boys and girls(and LGBTQ) fighting to maintain
peace in the Middle East.
We ALL need to give until we can give no more.
Maybe draft exemptions for the Ivy League, someone has to tell us what to do.
Jewish promoted Critical Race Theory believes and teaches that systemic racism is the main
reason why blacks commit criminal acts. Therefore the response to the disparity between White
and Black crime is to alter the standards, i.e., change White expections of the Black
community. Because to say to Black Americans that they must alter their behavior to meet the
current standards is racist.
Samuel Krasner, the Jewish DA in Philadelphia, is aboard with this. He decriminalised
shoplifting in his jurisdiction. And we now have shoplifters walking out of stores with
armfuls of stolen goods whilst smiling in the cameras and saying, 'I can't be
prosecuted.'
Then there is this unbelievable piece of BS legislation from Virginia: "Virginia
legislature passes bill preventing cops from stopping cars with no headlights, brake lights,
etc."
When Virginia state legislator who sponsored the bill, Patrick Hope, was asked about this
by a reporter from The Daily Press he responded by saying he didn't know that police were no
longer allowed to stop vehicles for not having their lights illuminated.
Patrick Hope sponsored a bill without actually knowing what was in it! If you think at
this stage that Patrick Hope is a hopeless idiot he gets worse.
When the importance of working brake lights on vehicles was mentioned to Hope he said:
"The brake lights -- I'm not concerned about that as a safety issue -- but I can certainly
see how headlights could be of concern ."
A Virginia state legislator is dumb enough to believe that brake lights have no importance
whatsoever to road safety in his state.
The modern United States? You couldn't f ** king make it up! By the way, who are the
majority people driving defective cars in Virginia? Blacks and other newly arrived
minorities, of course.
Would the local authorities in any part of Israel decriminalise shoplifting for a minority
demographic in their area? Not likely. How about Samuel Krasner, would he recommend that
crime be legalised for minorities in the state of Israel? No, he wouldn't. He's not stupid.
He would not do anything that would destroy his native country.
Would an utter idiot like Hope be allowed to introduce insane life endangering legislation
in Israel? No, his Jew financial backers would not allow that.
But, Trump or no Trump, all this is coming to your local area of America very soon.
It's amazing. It's astounding. A cursory look shows there are Jews behind every act of
destruction against White America and its founding culture.
The Jews are driving the de-educating of American youth, they've staffed 90% of the media
with lying, immoral and shameless journalists and installed unintelligent and easily
corruptible politicians in both US political parties.
As we see with Hope, the Jews have made possible state legislators who are so stupid that
they are probably suffering from mental health issues. What's very sad is that there's hardly
a peep from the great American public against them.
The Jews who first suggested making anti-semitism a crime in the West actually said to
their comtemperies at the time that it was just a "pipe dream." They never actually thought
in their wildest dreams that Western people and politicians would accept the lie that
anti-Jewishness was systemic in the West and needed laws to counteract it.
But, unbelievably for them, they easily got their anti-Semitism legislation enacted. And
then, enboldened, they drove ahead with Holocaust denial and all the other BS.
Now, as we see with the headlights, brake lights and the decriminalising of shoplifting
for Blacks, the Jews have become viciously emboldened. They've learned that European
provenanced Whites will accept any and all Bull S ** t that is thrown at them.
Shame on all Americans for sitting idly by whilst the tiny Jew demographic urines on all
that your forefathers built and fought for.
If your descents are Islamist slaves policed by Blacks in the latter half of this century
(all ruled from on-high by the Jews) they'll deserve it. They'll deserve it because their
fathers and grandfathers were idle and lazy cowards who sat on their butts while the great
inheritance which they were bequeathed was pulled out from under them.
BTW: Who had secured a vantage point in New York in September 2001 from which to watch the
planes fly into the buildings? And who then danced and cheered energetically as the planes
hit the buildings and killed 2,977 people?
Surely, you might think, it was Arabic Islamists, or Pakistanis, or some other race of
Muslims.
You'd be wrong if you thought this.
The correct answer is "five Israelis". Yes, it was five Jews who danced and sang as 2,977
Americans were murdered in cold blood.
@Lot el. Cursed with the loss of thousands of American lives resulting from such actions.
Cursed with the loss of tens of thousand of non-American lives from such actions. All this
for a shitty little country with which America doesn't even have a defence treaty.
Our Steadfast Ally ? The USS Liberty, Jonathan Pollard and the Israeli selling of American
defence technology to China immediately spring to mind. There is no defence treaty between
America and Israel. Israel is not America's ally. Rather it is a parasite on the American
body politic. Either Americans rip the parasite off their body, or it will eventually kill
America.
The Australian parliament seems about to
approve a 'human rights' law that would establish the ability to exert arbitrary state power over individuals in other
countries who have been accused of human rights violations. Ironically, this law gives the accused no day in court, and no
chance to see charges or evidence, confront accusers, present a defence or have a ruling made by an authority other than the
prosecution.
The law is called a Magnitsky Act. Kimberley
Kitching, a Labor senator from Victoria, has given notice that she will introduce the bill in December. If it's like the other
Magnitsky Acts introduced in half a dozen countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, it will itself
violate human rights when it is weaponised to target international adversaries. How did Australia come to consider a law that
violates human rights? And how does it weaponise 'human rights' to target international adversaries? How come it isn't being
critically questioned by the media? How come it enjoys
bipartisan
support
? Here is the backstory Australians don't know. I call it the Browder Hoax.
In 1998 William Browder, an American
investor, gave up his passport to become British, which put him on the US Internal Revenue Service list of '
tax
expatriates
', as the United Kingdom, unlike the United States, doesn't tax profits on offshore holdings. This was
convenient because from the mid-1990s he invested in Russian shares, becoming, he says, the largest foreign holder of Russian
stocks. The shares were moved offshore to tax-free British Virgin Island
shells
.
In a 2007 scam involving collusive lawsuits
('You cheated me, you must pay'; 'Yes, I agree, I will pay'), Browder's shell companies claimed to the Russian Treasury that
they had to pay out all their 2006 profits and requested refunds of all taxes paid in 2006: $230 million. This was known as
the tax-refund fraud.
The victim of the scam was the Russian
Treasury, though Browder first lied to the
Financial
Times
that his companies had been targeted by crooked Russian officials who were after the companies' assets. This,
however, was rather unlikely, as the companies themselves were participants in the scam, and Browder later admitted in a US
federal court
deposition
that
his companies had no assets to go after.
Browder would then claim that the shells were
stolen by an unrelated criminal operation, but evidence raises questions about that. His trustee, HSBC (as confirmed by the
HSBC comptroller in US federal
court)
,
said in July 2007 that it needed $7 million for legal fees to recover stolen companies, but Browder wrote in his book he
didn't know that they were stolen till
October
of
that year.
Browder declares that his 'lawyer' Sergei
Magnitsky, hired in 2007 (and really his accountant since 1997), discovered the scam and was jailed because of it, and then
beaten to death when he wouldn't recant. However, Browder never provided evidence of this, and neither do Magnitsky's
pre-arrest
testimon
i
es
,
which list him as an auditor. In fact, the scam was first revealed in April 2008 by a Russian, Rimma
Starova
,
the figurehead director of a shell company that took over the companies, and reported in July by the
New
York Times
and the Russian paper
Vedomosti
.
Magnitsky didn't allude to it in testimony until October.
Magnitsky was
named
as
a fraud collaborator by the scam's operative, Viktor Markelov, in the Russian trial that sent Markelov to prison.
In fact, the whole Magnitsky hoax was
invented two years after the accountant's 2009 death (due to terrible prison medical care) when Browder needed to block the
Russians from using Interpol to arrest him and return him for trial over $100,000 in tax evasion (he falsely claimed that he
hired the disabled and invested locally) and illicit stock buys of Gazprom, the energy conglomerate whose share sales in
Russia were then restricted to Russian citizens (he used cut-out companies with nominee owners). Browder admitted the
'disabled' ruse in his US court deposition.
Browder's public statements to
Chatham
House
, London, and University of San Diego
Law
School
in the two years after Magnitsky's death said nothing about his being beaten. Browder invented the story that
Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight riot guards to promote the Magnitsky Act in the United States to block the Russians'
tax-evasion pursuit. The Physicians for Human Rights in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to whom he gave all his evidence,
contradicts
the
beating claim, but the 'attack' is nevertheless cited in the US law.
Thus the 2012 US 'Magnitsky Act', formally
known as the
Russia and Moldova
Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act
2012, sanctioned dozens of Russians that Browder
said, without evidence, were responsible for the death of his claimed 'lawyer' -- that is, his accountant, Magnitsky. They were
low-level officials, tax investigators, court officers, and medical and prison staff. It was a stretch to say that
investigators looking into tax evasion overseen by an accountant were responsible for his death in detention.
In fact, the European Court of Human Rights
ruled
last
year that, 'The Russians had good reason to arrest Sergei Magnitsky for Hermitage tax evasion'. It said: 'The accusations were
based on documentary evidence relating to the payment of taxes by those companies and statements by several disabled persons
who had confessed to sham work for the two companies. One of them testified that he had been in contact with Mr Magnitskiy,
had received money from him and had assisted him in finding other sham employees. He also said that Mr Magnitskiy had told him
what to say if questioned by the authorities and had asked him to participate in a tax dispute as a witness'.
None of the targeted people were given a
chance to answer the charges. When former Interior Ministry tax investigator Pavel Karpov brought a defamation case in London
against Browder for accusing him of the murder of Magnitsky, the judge
ruled
that
he didn't have standing, because he didn't have a UK reputation to defend. However, the judge said there was no justification
for the charge. He said, 'nothing in this judgment is intended to suggest that, if the Defendants were to continue to publish
unjustified defamatory material about the Claimant, the Court would be powerless to act'. It was the only time any of the
targets had anything close to due process in a court of law.
The US act was expanded to sanction human
rights violators in any country of the world. Browder has had it passed in half a dozen countries, and is lobbying for an
Australian version. Putting Magnitsky's name on a law builds his wall against Russian justice. But the so-called 'human
rights' law has dangerous implications for the civil societies of democratic countries.
It violates due process of the law. People
accused of crimes in Australia have the right to hear the charges against them, to have evidence presented in court, to
challenge or refute the evidence and if found guilty to be punished according to law. Should people accused of crimes in
countries other than Australia be charged here while being denied those rights?
Michael McFaul, US ambassador to Russia from
2012 to 2014 and a friend of Browder's,
writes
in
his book
From Cold War to Hot Peace
that
before the Magnitsky Act the United States had already put Russians on a sanctions list. 'I was the one that ran that
decision-making process in the government. And we did that. And we don't need the Magnitsky Act to deny people visas to come
to the United States of America.' But, he said, Browder wanted a more public action: 'He said that wasn't good enough -- we
needed to do this publicly' -- with Magnitsky's name on the bill. McFaul went on:
'Bill and I had a philosophical
disagreement. I did not believe that the U.S. government should be able to seize individuals' private property without due
process. They should have the right to defend themselves in a court of law. Bill disagreed. He vowed to push on with his
campaign in Congress. I wished him luck'.
In fact, the Magnitsky Act is not about human
rights, which might have made the due-process issue salient. It is the weaponisation of human rights not only to benefit
Browder but to attack declared adversaries. The Magnitsky Acts are now added to an arsenal of sanctions that includes economic
sanctions against a country for 'crimes' attributed to their governments, though the crimes are not adjudicated by any
international tribunals, which would provide due process. Though the Magnitsky Act was devised by Browder to attack Russia,
Australian parliamentarians appear to be aiming it at China, which follows the United States' escalating campaign against that
nation. Most of the 160 witness
statements
filed
with the foreign affairs subcommittee considering the law came from invited witnesses attacking Beijing. Browder was one of a
handful invited to give live testimony. Critics of the bill were not. Later, former senior diplomat Tony Kevin was given a
chance to oppose the law in a
statement
and
a
hearing
.
In fact, the Australian parliament did its best to prevent critics of the proposed law from expressing their views even in
print. I filed an extensive comment exposing Browder's falsehoods that was largely
redacted
,
with links to documents
blocked
.
After I responded to a direct attack on me by
Browder, the subcommittee refused to post my response.
One must be careful about the models one
constructs. This law is aimed only at people in other countries, since Australian law guarantees due process to anyone charged
in Australia. How can Australia claim jurisdiction over crimes in other countries? Would it accept other countries claiming
jurisdiction over crimes alleged in Australia? This law would deprive people charged in other countries of rights enjoyed in
Australia. That challenges Australia's claims to be a country that honours the rule of law. In effect, the proposed law is not
aimed at people because they are human rights violators (such as some police in the United States or France) but because they
are political enemies (officials in Russia and Iran). This damages the legitimate worldwide human rights movement by allowing
targeted governments to dismiss charges as politically motivated. And in many cases, they would be right.
Beyond that, there may be another harmful
effect. Authoritarian right-wing political movements are growing in the world. Imagine what any of their governments could do
with a Star Chamber law bereft of due process that accuses and punishes political targets. They could say that they are just
copying the West. The precedent is poor. Back in 2001, George W. Bush's government pushed the UN General Assembly to
adopt
a resolution
requiring all member states to pass anti-terror laws, and this rapidly became an open invitation for various
regimes to bring in oppressive laws, with far-reaching consequences. The Magnitsky Act risks giving more tools to
authoritarian regimes.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LUCY KOMISAR
Lucy Komisar is an investigative journalist
who writes about the secret underbelly of the global financial system -- offshore banking and corporate secrecy -- and its links
to corporate crime; tax evasion by the corporations and the very rich; empowerment of dictators and oligarchs; bribery and
corruption; drug and arms trafficking; and terrorism. She was the winner in 2010 of the Gerald Loeb, National Press Club,
Sigma Delta Chi, and National Headliner awards in the United States for her exposé of Ponzi-schemer Allen Stanford, which was
printed by the
Miami Herald
. The Loeb
award is America's the United States' most prestigious prize for financial journalism. @lucykomisar
"... "As for Russia, we are, of course, interested in a broader dialogue and in the development of equal relations and cooperation between our two countries," Naryshkin said. "But, unfortunately, we do not see any signs of such an approach being found in American politics." ..."
"... "If Biden is elected, a disarmament deal would be much more difficult to achieve," Kiewiet said. "I don't think they [the Democratic Party] are capable of a foreign policy that treats Russia fairly." ..."
"... Regrettably, Mr. Naryshkin is correct. The US foreign policies have not been able to "make any adjustments" in attitude since the time of churchill's speech about the "iron curtin," and the military industrial complex, as well as the deep state, continue to dictate foreign policies to the White House. ..."
"... America is on the downslope, so poor relations will continue for quite a while. It is therefore up to Russia, China and others to build a new economic order that isn't US-centric. ..."
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want better relations with Moscow after the US election. That's according to the
head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, who is pessimistic about rapprochement between the nations.
Speaking to Dmitry Kiselev, the boss of media holding Rossiya Segodnya, Sergey Naryshkin explained that neither of the main US
political parties have any desire to improve the relationship between Moscow and Washington, as things stand.
"As for Russia, we are, of course, interested in a broader dialogue and in the development of equal relations and cooperation
between our two countries," Naryshkin said. "But, unfortunately, we do not see any signs of such an approach being found in American
politics."
The top spy's comments came on the eve of the 2020 US presidential election, in which Democratic candidate Joe Biden faces off
against the incumbent President Donald Trump. Throughout his entire leadership Trump has been accused of being a lackey of Russian
President Vladimir Putin, with some claiming he is compromised by the Kremlin.
However, Trump has shown little willingness to make friends with Moscow by increasing sanctions, pulling out of arms control treaties,
and putting pressure on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Russia to Germany. His opponent, Biden, has also shown no love
for Russia. While campaigning, the former vice president promised to be tough on the Kremlin, and there is little chance of him removing
any of Trump's sanctions, given his rhetoric.
On Tuesday, Professor Roderick Kiewiet from the California Institute of Technology told Russian news agency TASS that extending
arms control treaties could be even harder under Biden.
"If Biden is elected, a disarmament deal would be much more difficult to achieve," Kiewiet said. "I don't think they [the
Democratic Party] are capable of a foreign policy that treats Russia fairly."
peter R 52 minutes ago
Regrettably, Mr. Naryshkin is correct. The US foreign policies have not been able to "make any adjustments" in attitude
since the time of churchill's speech about the "iron curtin," and the military industrial complex, as well as the deep state,
continue to dictate foreign policies to the White House.
Lacus_Magnus -> peter R 5 minutes ago
Following WWI we invaded Russia from the east, while the UK, leading a coalition of pro-imperialists invaded from the west,
our oligarchs hated the socialist state then as much as now. They were only ok with the Russians from 1942 to '45, then it went
back to business as usual.
Anastasia Deko 44 minutes ago
America is on the downslope, so poor relations will continue for quite a while. It is therefore up to Russia, China and
others to build a new economic order that isn't US-centric.
BluDiva 7 minutes ago
Although a friendship with Russia could be immensely rewarding for the American people, there are a few, just a few, key players
in US foreign policy, who hold tremendous sway over anything good to happen. We all know why.
Shahriar Chaz -> Dadkhah 23 minutes ago
Finally someone speaking sense in Moscow...none of them are your friends and that includes the Trump supporters here.
billy brown --> CrazyJoe2 16 minutes ago
What about israel?
Naughtylus 52 minutes ago
I support Trump, and one of the reasons is because he bullies the EU OVERTLY. Those before him, bullied it too, but covertly,
allowing spineless EU politicians to pretend everything was fine to Europeans, and not having to enter in conflict with the USA.
But with overt bullying, EU politicians cannot pretend anymore, and are slowly forced to defend the EU against the USA. More of
Trump, and the EU could grow balls and pursue its own geopolitical interests, instead of serving the US Interests. That would
also be useful to Russia, because intrinsic European interests imply a rapprochement with Russia. But I will not hold my breath
about EU politicians growing balls..
I agree with all you points PO, rather those complaining about Russia are throwing a bunch
of contradictory self-serving and ultimately emotional accusations and complaints that
very much echo western foreign policy after the Cold War of Do Something, regardless
of how dumb, damaging and even making the situation much worse for those who they supposedly
are claiming to help. DO SOMETHING! My response is 'WTF don't YOU do something
youselves ? Put your body, blood and mind on the line if you really care so much
rather than typing on a keyboard thousands of miles away in great comfort. Keyboard warrior
wankers!
Those actually running the west aren't much different which is why they go for the easy
option of flying above 20,000ft and dropping bombs rather than sending very large numbers of
troops to hold ground and have a quick result. Why? Because they are afraid of bodybags and
how they might look. That is the crux. They're more afraid being turned against by the
electorate so 'easy solutions' that look good but don't deliver are the order of the day.
They just can't stand the real cost or be courageous enough to spell it out to the public
that their words if taken at face value means quite a lot of death. It doesn't sell.
I don't understand the current situation in full context but it seems that Armenian
leadership has whored themselves to Western interest. And the whore-wanabe's pictured above
are eager to sell their souls as well.
Russia's take may be to let Armenia face consequences of that decision to align with the
Western empire. And, it will be up to the Armenian population to remove the leadership that
chose Western allegiance if they so chose.
Russian leadership (showing great wisdom in my opinion) shuns imposition of
the-right-thing-to-do on a population that is too lazy or too fearful or too accommodating of
a whoring leadership. Russia has learned its lesson about helping other nations at great
expense to itself and then expecting gratitude or loyalty. As noted by others, the only
nation to do such has been Serbia.
The above Russian strategy is likely predicated on the belief that the Western empire is
wobbly and nearing the tipping point. Russian leadership appears to have concluded that it
now time to disconnect Russia from the Western economic system to escape the coming
calamity.
MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/. Moscow will provide all necessary assistance to Yerevan in
accordance with the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between the two
countries, if hostilities spill over to Armenia's territory, the Russian Foreign Ministry
said in a statement on Friday.
I am sure word will soon arrive here from Finland about this matter, namely about what
Russia should do but, as a result of its inherent weakness, most certainly will not do.
You may find things different by mid-November, as Armenia has – allegedly –
formally asked for Russian help. Here's a particularly pithy and realistic quote;
"In the modern world, you must either have your own heavily armed army combined with a
strong economy that can support it, or you must be friends with those who have it (here's a
hint, either Russia or China, because we see the results of Pashinyan and Lukashenko's
friendship with Europe and the US online today). The usual liberal mantras of
"Russia-Armenia-Belarus have no enemies" are good exactly as long as you are not attacked in
reality, and not on the Internet or in the media. And no assurances of American and European
friendship will save you. You'll be lucky if they don't take you apart themselves."
Remember when Pashinyan was elected, and the protests which swept him to power? Remind you
of anybody? Poroshenko, maybe? Not to suggest Pashinyan is a powerful oligarch – to all
appearances he is not. But he came to power by the same mechanisms – playing public
naivety like a violin, quoting hopeful citizens who really believe a different face is the
magic bullet which will blow away corruption, and receiving the benevolent blessing of the
west that the election was just as fair as fair could be. It always is, so long as the
western-preferred candidate gets 'elected'.
"Historically, Armenia's elections have been marred by fraud and vote-buying.
However, international observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe said the elections had respected fundamental freedoms and were characterised by
genuine competition."
You'd think that kind of boilerplate would have lost its power to make me laugh, but by
God, it still tickles me; "characterised by genuine competition" – oh, 'pon my word,
yes! You, like others, may have noticed by now that all it takes in certain countries to
eliminate any possibility of 'genuine competition' is advance polls which indicate the
western-disliked incumbent will win easily. That's how the people plan to vote, but that
counts for nothing – it's only 'genuine competition' if there is a realistic
possibility the west's man (or woman) will get in, and the more likely that looks to happen,
damned if the competition does not get more genuine. Nobody seems to notice that the
'competition' reaches the very zenith of 'genuineness' just about the time nobody has a
chance of holding off a landslide win by the preferred candidate.
I think by now everybody who reads here knows how I feel about it; you can't really blame
the west and its media outlets for behaving the way they do. The western countries are mostly
run by wealthy venture capitalists, and what wealthy venture capitalists like best is
acquiring and controlling more wealth. This should not be a surprise to anyone. Even when
western venture capitalists are dead altruistic and benevolent, what they want is for more
wealth and capital to be acquired and controlled by the country to whom they feel the most
sentimental attachment, so that a few of their countrymen might do all right out of their
maneuvering as well – these are the people who come to be regarded as
'philanthropists', like George Soros. But generally they are mostly in it for themselves.
No, what I find the most objectionable is the veneer of holier-than-though goodness which
always covers western exploitation ops. They always have to pretend like a smash-and-grab
crime is some kind of fucking religious moment just because it is they who are doing it, as
if they bring rectitude to even the most blatant self-interest. When the truth of the matter
is that what the powerful do not give even the tiniest trace of a fuck about – Locard
himself could not detect it – is what life is going to be like afterward for the
average citizen in the country targeted for exploitation by changing its leadership. You
know, the ones jumping up and down in Independence Square (there's always an Independence
Square), or walking around with big dumb grins on their faces as if they have just felt the
planet shift under their feet.
It's worth mentioning here that the period during which the west – led, of course,
by the United States and its government/venture-capital institutions – was the most
optimistic about Russia was the moment when it looked like a class of wealthy venture
capitalists was going to take over the running of what was left of the Soviet Union; the
Khodorkovskys and the Berzovskys and the Abramovitches. The wealthy Boyars who, albeit they
spoke a different language, really spoke the same language to the letter as their western
counterparts.
And the official western perspective on Russia made an abrupt turn to the South, and grew
progressively grimmer, the more evident it became that that was not going to happen.
"Venture capitalists" may not be the most accurate terminology for those who run the West.
There are a lot of old power blocks including the Vatican, the British royals, Zionists and
other groups who get along well enough not to openly attack each other but will protect their
particular areas of dominance. Their glue are narcissistic/messianic beliefs of their right
to rule humanity. There may be deeper and murkier layers in the ruling hierarchy. I say
"ruling" but their rule is only to the degree that we do not care enough to resist.
The interesting thing is that these demonic forces are nearly entirely of a Western
origin. Is there a genetic factor that has become concentrated in the ruling elites? Some
other self-propagating driver of their beliefs?
I do believe that Russia and China are sorting and identifying the real actors in the
Western ruling elites.
A very interesting and thought-provoking reply. I think we must be careful to not just
'study it, judiciously as you will', while 'history's actors' reshape reality around us.
It seems to me that whatever the behavior of Armenia, Russia is still expected to
protect/save christians in the region regardless of all the s/t that is thrown at them and
particularly knowing the blood thirsty history of Az/turcoman/whatever behavior against
Armenians.
There is a point here as Russia presents itself as the leader of the Orthodox Christian
world it is its actual duty to rise above (pthe etty nasty s/t) and protect christendom in
the hood regardless
But, and as we all know, the having the cake and eat it crowd has only but expanded, most
notably those who are pro-west. They are owed it and thus they demand it as they are
considered and have been told that they are a cut above the rest. It's the same western
'benefit of the doubt' that allows its intellectuals to support successive foreign policy
adventures that have ended in catastrophic failure but even worse left those that they
pledged to help in a much worse position.
I also think that in this case most people really do not know that Armenia is run by a
pro-western government. It's not exactly hot news. And its still not widely reported let
alone. After all, the western media is not exorciating Washington, Berlin, Paris and London
for doing f/k all to help Armenia. They've been mostly silent. No need to point out yet again
that the west picks and choses which countries/territories to carve up in contravention of
long standing international law, and which others it strictly abides by, in this case
Nagorno-Karabakh.
This may well be in part of being stung by the highly successful and bloodless return of
the Crimea to Russia which was done in line with international law regardless of western
protestations. It really put their carving off Kosovo by extreme violence in an very bad
light by comparison and cannot be denied any longer as 'not a precedent' if they claim Russia
took over Crimea illegally. The West has really tied itself in to a gordian knot at the
international and state level despite doing its best to ignore it at home. The rest of the UN
members don't buy it in the least.
So back to the beginning, who to blame? Russia is the easiest target. Surely not the west
who is also selling weapons to Azerbaidjan, buys its gas and give the dictatorship a free
pass. And even less so i-Sreal selling weapons, another people that has suffered the fate of
genocide. No. Russia has to do something!
And, or, is it also their argument that despite 'Russia not respecting international law'
that in this case it is an 'exception' (but not a 'precedent' (!)) and their failure to do so
is inexcusable? It really is the most gigantic load of bollocks.
Just a few points – Russia's defense of Christendom may be limited to Orthodoxy as
the rest are spinoffs or spinoffs of spinoffs. Christian religious values in the west hardly
resemble core Christian values so why should Russia give a damn about protecting such
Christians? If the Armenia Orthodox church is comfortable with, if not endorsing, LGBT? life
styles, then they would likely be considered as non-Christian. I do not know if the forgoing
is the case; just discussing implications.
Russia will fulfill its obligations to defend Armenia from armed attack. However, once
Azerbaijan has gotten what it wants, there will be no incentive for an attack on Armenia and
especially so considering the dire consequences of a Russian military response.
I remember when my wife asked an old priest here after our youngest's christening into the
ROC if we could get wed in said church. He told her we couldn't because I wasn't a
Christian.
She begged to differ, but he insisted that I was a heretic and would have to baptized
according to ROC rights and after having had ROC catechism lessons.
He was right too and twofold: (i) all "Christian" faiths are heresies, aberrations of the
true, correct liturgy as passed on from the apostles and (ii) I am a heretic of a pagan
nature.
I have a soft spot for pagan beliefs as well. There are nonphysical entities that we
interact, mostly without awareness, on a daily basis. No big deal, we just need to be mindful
of such realities to better understand why things happen the way they do. The Woke folks
could not possibly understand such, being isolated in their hall-of-mirrors tight little
self-contained world of self-importance with the firm conviction that they are the be-all and
end-all. A peasant toiling in the fields or a kid in the slums understand reality better the
the Wokest of the Woke. Am I serious? I don't know.
There's a report the other day that China's massive planting of trees is estimated to soak
up to 35% of the carbon dioxide it produces industrially. The data comes from ground level
station, satellite and other sources.
Which leads me to this question. If farmers (in u-Rope) are now being paid not to grow
food, then wtf not just plant forests of trees that can also be farmed and managed? Is it
because it is too easy and there's not much profit in it?
Trees are central to Germanic paganism. How can one not respect a tree such as the mighty
oak that is at least 500 years old when mature and may live for 1,000 years and more? Such
living things interact with us -- of course, they do, if "only" in the maintainance of an
ecological balance of the gas that is necessary for our existence.
That bastard Charles "the Great" of the Franks waged relentless war for over 30 years
against the Saxons (not the "Anglo-Saxons, but my kinfolk in what is now Lower saxony in
Germany) because of their refusal to accept Christianity.
Too right they didn't, for they knew full that if they had, the would have fallen under
the thrall of the person who styled himself as emperor of the Western Roman Empire that had
fallen into dissolution some 300 years earlier, which reborn "Roman Empire" had as its state
religion Christianity -- Roman Christianity that is, and its emperor, much later styled as
the "Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation", was guess who? That's right, Charles the
Great/Carolus Magnus/ Karl der Grosse/Charlemagne.
One of Charles' favourite tricks in subduing the Saxons was making public spectacles of
hacking down their "holy" trees or " Irminsul . After one victory against rebellious
Saxon pagans whose lands the Franks had invaded, Charles had them all baptised -- then had
them beheaded, all 4,500 of them!
Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, said on the closing of the conflict:
The war that had lasted so many years was at length ended by their acceding to the
terms offered by the King; which were renunciation of their national religious customs and
the worship of devils, acceptance of the sacraments of the Christian faith and religion, and
union with the Franks to form one people.
So the Saxons started eating small pieces of bread that they were to believe was god,
which is far more reasonable than believing that trees and rivers and forests and storms were
worthy of their respect.
Right! I'm off to my holy grove in order to pay my respects to Woden.
Okay, you've baited me (love to spend more time here but I do appreciate the occasional
glance and many great comments and discussions)
"But veneration is inherent in the human breast. Presently mankind, emerging from
intellectual infancy, began to detect absurdity in creation without a Creator, in effects
without causes. As yet, however, they did not dare to throw upon a Single Being the whole
onus of the world of matter, creation, preservation, and destruction. Man, instinctively
impressed by a sense of his own unworthiness, would hopelessly have attempted to conceive the
idea of a purely Spiritual Being, omnipotent and omnipresent.
Awestruck by the admirable phenomena and the stupendous powers of Nature, filled with a
sentiment of individual weakness, he abandoned himself to a flood of superstitious fears, and
prostrated himself before natural objects, inanimate as well as animate. Thus comforted by
the sun and fire, benefited by wind and rain, improved by hero and sage, destroyed by wild
beasts, dispersed by convulsions of Nature, he fell into a rude, degrading, and *cowardly
Fetissism*, the *faith of fear*, and *the transition state from utter savagery to
barbarism*."
• "The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam" by Richard Francis Burton
A long while ago, somebody here (Skoolafish or James Lake, perhaps?) asked other Stooges
what they thought of the woman, about whom a Russian blogger has written below.
First of all, though, and before any of you care to read the translation below, my opinion
of her is thus:
Let us start with the simplest of questions. Is anyone reading these lines familiar
with Aleksievich's works? I read some once, because I had nothing better to do. What is she
like? Well, in general, she is a classic representative of the perestroika fashion for
dishing out all sorts of dirt.
In the late '80s and even more so in the '90s, this was in vogue. You remember, of
course, what kind of cinema flourished then our country: black and gloomy, painting reality
in terrible colours. In the country itself, not everything was in order either, and such art
might have been appropriate then. After all, an artist strives to reflect the moods of the
surrounding reality. But is Svetlana Alexandrovna an artist? Rather yes than no, but the fact
that her whole essence is reflected in the artificial squeezing out of tears from the reader
is an opinion with which it is difficult to argue. This is not my idea. This is what
Tatyana Tolstaya
has said. I shall tell you more: all this pseudo documentary prose of hers cannot claim a
place on the bookshelf of any self-respecting Russian person.
Well what a surprise!
The presentation of the Nobel Prize to Aleksievich did not surprise me. It has long been
common knowledge that this award is given for political reasons. Did they give it to Tolstoy,
for example? No. Maybe Yesenin? Or Mayakovsky? Of course not. Let us remember what kind of
Russian-speaking people in general have received this award.
Bunin and Brodsky lived in exile. Solzhenitsyn was a dissident. Pasternak received the
award for publishing his novel outside the USSR. And only Sholokhov stands out from the
crowd. However, our liberals were then ready to trample on him. To this day, they boldly
argue that he did not write his works himself. Well, I do not believe that, but it is a
killer argument -- obviously: obvious to them, that is, but not to me.
But what about Aleksievich? Is she really a dissident? Well, what is a dissident? In the
USSR, films were even shot and performances were staged according to her scripts. But, of
course, she was not allowed to live. True, she managed to receive a dozen awards from the
country she hates. Being adaptive, I think it is called.
To be continued, otherwise the above will be checked out because of all the links
therein
MOSCOW EXILE October 31, 2020 at 1:37 am On Aleksievich (continued) . . .
Actually, what are her political motives today? What is her rationale as regards our
country? She hates Russia and the Russians and exudes bile. I regularly come across creepy
quotes from her revelations. For example, according to her, my people are mean. There is
nothing vile In the USA, which has destroyed Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia, but in Russia, which
made Central Asian people literate, everything is vile; in Russia, which rebuilt the Baltics,
Belarus and the Ukraine, there live bad people. They are so bad that Svetlana Aleksandrova
cannot sleep.
She calls Russia a pit. The "Maidan", in her opinion, is a good thing. In general,
everything that is anti-Russian is a great blessing. Well, how can one ask that a prize not
be given to this woman, who is so wonderful in all respects? Of course they gave her a prize!
I should have been surprised if she had not been awarded one.
It would have been possible for her to go on living in peace and quiet, not denying
herself anything, but no -- people like her, like Solzhenitsyn, rave on about the fate of
entire countries. And of course, she could not stay away from the opposition in Belarus.
Naturally, she does not like Lukashenko -- how can anyone like a person who has safeguarded
industry in his country? Neither she nor her controllers can like him. No, I have not made a
typing error! Just take a look at this cute photograph and admire:
Here she is with the ambassadors of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and
Slovakia. This shot was taken the other day. By the way, for some reason, everyone is not
wearing a mask.
So all these ambassadors represent the interests of big business. The battle of ideologies
on the planet is over. Today, everything is ruled by representatives of Capital and its
service personnel. Naturally, representatives of certain countries regularly interfere in the
internal affairs of sovereign states. This is generally a fashion in the West, namely
sticking their noses into other peoples' business.
Aleksievich, on the other hand, in this story is just another talking head. Another head,
which is terribly far from the people and, in general, is not interested in other opinions.
She is not worried that thousands of people will be left without work. That they will have
nothing to feed their children with. This is an unimportant opinion and wrong.
There is also an opinion of her controllers, and it is a wrong one. Her controllers are
all anti-Russian. So, by supporting the opposition, Svetlana speaks from Russophobic
positions. I do not go along with such people: we are of different worlds. And I really do
hope that Lukashenko will have the willpower to arrest this wonderful woman who is lying low
and keeping her eye on how to bring down Belarus.
I advise you to read the works of this writer. For example, "Boys in Zinc"*, dreamt up by
her. You might like it: then again, you might not. I did not like it, but then I am not one
of the creative intelligentsia, which for some reason always knows how to write.
That is all for today.Thank you for your attention and see you soon.
*Boys in Zinc
Nuff said!
By the way, Aliksieva was born in Ivano-Frankivsk in deepest Western Ukraine when
"Independent Ukraine" was the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Ivano-Frankivsk was formerly a Polish city known as Stanisławów, situated in
that portion of partitioned Poland that became part of the Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian
Empire.
You know, that part of the world where Bandera and others of his ilk hailed from.
I didn't see Stas Belkovsky, that oft-quoted 'Kremlin insider' who is always 'blowing the
whistle' on Putin's Billions. Or is that him far left, second row, with the glasses?
You'd think that voting Republican would be an easy decision if you work on Wall Street,
especially given the lower taxes and the removal of burdensome regulations. But Democrats have
entangled themselves so deeply in the web of Wall Street, that the industry is now leaning to
the left, according to a new report from
Reuters .
The Center for Responsive Politics took a look at how the industry, and its employees, break
down for the 2020 election cycle.
It has been obvious that Democratic candidate Joe Biden has been outpacing President Trump
when it comes to fundraising, and this is also true of "winning cash from the banking
industry," Reuters notes.
Biden's campaign has been the beneficiary of $3 million from commercial banks, compared to
the $1.4 million Trump has raised. This is a far skew from 2012, where Mitt Romney was able to
raise $5.5 million from commercial banks, while Barack Obama only raised $2 million. In 2012,
Wall Street banks were among the top five contributors to Romney' campaign.
In 2020, campaign contributions to congressional races from Wall Street banks are about
even. Republicans have raised $14 million while Democrats have brought in $13.6 million. About
four years ago, Republicans pulled in $18.9 million, which was about twice as much as the
Democrats raised. In 2012, Republicans raised about 61% of total bank donations.
Interestingly enough, when Biden and Trump are removed from the equation, the highest
recipient from Wall Street is none other than Bernie Sanders, who has raised $831,096. Sanders
often tops contributions in many industries due to his grassroots following.
When you remove the employees from the equation and only look at how the bank's political
arms donate, the picture turns more Republican-friendly.
House of Representatives lawmaker Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, one of the senior
Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, which is key for the banking industry,
tops the list, hauling in $226,000. Next up is Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the top
Republican on that panel, with $185,500 in cash from bank political committees.
The top 20 recipients of bank political funds comprise 14 Republicans and six Democrats.
Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, a senior member of the House banking panel,
received the most among Democrats, with $140,000.
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The shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the value of
Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor
progressives.
ay_arrow
tonye , 3 hours ago
It's obvious. Wall Street is part of the Deep State...
Le SoJ16 , 3 hours ago
How can you hate capitalism and work for a Wall Street bank?
tonye , 3 hours ago
Because Wall Street is no longer capitalist.
Main Street is capitalist, they create the GNP.
Wall Street is a casino owned by globalists and bankers. They don't create much
anymore.
Macho Latte , 2 hours ago
It has nothing to do with ideology. The Biden is FOR SALE!
Any questions?
Lord Raglan , 2 hours ago
It is because the majority of Wall Street are Jewish and **** overwhelmingly support
Democrats.
David Horowitz has said that 80% of the donations to the Democrat Party come from
****.
KashNCarry , 2 hours ago
What a bunch of ****. Wall St. elites are in it up to their necks casting their lot with
the globalists who want total control NOW. Trump is the only thing in their way....
artvandalai , 3 hours ago
Wall street people don't know much about the real economy. They also know little, nor do
they care about, the real problems faced by business people who have to work everyday to
overcome the policies put in place by liberals.
They do understand finance however. But all that requires is the ability to push paper
around all day.
But let them vote for the Libotards and have them watch Elizabeth Warren take charge of
the US Senate Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection Committee. They'll be jumping
out of windows.
FauxReal , 3 hours ago
Wall Street favors free money?
sun tzu , 1 hour ago
Wall Street wants bailouts. 0bozo gave them a yuge bailout
American2 , 2 hours ago
Based on the massively coordinated MSM suppression of the Biden corruption scandal, now I
know why these folks back Biden.
CosmoJoe , 2 hours ago
Democrats as the party of the big banks,
bgundr , 2 hours ago
Of course banksters favor policies that make the average person a slave with less
agency
Homie , 2 hours ago
Especially if you like the endless bailouts, give-aways, and freedom from those pesky
rules limiting the Squid's diet
You'd think that voting Republican would be an easy decision if you work on Wall Street,
especially given the lower taxes and the removal of burdensome regulations.
mtl4 , 2 hours ago
The shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the
value of Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor
progressives.
The banks are big on corruption and that's one poll the Dems are definitely leading by a
longshot.......thick as thieves.
tunetopper , 2 hours ago
Wall St youngsters dont realize their job is to whore themselves out as much as possible
to the few remaining classes of folk they dont already have accounts with. The few
Millennials and Gen Xers that have enough capital saved up are their target market. Ever
since the take-down of Bear Stearns and Lehman, and the exit of many others from their
Private Client Groups- the Whorewolves of Wall St are very busy pretending to be Progs and
Libs.
And like this post says: " who really cares, they all live in NY, NJ and CT which are
guaranteed Dem states anyway"
So in essence- they have nothing to lose while pretending to be a Prog/Lib. in order to ge
the clients money.
radar99 , 36 minutes ago
I arrived to wall st in 2010. My female boss at a large investment bank hated me from the
moment I criticized Obama. I was and still am absolutely amazed you can work on wall st and
be a democrat
moneybots , 59 minutes ago
"The shift in data shows that while Wall Street's top brass may still understand the value
of Republican leadership, bank employees themselves may overwhelmingly favor
progressives."
So 50 Cent alone went Trump after finding out NYC's top tax rate would be 62% under
Biden?
Flynt2142ahh , 1 hour ago
also known as MBNA Joe Biden friends, you mean the privatize profits but liberalize losses
crowd that always looks for gubment money to bail out failures - Shocking !
invention13 , 1 hour ago
Wall St. just knows Biden is someone you can do business with.
Loser Face , 1 hour ago
Wall Street leans towards anyone who passes laws that benefit Wall Street.
Obamaroid Ointment , 1 hour ago
The Wally Street crowd has always been a bunch Globalist Mercedes Marxists and Limousine
Liberals, this article is ancient history.
Sound of the Suburbs , 2 hours ago
US politicians haven't got a clue what's really going on and got duped by the banker's
shell game.
When you don't know what real wealth creation is, or how banks work, you fall for the
banker's shell game.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy towards a financial
crisis.
On a BBC documentary, comparing 1929 to 2008, it said the last time US bankers made as
much money as they did before 2008 was in the 1920s.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial
crisis.
Money and debt come into existence together and disappear together like matter and
anti-matter.
The money flows into the economy making it boom.
The debt builds up in the financial system leading to a financial crisis.
Banks – What is the idea?
The idea is that banks lend into business and industry to increase the productive capacity
of the economy.
Business and industry don't have to wait until they have the money to expand. They can
borrow the money and use it to expand today, and then pay that money back in the future.
The economy can then grow more rapidly than it would without banks.
Debt grows with GDP and there are no problems.
The banks create money and use it to create real wealth.
Caliphate Connie and the Headbangers , 2 hours ago
The banks and corporations of America have been welfare queens since 2008. Regardless of
who wins, they will be the beneficiaries of moar US-style corporate welfare socialism.
Victory_Rossi , 3 hours ago
Wall Street loves globalism and hates the entire ethos of "America First". They're people
with dodgy loyalties and grand self-interests.
FreemonSandlewould , 3 hours ago
What a surprise. The Banking Cartel faction of the Jish Control Grid sent Trotsky and
company to Russia to implement the Bolshevik revolution. Should I be surprised they lean
left?
Well I guess not. But they are at base amoral - that is to say with out moral philosophy.
Their real motto is "Whatever gets the job done".
Did some googling and I find it fascinating how much support the US State Department and
associated fake NGOs talk up this "Ecodefense" organization in Russia while ignoring,
dismissing, or criticizing activist environmental organizations that impact the empire's
profits.
Meanwhile record numbers of environmental activists have been murdered across Latin
America and the Philippines. Funny how the US State Department only complains about the CIA's
drug dealers getting snuffed in the Philippines!
This difference in response to persecution of activists in different places leads me to
strongly suspect that, like the drug dealers in the Philippines that the empire cries over,
certain environmental "NGOs" in Russia are tools of the empire.
Governments should closely watch all "NGOs" operating in their countries and
immediately arrest anyone from those organizations who are awarded a financial "literary
prize" or other laundered payment by obscure groups that are linked through any number of
intermediaries to the US State Department's fake "NGOs" . These groups that hand out
the payment from the empire are usually hazy publishing companies that have never published
anything, or at most create a quarterly newsletter with a distribution list of around five
people. Somehow these dubious "publishers" hand out quarter million dollar
"literary prizes" to pro-empire individuals whose writing sucks. A quarter $million
every couple years is more than enough to grow local fake "NGOs" to be used in future
"regime change operations" .
Furthermore, if the US State Department talks up an organization then that organization
is almost certainly an evil tool of empire.
There are now much stronger arguments to believe that both Harvard mafia players and Browder
were puppets of certain intelligence agencies.
Notable quotes:
"... Just how much this changed is partly witnessed in the life of bill browder - a person well known to most here... so, clearly russia made changes to try to protect itself from the encouraged kleptocracy that was in full swing in the early 1990s ..."
"... You mention Bill Browder. He is the grandson of Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1930-1945. It is now freely admitted that Earl was always in the employ of the FBI. Bill simply continues the family business, which is Get Russia. The odds that Bill is an independent actor and is not working for .gov are same as odds that Easter Bunny is real. ..."
@ 26 eric... thanks... unfortunately it seems michael hudson hasn't really commented on
russia in any significant way unless one goes back 5 years or so... i wonder how things have
changed since?? here is a link to the articles that top up using russia as the search term -
https://michael-hudson.com/?s=russia
i enjoyed the paul craig roberts - michael hudson article from 2019 on pcr's website...
again, i am not informed enough to make an informed comment on pcr's conclusions from march
of 2019... he and however much of the article hudson contributed - might be exactly right,
especially in the conclusions of the 3rd to last paragraph in the article.. i don't know...
thanks for the ongoing conversation..
@ Jen | Oct 24 2020 23:04 utc | 29 / 31.. thanks jen.. i haven't been to marks website in
a long time! i recall moscow exile.. is he still posting their?? regarding central banks and
nabiullina the head of russias central bank... i am not sure how many know this but the
position of being the head of a central bank in any country is not a position that is decided
upon by the country itself, or at least not in any democratic way... and the country is
supposed to not get involved in the politics of it either as i understand it... instead these
people are suggested in some other way - not elected - and while they do have to work with
the political leadership - they can't be gotten rid of easily as i understand it.. i think a
lot of this has to do with the way the international institutions work and how if a country
wants to be a part of this same international system of money, they need to accept the
structure as it is opaquely set up as... thus the central banks are under specific guidelines
that they have to follow that comes from somewhere outside the actual country.... i would
love someone to correct me on all this, but it is my present understanding of how this
particular system works... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank
As for what happened in Russia during the breaking up of the USSR and the transition of
Russia during the 1990's - one could argue the agenda of the Harvard plan for Russia was to
exploit russia for it's resource rich territory and install people like Yletsin who would
happily go along with this madness..
Just how much this changed is partly witnessed in the life of bill browder - a person
well known to most here... so, clearly russia made changes to try to protect itself from the
encouraged kleptocracy that was in full swing in the early 1990s ... just how much they
have managed to ween themselves off private finance - i have no idea... it sounds like they
are in the same boat as the rest of the planet in being beholden to private finance....
Of course private verses public finance is a confusing topic that keeps on getting
revisited here at moa and for good reason... i don't really know how all this interfaces with
everything else.. i appreciate erics particular vantage and am curious to hear of others
viewpoint as well.. thanks jen.. i have some other comments to read now on this topic from
H.Schmatz @ 28
You mention Bill Browder. He is the grandson of Earl Browder, General Secretary of the
Communist Party USA from 1930-1945. It is now freely admitted that Earl was always in the
employ of the FBI. Bill simply continues the family business, which is Get Russia. The odds
that Bill is an independent actor and is not working for .gov are same as odds that Easter
Bunny is real.
@ old hippie... yes, i was aware of that - thanks.. if you haven't seen it yet - the movie
the Russian guy made on Browder is quite good - worth the watch, but i think you have to pay
for it now.. there was a time where you could watch it for free... yes indeed, the son worked
or works for the same folks as the father did...here is a link to the movie.. http://magnitskyact.com/
here is an interesting link that i found just looking for a link to the movie... if you
haven't watched the movie, this is a good start and covers it from a particular angle.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOx78CBq0Ck
Earl Browder was an interesting dude who led an interesting life..
I have not yet read the whole transcript of Putin´s long intervention in the Valdai
Discussion Club, and thus, I do not know how deep he went about last frenzy on "regime
change" intends in the post-Soviet space, but in case he did not put it clear enough,
background of the recent explosions of regime change intends in countries surrounding Russia
( Spoiler: it was all there in a 2019 Reand Corporation file...)
"... Political collapse: obviously there wasn't really a functional government at all for a period of time in the nineties. Lots of American consultants running around and privatizing things in a fashion that created a lot of incredibly corrupt, super-rich oligarchs who then fled with their money, a lot of them. ..."
Welcome back to Turning Hard Times into Good Times. I'm your host Jay Taylor. I'm really
pleased to have with me once again Dmitry Orlov.
Dmitry was born and grew up in Leningrad, but has lived in the United States. He moved
here in the mid-seventies. He has since gone back to Russia, where he is living now.
But Dmitry was an eyewitness to the Soviet collapse over several extended visits to his
Russian homeland between the eighties and mid-nineties. He is an engineer who has contributed
to fields as diverse as high-energy Physics and Internet Security, as well as a leading Peak
Oil theorist. He is the author of Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American
Prospects (2008) and The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors' Toolkit (2013).
Welcome, Dmitry, and thank you so much for joining us again.
A: Great to be on your program again, Jay.
Q: It's really good to hear your voice. I know we had you on [the program] back in 2014.
It's been a long time -- way too long, as far as I'm concerned. In that discussion we talked
about the five stages of collapse that you observed in the fall of the USSR. Could you review
them really quickly, and compare them to what you are seeing, what you have witnessed and
observed in the United States as you lived here, and of course in your post now in
Russia.
A: Yes. The five stages of collapse as I defined them were financial, commercial,
political, social and cultural. I observed that the first three, in Russia. The finance
collapsed because the Soviet Union basically ran out of money. Commercial collapse because
industry, Soviet industry, fell apart because it was distributed among fifteen Soviet
socialist republics, and when the Soviet Union fell apart all of the supply chains broke
down.
Political collapse: obviously there wasn't really a functional government at all for a
period of time in the nineties. Lots of American consultants running around and privatizing
things in a fashion that created a lot of incredibly corrupt, super-rich oligarchs who then
fled with their money, a lot of them.
Surprisingly, social and cultural collapse didn't really get very far until Russia started
regaining its health. Some of the other Soviet socialist republics are in the throes of
full-on social and cultural collapse, but Russia avoided this fate.....
"... When everything is fine, and the macro economic indicators are stable, various funds are building up their assets, consumption is on the rise and so on. In such times, you hear more and more that the state only stands in the way, and that a pure market economy would be more effective. But as soon as crises and challenges arise, everyone turns to the state, calling for the reinforcement of its supervisory functions. This goes on and on, like a sinusoidal curve. This is what happened during the preceding crises, including the recent ones, like in 2008. ..."
"... So, again, no model is pure or rigid, neither the market economy nor the command economy today, but we simply have to determine the level of the state's involvement in the economy. ..."
"... In the U.S., since 1980, money has increasingly become the source of political power. This is dictatorship. The U.S. has transformed itself from an imperfect democracy, into an almost perfect 'oligarchic dictatorship' where the corporations oversee the government, rather than the government overseeing the market. This is the very definition of fascism. And under such a system, the U.S.'s market economy has been transformed into an economy of serial monopolies. ..."
"... i continue to believe the planet is being screwed by big finance.. ..."
"... Very true jadan, your view on Putin, and every time I read an excerpt or a speech by him I notice he is far above our western "leaders" with their meaningless chatter and hollow phrases. ..."
Most of the commentators on yesterday's
post were right. It was the Russian President Vladimir Putin
who said this :
Many of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when we were children and remember what the main character said:
"It's a question of discipline. When you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. It's very tedious
work, but very easy."
I am sure that we must keep doing this "tedious work" if we want to preserve our common home for future generations. We must
tend our planet.
The subject of environmental protection has long become a fixture on the global agenda. But I would address it more broadly
to discuss also an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in
favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
We often say that nature is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Especially when the use of natural resources is growing
to a global dimension. However, humanity is not safe from natural disasters, many of which are the result of anthropogenic interference.
By the way, some scientists believe that the recent outbreaks of dangerous diseases are a response to this interference. This
is why it is so important to develop harmonious relations between Man and Nature.
I found the excerpt remarkable because it included this, on might say, anti-capitalistic statement:
.. an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious
and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
That 'green' statement will rile those people who argue for free markets and a right to sell bullshit in ever more flavors. In
their view the fight against such 'communists' thinking must be renewed.
As the full English transcript of Putin's speech and the two and a half hour Q&A
is now available I can also quote another interesting
passage where Putin talks about capitalism and the role of the state. His standpoint seems very pragmatic to me:
Question : Mr President, there has been much talk and debate, in the context of the global economic upheavals, about the
fact that the liberal market economy has ceased to be a reliable tool for the survival of states, their preservation, and for
their people.
Pope Francis said recently that capitalism has run its course. Russia has been living under capitalism for 30 years. Is it time
to search for an alternative? Is there an alternative? Could it be the revival of the left-wing idea or something radically new?
Putin: Lenin spoke about the birthmarks of capitalism, and so on. It cannot be said that we have lived these past 30
years in a full-fledged market economy. In fact, we are only gradually building it, and its institutions. [..]
You know, capitalism, the way you have described it, existed in a more or less pure form at the beginning of the previous century.
But everything changed after what happened in the global economy and in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, after World
War I. We have already discussed this on a number of occasions. I do not remember if I have mentioned this at Valdai Club meetings,
but experts who know this subject better than I do and with whom I regularly communicate, they are saying obvious and well-known
things.
When everything is fine, and the macro economic indicators are stable, various funds are building up their assets, consumption
is on the rise and so on. In such times, you hear more and more that the state only stands in the way, and that a pure market
economy would be more effective. But as soon as crises and challenges arise, everyone turns to the state, calling for the reinforcement
of its supervisory functions. This goes on and on, like a sinusoidal curve. This is what happened during the preceding crises,
including the recent ones, like in 2008.
I remember very well how the key shareholders of Russia's largest corporations that are also major European and global players
came to me proposing that the state buy their assets for one dollar or one ruble. They were afraid of assuming responsibility
for their employees, pressured by margin calls, and the like. This time, our businesses have acted differently. No one is seeking
to evade responsibility. On the contrary, they are even using their own funds, and are quite generous in doing so. The responses
may differ, but overall, businesses have been really committed to social responsibility, for which I am grateful to these people,
and I want them to know this.
Therefore, at present, we cannot really find a fully planned economy, can we? Take China. Is it a purely planned economy? No.
And there is not a single purely market economy either. Nevertheless, the government's regulatory functions are certainly important.
[..]
We just need to determine for ourselves the reasonable level of the state's involvement in the economy; how quickly that involvement
needs to be reduced, if at all, and where exactly. I often hear that Russia's economy is overregulated. But during crises like
this current pandemic, when we are forced to restrict business activity, and cargo traffic shrinks, and not only cargo traffic,
but passenger traffic as well, we have to ask ourselves – what do we do with aviation now that passengers avoid flying or fly
rarely, what do we do? Well, the state is a necessary fixture, there is no way they could do without state support.
So, again, no model is pure or rigid, neither the market economy nor the command economy today, but we simply have to determine
the level of the state's involvement in the economy. What do we use as a baseline for this decision? Expediency. We need
to avoid using any templates, and so far, we have successfully avoided that.
Then comes a paragraph that shows where Russia differs from the current 'western' economic policies of negative interest rates
and deflation:
Of course, the Central Bank and the Government are among the most important state institutions. Therefore, it was in fact through
the joint efforts of the Central Bank and the Government that inflation was reduced to 4 percent, because the Government invests
substantial resources through its social programmes and national projects and has an impact on our monetary policy. It went down
to 3.9 percent, and the Governor of the Central Bank has told me that we will most likely keep it around the estimated target
of around 4 percent. This is the regulating function of the state; there is no way around it. However, stifling development through
an excessive presence of the state in the economy or through excessive regulation would be fatal as well. You know, this is a
form of art, which the Government has been applying skilfully, at least for now.
Keeping inflation up by a bit will make it easier for Russian consumers and companies to pay back their loans. It is economically
healthier than the deflationary policies of western societies.
Russia is well on its way to overtake Germany as the fifth biggest economy. Putin's pragmatic positions towards the role of the
state in the economy and his relative generous policies of social programs and large national projects have contributed to that.
The many questions and answers on foreign policy in the Valdai talk show a similar pragmatism on other issues. For those interested
in those here is again the link to the transcript
.
Posted by b on October 24, 2020 at 18:00 UTC |
Permalink
Putin was (is) an important figure in rescuing Russia from the collapse, and western carpetbagging, of the nineties but in no
way has he moved Russia towards communism or prepared the path (structurally) for a future communist state. Despite everything
that Putin has achieved, in no way has he created a system that is separate from that of the west. The external impostion of sanctions
(by the west) has had much more effect than anything Putin has done (in terms of separting from western dogma).
This talk of "overconsumption" is totally irrelevant to Russia (Russians are still largely poor and "under"-consume) as well
as much of the rest of the world. And Russia is a huge producer of the resources (oil, gas, coal), and a huge consumer of these
same resources, that we are told are destroying the world. So Putin is not really addressing Russians or the majority of the world,
and western governments are used to hearing this kind of guff (because they say the same, frequently).
So, Putin is not referring to a Communist (economic) state; he is referring to a mixed economy just like every other western
state (yes you could also say "just like every other state in the world" but what I am demonstrating is that, at best, Putin desires
to adhere to conventional western economic dogma).
Putin is 68 and the average life expectancy on Russia is 72 (only 65 for males). Putin will be gone soon enough and what he
has built is a proud independent nation that is integrated into the world economy and is well able to defend itself. But he has
not changed the fundamental economic relations that were established in Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
So, this "remarkable...anti-capitalistic statement" is either meaningless or a signal of compliance to western/world capitalist
elites who, perhaps, wish to bring the free-market to an end and entrench their position as a permanent elite - and that would
not be communism, rather it would be feudalism.
With the advent of the industrial revolution, capitalism, mass education, democracy and then the proto-communist states it
was thought impossible (and undesireable) that social structures could regress. But, has the (within technical capacities) ability
to capture data on everyone all of the time (and analyze and interpret that data in real time) and deep understandings of behavoiuralism,
human psychology and sophisticated, convincing and all pervasive propaganda resulted in a fundamental change? In short, that it
is no longer held that all humans are free, can make their own choices, and are capable of organising society for and by themselves
(even as some kind of future objective) - and that this has been replaced by a belief that humanity is best run by a "benevolent"
elite.
I'm not sure that the concept of neo-liberalism is really applicable to Russia. What happened under Yeltsin was a simple pillage
of the state, as anyone would do if they can, as he was too drunk to notice. The same thing is happening today in UK.
Putin has spent his time trying to recover from that situation to more control, as a conservative nationalist, but its not
so easy.
"... I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the confidence it's citizens have in it. That is the
strength of a state. People are the source of power, we all know that."
Yes! 'People are the source of power' is the definition of democracy.
In the U.S., since 1980, money has increasingly become the source of political power. This is dictatorship. The U.S. has
transformed itself from an imperfect democracy, into an almost perfect 'oligarchic dictatorship' where the corporations oversee
the government, rather than the government overseeing the market. This is the very definition of fascism. And under such a system,
the U.S.'s market economy has been transformed into an economy of serial monopolies.
Russia is rapidly developing; the U.S. is rapidly failing. No need to wonder why!
Depending upon who you ask
, somewhere between 33% and 70% of Russia's economy is still state controlled. You can never say "we" when talking about
directing a capitalist market economy because "The Market" will always be boss. Though Russia suffered a catastrophic capitalist
counterrevolution, it is this large share of the economy that is not entirely subservient to market forces that gives Putin the
luxury of talking in terms of "we" , despite his submissive attitude towards capitalism.
The fact is that capitalism ( "The Market" ) cannot develop Russia. This has been the case for more than a hundred years,
which is why they had a revolution in the first place and why the privatizations have been halted and are now (grudgingly) being
reversed.
Putin's strength lies not in his ideology because his strength of conviction to that ideology is that of an overcooked noodle.
This happens to work out OK though because his ideology is neoliberal capitalism. Clinging to that ideology isn't serving any
leader in the world right now, as we can see in Europe and the US. Rather, Putin's strength is in his patriotic pragmatism. He
doesn't want to build "Socialism with Russian Characteristics" , but pragmatics forces him in that direction.
Russia will be moving to a progressive income tax regime from 2021 onwards. The current personal income tax regime is a flat
13%. From next year, individuals earning 5 million rubles or more annually will be subject to a 15% tax rate. Sounds like little
but these sorts of reforms have to take time and have to be done in small increments.
It's my understanding that the bulk of Russia's tax receipts currently come from the energy sector. I'm sure way back in 1998
Putin wrote a PhD dissertation on the use of natural resources as the basis of economic development and growth, and taxation of
energy companies would be one method of using land resources to achieve this growth.
Keeping inflation up by a bit will make it easier for Russian consumers and companies to pay back their loans. It is economically
healthier than the deflationary policies of western societies.
That's a great idea, except both government and household debt in Russia are among the lowest in the world (probably the lowest
of any industrialized country). Both Putin and the foreigners who fawn over him, including myself not very long ago, are the first
to tout this fact. This way inflation in the Russian economy means consumers get to enjoy rising costs of living, and the state
and companies rising costs of raw materials, energy etc. while there's virtually no debt on the other side of the equation for
inflation to devalue. There's still a lot of corporate sector debt in Russia, but the bulk of it is still, incredibly, denominated
in dollars, euros, Swiss franc, and so on. Ruble inflation and falling exchange rates don't make this debt to cheaper to service,
but of course the opposite.
It's a great thing that the rate of home ownership (without associated mortgage debt) is so high in Russia, and it's probably
the only result of the privatization drive that was actually a good outcome. There's no reason that Russians should now be loaded
up with huge debts in order to own a house or an apartment. Access to personal credit for things like a car is difficult and expensive
in Russia, which obviously means a lot of people can't afford a car, but on the other further helps to ensure the indebtedness
of households is kept low. At the same time, like Putin (and b) does here, many in Russia apparently want to pretend that their
economy is like a Western economy, and that accordingly its households are partially relieved financially by inflation when they
actually only suffer from increased prices. It's absolutely bizarre.
The reality is that Russia's leadership has an unparalleled commitment toward, and talent for, getting the worst of all worlds
economically. Thanks to them Russia is probably the only major economy in the world with high inflation but microscopic domestic
currency debt (and correspondingly low investment in the domestic economy). This way Russia has gotten to enjoy, historically,
very high inflation but much lower growth rates than other developing economies. (The high growth rates in the 2000's came from
high raw materials prices, resulting merely in accumulation of foreign exchange reserves which the Russian government itself then
said could not be efficiently converted into rubles and invested in the Russian economy. Growth in industrial and agricultural
production, or in fixed assets like infrastructure, was accordingly much smaller, if even existent.)
There's also the continuing Wild West capitalism where oligarchs have gotten to keep their stolen assets in potash, gold mining,
coal mining etc., even in strategic industrial sectors like steelmaking, power engineering or the automotive industry, while at
the same time even Chinese investors are discouraged from investing through opaque regulation and unpredictable Russian state
intervention. In other words, stability for the oligarchs who openly tried to destroy the Russian state and turn it into a Hong
Kong-style neo-feudal hellhole, and who today just as before continue to asset strip the last residues of Soviet-era manufacturing,
but a Great Wall against the Asians who want to come in and develop petrochemicals plants, e-commerce, timber industry or whatever.
Through the entire 2000-2012 era, the Russian government came down like a hawk on ruble-denominated debt, while corporations
(both private and state-owned) could take out basically unlimited loans in foreign currency. State-owned companies like Rosneft
actually led the foreign currency indebtedness, helping enormously to ensure that Russia's only real advantage and asset in the
post-Soviet era, the trade surplus resulting from its oil and gas exports, is sent out of the country as interest payments to
American and European banks, rather than (as China has done) paying for the imports of Western machinery and technologies to help
develop domestic manufacturing.
Certainly, Russian companies are now much more restricted in the amounts of foreign currency credit they can accept, but access
to ruble credit is highly limited as well. The result is of course austerity in the economy, with anemic growth and falling living
standards.
Another important "benefit" was that the West had an easy way to put pressure on the ruble. They simply forbade Russian companies
from rolling over their debt, forcing them to come up with huge sums of foreign currency in short order. That crashed the rouble,
thereby dramatically forcing up prices (and equivalently, inflation) in the, by its own design, almost completely import-dependent
Russian economy. The crash in oil prices (again, simply limiting Russia's income in dollar terms, much of which they needed simply
to pay back Western creditors anyway) was just icing on the cake.
One could keep going like this forever. If China and South Korea had political and corporate elites with this mentality, and
with this level of commitment to neo-liberalism and globalization, but (critically!) only to its worst aspects and outcomes, these
countries would have been very lucky to be at the level of development of Thailand today. That's the reality and attacking people
who raise these criticisms as enemies of Russia, as many did to me in the last thread about thread on these topics, does nothing
to help matters. In fact, with "friends" like you, maybe Russia does not need enemies.
I've been having fun listening and reading the reactions and selected excerpts in the media to the long, very long Putin conference,
three hours with the question and answer segment, the most substantial and interesting, but five hours total considering that
he appeared two hours late, no doubt preparing until the last minute and over the speech as could be seen in the notes that he
held and that somehow the sound technicians did not filter out completely, which was a bit annoying.
Checking out the chaotic notes that I took, there is one little detail that most surely won't get any attention, his recourse
to widely used popular expressions like when he asks himself rhetorically:
what is a strong state? What are its strengths?
The Russian word for strength could be translated as power too, and any an every Russian recalls the great hero of the dark
90's, the late Serguey Bodrov in the film "The Brother 2", partly filmed in Chicago, Bodrov asks a panicked businessman: Tell
me American, where is the power? is the power in money? I think the power is in truth . a phrase that everybody knows and
feels proud of in Russia.
Vlad not only plays complex accords for foreign consumption, he plays for the home team first, just in case .
Putin, like all politicians, is more about what he says and less about what he does.
Fair enough, i challenge anyone in his position to do better... I actually admire the man, but let's not delude ourselves.
Russia stands to benefit from global warming more than any other country in spite of all the damage it will still cause it. On
the overall balance, it will average out ahead of everyone else, in relative terms, so don't look to them for answers.
As for "the State"... so what if it's his mates who benefit instead of oligarchs, what is the difference when most of the people
in Russia are broke and have no realistic prospects or chances of progressing beyond their predetermined fates? The cynic in me
ultimately thinks he just wants the oligarchs to pay their taxes to make his job easier, keep the people happy, so he can get
reelected more easily.
@ Eric | Oct 24 2020 21:10 utc | 18.. eric, i was intrigued by your ideas in the previous thread and i am again here... how do
you come by this particular vantage point?? do you have a particular background in finances, or is it just a special interest
that you have cultivated to come by the position you share in your post here? i am genuinely curious! i don't have enough knowledge
to comment and wish someone like Michael Hudson could comment on this specific topic that you seem to excel at holding a very
specific and fairly negative outlook on with regard Russia... thanks for your comments either way.. it is above my pay grade to
respond with any authority..
i continue to believe the planet is being screwed by big finance.. it seems hard to see thru the maze a way out of
this... your suggestion that russia is also caught in this maze would not surprise me... what is the way out, if i might be so
bold??
I think your post points to a fundamental worrisome feature of Russia. It's very unclear who actually has a stake in the prosperity,
power or even existence of the Russian state in 50 or 100 years' time. People can pretend that the Russian Orthodox Church plays
this role but there's very little to suggest it really does. India, I think, unfortunately struggles with the same problem, but
the destruction of India at the hands of British goes a long way to explain it in my view. In China or Iran, with all the issues
of their own that those two countries have, there's however very little ambiguity in this regard.
I'm not even sure I would place the blame on Western-style representative democracy in Russia, as the same basic problem seems
to have been there both before the October Revolution and at the very least during the post-Stalin era of the Soviet Union. The
question is if Russia, despite everything, as a Christian civilization isn't ultimately a participant in the Western world's anomie
and decline.
Yes! Absolutely capitalism is rapidly destroying the planet. Of this there is no question. Nothing can be left alone: 'undeveloped'
land must be 'developed', i.e. forests cut down and replaced by subdivisions, parking lots, McDonald's, office buildings, etc.
Capitalism is truly insidious: look at how the once mighty Amazon rainforest has been utterly wiped out by greedy cattle farmers
looking for a quick buck with the blessing of Bolsonaro. Where there were once massive old growth forests across N. America, there
are now only 'tree museums', i.e. national parks which save less than 1% of what there once was before Europeans came and destroyed
everything–in the name of profit. Capitalism not only destroys natural resources, it destroys people: slavery has been replaced
by wage slavery: and the wage slave's earnings from his 'mcjob' invariably go to his landlord, or other parasites. Your employer
is your master in capitalism: he is your god and you serve him. Any excess profit you make all goes to him, not you. If you look
at him wrong, or have a bad attitude you are replaced–and NO good reference for you! What a miserable shit system craptialism
is.
I have been strongly influenced by Michael Hudson's writings over several years now. Basically everything in that post is either
a point he already made about Russia or a direct application of his overall thinking on Russia's economy. For this reason I was
very surprised by the hostility of certain commenters, in particular karlof1, who also could be called followers of Michael Hudson.
karlof1 even suggested I should spend a couple of years researching Russian economic development, even though I've quite obviously
already done that (which doesn't mean everyone has to agree with my conclusions). I have to wonder if he and Martyanov either
never came across Hudson's criticisms of Russian economic policy (one of the actually less harsh examples
here - if you search
his site michael-hudson.com you can find others) or consider him also an ignorant anti-Russian commentator but are able to appreciate
him in spite of that.
I wrote about this part of Putin's speech back on the 22nd when he made this appraisal:
" only a viable state can act effectively in a crisis ."
I bolded the text then and I've done so again because that's one of the most important points he raised, IMO, particularly
in relation to the clearly unviable Outlaw US Empire and EU. I even turned my commentary into a short article at my VK space that
will be expanded once I digest all the Q & A.
I recently made an observation about Russia's banking and finance systems in that they're controlled by the public via the
state, not by some private entities separate from the state doing all they can to avoid any type of regulation and oversight,
which was based on this item I linked here at the
time. I later made the observation that the moral/ethical grounding of who/what's in charge of those systems matters greatly when
it comes to making an equitable society--and it will matter even more as we get into the having steady-state economies as resource
depletion mounts into the crisis it will eventually become. Putin showed that he knows and understands all that, which is well
beyond the capacity of the vast majority of those known as politicians--especially those in Neoliberal nations. Putin used the
term "balance" 7 times, imbalance once, in his speech. I suggest readers use the CTRL-F function to search the text for that term
to see what it's in reference to so they can learn a bit more about the man and his mind and the importance of seeking balance
in attaining equitability.
At the tail end of the Q & A, Putin is asked: "what you can advise and offer to Russian youth?" Putin's answer conforms completely
with his policy toward the promotion of families and urging young people to strive for their aspirations -- unlike many Western
politicos, he backs his admonitions with robust policies to make them possible, something I've long admired about him. Here's
most of Putin's reply:
"But what can we offer? We believe we will give young people more opportunities for professional growth and create more
social lifts for them. We are building up these instruments and creating conditions for people to receive a good education,
make a career, start a family and receive enough income for a young family.
"We are drafting an increasing number of measures to support young families. Let me emphasise that even during the pandemic,
most of our support measures were designed for families with children. What are these families? They are young people for the
most part.
"We will continue doing this in the hope that young people will use their best traits – their daring striving to move
ahead without looking back at formalities that probably make older generations more reserved – for positive, creative endeavours.
Eventually, the younger generation will take the baton from the older generation and continue this relay race, and make Russia
stronger."
The difference in that regard between Putin's vision and his actions when compared to the Outlaw US Empire and other Neoliberal
nations is beyond stark--it's as if they inhabit two different solar systems.
The reason Putin's hated by the West is he took an unviable Russia and made it more than viable again. IMO, he's the unequaled
Dean of what few Statesmen exist in today's world, which makes him an asset for humanity.
There used to be a regular commenter at Mark Chapman's Kremlin Stooge / The New Kremlin Stooge - I forget his KS name but he
was a physicist (and not a very good-tempered one at that, he had regular shouting matches with one other commenter Yalensis there)
-- but he was of the opinion that interest rates set by the Central Bank of Russia have been too high and have discouraged small
business investment in Russia. The head of the CBR may still be Elvira Nabiullina -- I haven't checked lately. She and others
in the government who help set monetary policies in Russia are suspected of being neoliberal and Atlanticist in their outlook.
As President, Putin is not responsible for setting domestic policies - that's Prime Minister Mishustin's job.
Putin spoke all that in a very specific environment (in a room full of rabid liberals/pro-capitalists), so we should be care about
its content.
There are some incongruousness in his speech we must correct here:
1) It is a myth the State, during the golden age of liberalism (16th-19th Centuries) was "minimal". On the contrary: there
was a ton of State intervention in the people's daily life - including the right of the State to separate whole families and use
their children in servile labor. The difference here is that the gross of that intervention was directed to the dispossessed,
i.e. the working classes. There was also a ton of regulations over slave ownership. The age of classical liberalism is considered
one of minimum State because the freedom of the powerful slave owners and industrialists was almost zero; it's the History told
from the point of view of the capitalists. That's why Putin clearly said "[capitalism] the way you have described it [...]"
2) The mixed system between what he calls "State intervention" (welfare of the people, command or planned economy) and "free
market" is the scientific definition of socialism. Marx wasn't an idealist: he was a materialist. He knew a direct transition
to communism was impossible, therefore he imagined a system of transition, where communism and capitalism would exist together.
This transition system was called socialism. That's why China, still governed by a Marxist-Leninist Party, considers itself socialist
and not capitalist, or even "mixed" for that matter;
Another observation: the Western countries didn't enter deflation/low inflation because of ZIRP/NIRP. They were already suffering
from it before those policies. The opposite is the true: precisely because they were having a too low inflation, they resorted
to ZIRP/NIRP.
Yep re my comment @ 29: Nabiullina is still CBR head according to her Wikipedia entry. Since becoming CBR head back in 2012 or
2013, she has consistently followed a policy of tackling inflation first to the extent of keeping interest rates higher than they
perhaps should be. This probably helps explain some of the issues Eric @ 18 raises about Russians' access to personal credit.
Interestingly Nabiullina's Wikipedia entry shows she worked with Alexei Kudrin in the past. Kudrin has a reputation for preferring
neoliberal economic policies. Currently he is Inspector General in the Russian govt's audit office where he can mouth off all
he likes about how he'd reform Russian economic policies if he got the chance but not actually do much damage: a case of Putin
keeping potential enemies somewhere where they can be watched.
Eric does raise the issue about how Russian oligarchs were allowed to keep their gains and not be forced to pay back taxes
they owed way back in the early 2000s, but this was on condition that they not meddle in Russian federal politics and buy influence,
and pay all their future taxes and other obligations, like paying their employees, promptly and in accordance with Russian laws.
Those who refused ended up in prison (Khodorkovsky) or fled overseas (Berezovsky). Roman Abramovich paid an unusual penalty: he
was made Governor of Chukotka in far eastern Siberia near the Bering Sea for a couple of years at least. He paid for all that
territory's infrastructure improvements. Of course the people there must love him!
So why are not all barflies writing and thinking about the role of the state in the economy within the context of current private
control of finance in the West?
What is blinding you all to not state the obvious role issue of those that own global private finance not being any "state"
of transparency?
We are in a civilization war about the fact that a current state in our world, China, has a public finance core of government
which is opposed to the Western cult of global private finance. Wake up.
Reading the entrails of the Russian economy that has been ravaged for decades by the cult of private finance and its followers
in Russia does us no service to b's question of what role the state should have in the national and world economy. Because Russia
is still having to operate with the shit show called empire they are limited in their response. I was taught 50 years ago that
a 2% inflation rate was optimal but because Russia is trying to build its population, it is spending more money supporting that
segment of the overall population and saying the inflation rate is worth the investment.
The role of the state in the economy
History has shown positive results from what are called mixed economies. The US is a mixed economy with the state, at various
levels, supporting energy, transportation, USPS, water, sewage treatment, police and fire protection, education, SSI, regulations,
etc. There are and have been attempts to privatize all those things under the canard that the service can be provided "better"
with profit as the motive other than service to others.
There is no magic mixed economy formula for any one state and it will change over time like Russia is choosing to do. But the
state has limited control of the economy if the tools of finance are privately held and not integrated into state functionality....and
it is my understanding that the Central Bank in Russia for example is not entirely a sovereign entity...what sayest our most recent
barfly, Eric?
Please join in a more reasoned contextual discussion of our world. I am tired of reading about "ism"s. More reality please.
Thank you b for continuing this conversation. The speech and Q&A were most interesting. They were consistent with what Putin has
said before, but done so this time with more confidence as even the oppression of the covid situation was dealt with in honorable
fashion - if one can honor a virus, that is. It is always, with Putin, that the people come first, and he made that statement
at the beginning.
Countries, all countries, have that obligation in their governance that it be for the people's welfare. So, to him, whatever
system a country has is only important in that respect and each country, drawing on its own history and its assets, decides for
itself what that style of governance will be.
This is different from any outside system being touted as the ideal. There isn't an ideal. It all depends on how the people
wish to be governed, based on what they feel is important to them. That is democracy in its loosest terms. He said several times
that any philosophy of government imposed by outsiders will never work.
At the same time, his support for the UN system on a world wide basis is as unconditional as his first premise.
I meant to add that casting my mind back to the last debate, the one thing being said about the people was Biden intensely eyeing
us and telling us about the empty chair at the kitchen table - nice!
.. an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption – in favour of
judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also think about tomorrow.
We need to land somewhere between North Korea and the US on consumption. John Judge used to talk about how 30 houses on a street
need 30 lawnmowers. Why not buy one lawnmower, share it and maintain it? I ditched my lawns long ago as that is also over consumption
but I use it as an example of what type of society we have built.
"... I am confident that what makes a state strong, primarily, is the confidence it's citizens have in it. That is the strength
of a state. People are the source of power, we all know that."
It is not just confidence it is having an educated competent citizenry. Our top education institutions, especially the ivy
league, are cranking out students trained to protect the status quo hence things will not changed easily.
Moon is going to end up on the Russian disinformation agitators list.
@ Posted by: psychohistorian | Oct 25 2020 0:05 utc | 32
This "mixed economies won the Cold War" is an old story already. Eric Hobsbawn left a letter claiming just before he died,
in 2012.
The problem with the Scandinavian economies is this: who's gonna do the dirty jobs? You cannot simply make a nation of designers
and white collar workers. The social-democracies of the post-war solved this problem with the Third World countries, but now those
countries are not accepting this role anymore.
Besides, there's the objective fact even the Scandinavian economies are declining, with inequality skyrocketing since the end
of the 1990s. They, too, are susceptible to the laws of capitalism.
"Strengthening our country and looking at what is happening in the world, in other countries, I want to say to those who are still
waiting for the gradual demise of Russia: in this case, we are only worried about one thing -- how not to catch a cold at your
funeral", Putin said on Thursday at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.
That's an interesting question. How are the underclass workers (construction, janitors, street sweepers) wage and social benefits
in the Nordic countries in comparison with China, S. Korea and Japan?
Those are important points. It seems to be a common pattern in neoliberal economics. The answer to "why" that I pieced together
is this: It is all about the oligarchs in combination with their immediate overseas business partners. Typically they own a considerable
portion of the foreign-jurisdiction bonds lent to their own nations. It is a straightforward money laundering arrangement.
The Russian government cannot simply remove the domestic oligarchs**, no more than a US or EU government could do the same
against equivalent local business powers. Rather, they come to a livable equilibrium. Preventing investment from China, EU etc,
is, in addition to defending national sovereignty, also a case of the government defending the domestic oligarchs from foreign
rivals -- rivals who would have greater financial resources with the backing of their own larger home regions.
However, the big difference in the case of Russia, compared to most countries victimized by the neoliberal pattern, is that
the government is powerful enough to quite reliably protect the local oligarchs from their foreign rivals, including pretty much
anything that the foreign rival's home governments can possibly throw at them (i.e. the various regime change toolbox). This protection
is a massively valuable service. For this reason, the Russian government can, if it is halfway decent and perhaps above-average
in managing the difficult internal politics, negotiate a better (i.e. more long-term sustainable) arrangement with the local oligarchs,
in terms of how the citizens are affected.
[** but with all the sanctions etc, this balance of power actually shifts]
You do realize that the Russians have three (3) vaccines, and the Chinese one (1) in late stage 3 trials, with Sputnik V due to
complete theirs next month and to go into serial production shortly. Putin's strategy is to vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate.
Mishustin is busy holding trade fairs promoting the Russian arctic. Business residency for $$RUB$$$. Ski resorts on the Kola peninsula...
While his enemies implode under the second COVID-19 wave....
Thank you Alicia for putting up that interview. I like very much the articles Orlov writes, and many of them I find translated
in French. He has humour, unlike more well known geopolitics analysts. Try this one:
That Valdai speech / Q&A was a master class in governance.
While Putin thinks and talks like a sane man, Western leaders reveal daily that they are now not sanity-capable, not logic-capable,
not sanity-capable, not shame-capable.
Putin shows a commanding grasp of his nation's people, economy, culture, history, environment, geo-strategic needs, impressively
rattling off numbers, statistics, reason, rationale, logic and pragmatic good sense. In all that, he reminds me of that other
great world-class leader, Lee Kuan Yew, whom Kissinger once called the Wise Man of Asia. Russia is fortunate to be governed by a world-class leader and his team today, but good luck to the Great Toilet Bowl Stirrers
in the West.
Putin: "But I would address it more broadly to discuss also an important task of abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited
consumption – overconsumption – in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for today but also
think about tomorrow..... After all, it is within our power to stop being egoistical, greedy, mindless and wasteful consumers....
We just need to open our eyes, look around us and see that the land, air and water are our common inheritance from above, and
we must learn to cherish them, just as we must cherish every human life, which is precious. This is the only way forward in this
complicated and beautiful world. I do not want to see the mistakes of the past repeated."
Was Putin talking about Russians? or about Americans? Who are those exceptional 4% of the global population who demands to consume 40% of global resources?
Putin: "So, we want the voice of our citizens to be decisive and to see constructive proposals and requests from different social
forces get implemented.... what you call your political system is immaterial...."
It doesn't matter if it is a 'democratic' or 'socialist', but governments that primarily serve the people's needs (not the
elite's greed) will listen to, and DO, the people's will. Out of that, the people give their CONSENT to be governed.
Today, ALL governments use a mix of democratic and socialist tools, eg. China, Russia, UK, USA. But, unlike the West, who boast
that their system is more perfect, China and Russia serve their people primarily.
As Deng said, it does not matter if the cat is black or white.
How much of America's policy's are run out of pure jealousy of Russia and China ?
Rather than being a supper power, they have regressed into immature petulant juvenile tantrums.
Self-distruction and self-harm.
Putin is a "statesman". A few squalid pretenders in the political class here may aspire to that title, but It is not a badge you
pin on yourself, it is awarded by general acclaim. Putin has stepped into the vacuum of world leadership left by the US Idiocracy
when Trump took over with the help of his free market, anti-government cohort, the Koch's, Robert Mercer, Paul Singer, and etc.
Putin is the champion of arms control, multilateralism & cooperation, and following this address certainly, environmentalism.
All attempts to demonize Putin on the part of the neoliberal US oligarchy collapse when the diminutive Russian Mongol begins to
speak. I join in the applause. It is so refreshing to listen to a leader talking sense for a change! I don't care if he is a benevolent
authoritarian anti-democrat, I am so grateful for his intelligent leadership that I salute! And I thank b for bringing this Valdai
event to our attention. The poverty and ideological blindness of our media conglomerates is just outrageous!
"Overconsumption" , in and of itself, isn't the problem. The problem is the distortion of value that capitalist empire
introduces. If the effort required to acquire some thing accurately reflected the effort to produce that thing then consumption
would be naturally self-limiting. After all, who could every day consume products containing two days worth of effort if they
had to work two days for every day worth of their consuming? "Overconsumption" can only occur because the empire expropriates
massive amounts of produced value from its vassals and uses that robbed value to buy off its domestic population. Likewise, capitalism
over-rewards certain portions of the domestic population (typically no-skill "professionals" such as journalists and middle
managers) who act as "insulation" for the elites from the working class.
Note that you don't see "overconsumption" among factory workers in Bangladesh or Malaysia. Child slave laborers working
on African cocoa plantations for your Hershey bars could never be accused of "overconsumption" . It would even be unjust
to accuse Chinese workers, as much as their standards of living have exploded over the last couple decades, of indulging in
"overconsumption" .
When China is successful in replacing the US$ with a scientifically managed "currency basket" for international trade
and currency reserve then the problem of "overconsumption" will correct itself and the Global North will go on a diet.
I am not sure that will be possible though without some "kinetic" events between now and then.
On the role of the state on the economy...and on everything else...things not discussed at Valdai, nor at MoA for that matter,
and which contribute to promote the disintegration of states so wished by the neorreactionaires due the lose of confidence of
citizens in the state-
Making the broth to fascism, on the verge of coming "curfews" to be stablished in Spain ,and other European countries...One
wonders why the hell Thiel & associated, those owners of hedge funds and managers of our personal data on behalf of already fascist
givernment like that in the US, need to follow trying to implant their so wished feudal state where the masses are submitted into
slavery, when all that is this already here...and without complaints from our part...
(...)A recent article by Carlota García Encina, an analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, described the coronavirus pandemic
as "an opportunity for NATO." Specifically, it stated that "the universality of the coronavirus means that NATO must defend
the 30 as if they were one, going from" one for all and all for one "to" all for all ".
In 2003, and anticipating events like the cheating poker player who anticipates his results, NATO released - it was not
secret - the Urban Operations in the Year 2020 report, a socio-economic analysis of the situation in Europe where it anticipated
a crisis unprecedented in the history of capitalism, where urban poverty "could grow significantly in the future, leading to
possible uprisings, civil unrest and threats to security that will require the intervention of local authorities".
The analysis was only a preview of the crisis that the capitalist system was forging. The United Nations evaluated in 2019,
and counting on the data as of December 31, 2018 (that is, less than a year and a half after the "coronavirus crisis"), that
26.1% of the population in Spain, and 29.5% of those under 18 years of age were in a situation of poverty. That more than 55%
had difficulties to make ends meet, and that 5.4% had severe deficiencies (access to electricity, drinking water, heating,
etc.). Official unemployment was 13.78%, more than double the EU average, and youth unemployment was 30.51% among those under
25 years of age. We insist, before the State of Alarm decreed on March 14, 2020.(...)
(...)Any investigation of an event ("coronavirus crisis") has to start from the circumstances that surround it to obtain accurate
conclusions, and not the other way around. The origin of this crisis that is impoverishing millions of people cannot be limited
to March 14, 2020, because as we have seen, the problem came from long before.
If we add to this that many of the decisions that are transforming society towards a privatist model (locked up at home)
and individualistic (normalizing the suppression of rights) were made based on the criteria of a "committee of experts" that
has not existed, we can never set off an alarm that this is not just a "fucking virus."
But the second question that we need to verify is the deterrent effect of the exercise of those rights which imply these
decisions, because even the left is accepting the official account of the events with astonishing passivity.(...)
(...)Paul Von Hindenburg, who came to power thanks to his family fortune, and with credentials manufactured by that fortune,
ended the German Weimar Constitution of 1919 by signing the Reichstag Fire Decree and ushering in something that at the time
of being approved no one called fascism. In the current context, the succession of regulations of this "new exceptionality"
grants an extraordinary delegation of functions to the police or civil guard officers.
With this empowered power, there is no place to turn back. The curfew that will be established in the next few hours may
one day be eliminated from the BOE, but the meaning of this measure is that mass psychology incorporates a disciplined attitude
towards the reality that surrounds us into its behavior.
And what surrounds us is what we already know. Faced with the question of whether or not we should comply with the restrictions
imposed by the State (confinement, isolation, no meetings, no leisure), we must ask ourselves (as we should have done before
March 14) if we are willing to accept or not that poverty and repression are part of our lives .
The stock market crash of 1987, the savings and loan debacle, the tech bubble, the Asian tigers meltdown, the world "recession"
of 2008 and today's global slump (which preceded the pandemic, a point neglected by the apologists for capitalism,) show that
capitalism doesn't work as advertised, even on its own limited terrain. All claims about how "I" (whether it's Putin, Trump, Boris
Johnson, Macron, a miscellaneous German, whoever) am smart enough to solve the minor details of finance responsible have been
proven by history to be lies. Whether born of sincerely felt megalomania or calculated perfidy doesn't matter, instability and
inequality (which is a bad thing, not a good one, no matter what secret feelings may be harbored,) *are* the normal operations
of market economies.
When you add to that the way the global capitalist system is creating a global environmental crisis, the shamelessness of the
capitalist apologists is staggering. Putin is a fool.
The fraud Proyect seems to think Xi is actively commanding the Chinese economy in such a fashion as to be personally responsible
for, well, everything, conveniently omits that Xi is to be condemned precisely for *not* taking charge the way needed, for advancing
the power of the Chinese bourgeoisie even at the expense of the future of China. But then, Proyect is anticommunist/pro imperialist,
a champion of barbarism using pious phrases.
Lastly, the notion that "overconsumption" is the problem, is basically an attack on the masses of the people. The problem is
the accumulation of capital, of money, which is not consumed, but "invested" for yet more money. There's a fake left website called
Crooked Timer where the oh-so-refined-sensibilities of a clot of academics is offended by the rabble eating meat...but they're
not offended by billionaires having more money than they can spend! This is the same thing. The pursuit of money, profit, is not
overconsumption, but that, not overconsumption, distorts the economy. Starting with vague notions like overconsumption reflects
a deep ideological disorientation...or a commitment to capitalism, imperialism and ultimately barbarism.
Things not discussed at Valdai...on the "eco-scam", how the Spanish IBEX35 giants, private great corporations on energy, transports
and clothing, claim thousands of millions from European Funds ( which come from tax payers money, not from the private bank accounts
of European officials, do not forget...) on the alibi of "energetic transition" and "sustainability"....This is the new scam after
that of rescuing big banks in 2008, for the bailing out and profit of those of always while the population impoverishes at galloping
pace and without any prospect of recovery, austerity seems to be our only prospect...
On the "pipelines war", also discussed at Valdai, of which it is part the alleged "Navalny poisoning" also briefly discussed without
naming that unimportant, at Russian and world level, person, how to explain that Germany must cut off Nord Stream 2 pipeline
development on the grounds of not linking its energetic sovereignty to Russia, and then Europe must link its energetic sovereignty
to Israel, when the EU has been an historical defender of Palestinian people´s rights and with this link Europe will be submitted
to blackmail on the part of Israel anytime it dares criticize Israel´s apartheid measures against Palestinians?
After diplomatically recognizing Israel, the UAE signed a contract through the MRLB with the Israeli company EAPC (which manages
the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline) to transport crude oil to Europe without having to cross the Suez Canal
Very true jadan, your view on Putin, and every time I read an excerpt or a speech by him I notice he is far above our western
"leaders" with their meaningless chatter and hollow phrases. That's why you will never read the slightest alinea by Putin in der
Spiegel,le Monde ,or le Figaro.The vile venal journo's can't afford to print it and keep up their unmerited credibility at the
same time.Same for Lavrov,Assad,Xi and Khadafi.
American grocery stores - 80 pct of the items are not necessary and are likely harmful to some degree. Junk food outlets, it's
been known for decades that this stuff leads to obesity, diabetes, and who knows what else. The authorities could mandate changes
to low fat, sugar and salt contents that would apply to all of them with no real harm to their business, but it doesn't get done
because the right people get paid off.
Putin stands out like a shining light amongst what are called world leaders.
Some are just bosses of crime syndicates, follow my eyes (USA). Others are just hopeless idiot figure-heads, like Trudeau.
(I am biased, particularly dislike him. Macron is in the same bin.)
Putin's statements about the 'economy' are calculatedly 'judicious' and unassailable. Note, he only says one has to question
the role of the State in the 'economy' in the sense of control of it, with the State as a mega-regulator + law-maker wielding
authority from the top - not as negotiator, as far as I have understood Putin.
That 'State control' should be different in different conditions -- regions, epochs, etc., is a truism. Putin projects the
feel of 'reasonable control' and 'piloting' (encouraging xyz.. or the opposite..) which rejects both despotic, authoritarian stances,
often 'arbitrary' (or experienced as such), as well as, on the other side, anarchy and unbridled profiteering -> racketeering,
monopolies, cartels, fraud, violence, coercion, etc. Some call that capitalism, others gangsterism.
Russia, land + ressource rich, with a 'low' population density, with well-educated ppl (as compared to many others), its 'economy'
at least not plunging or even stagnant (GDP per capita or some such), is well positioned to put forward such 'reasonable' thoughts.
Humanity's dilemma or rather looming disaster sink-hole - see: ressource extraction, trashing the environment, irreversible
tipping points, 'peak oil' (gone out of fashion with fracking in the US), and other over-consumption (sand for ex.), destruction
(soils.. rivers.. ocean.. global warming..), over-population, global warming.. will not be reversed or in any way solved, by reasoned
Putin-type discourse. (see pnyzx at 4, vk 30, psychohistorian 32 and others..)
For sure, Putin's job is not to solve the world's problems but to protect and nurture Russia and its people and he does that
very well.
"while at the same time even Chinese investors are discouraged from investing through opaque regulation and unpredictable Russian
state intervention."
I wonder if they are becoming more open to western investors. Nordstream 2's financing is ~50% European, and this from Oilprice.com:
". . . .No wonder, then, that a number of banks have pledged a total of $9.5 billion in funding for Novatek's second LNG project,
the Arctic LNG 2. According to a Reuters report, the China Development Bank and German Euler Hermes are among the lenders that
have made pledges, and French Pbifrance is yet to decide on the funding. The China Development Bank is, unsurprisingly, the most
generous backer of the $21-billion Arctic LNG 2 project, with $5 billion.
Arctic LNG 2 will have a liquefaction capacity of $19.8 [sic] million tons of LNG annually divided among three liquefaction
trains."
PS - Good to see you posting after you were virtually assaulted last week.
Den lille Abe,
I nowadays start to read comments from the "bottom up" - in order not to fall into the traps of some trolls, some of those I know
by name, and this prevents me to read their comments. In other words, if you continue reading from top down, you don't know who's
comment you read...
Interesting transcript. Simple, no-frills English.
Judging from the English subtitles in Oliver Stone's 4-part series The Putin Interviews, Putin is no stranger to refreshingly
frank, clear and unambiguous communication, No wonder Russians love him.
Huge contrast with the mendacity of pseudo-Christian ratbags masquerading as Western Leaders on the world stage. Evidence of
the Scum Mo Government's laughably opaque and unaccountable corruption is seeping out of every crack in the facade of what passes
for 'democracy' in Oz.
RNC's national spokesperson Liz Harrington battled CNN's Christiane Amanpour for
refusing to engage with allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his family after years
of hyping unverified Trump-Russia allegations.
"Why don't you want to report this? This is one of the most powerful families in
Washington," she asked. "And you're okay with our interests being sold out to profit Joe Biden
and his family, while we're suffering during a pandemic from communist China?"
Russia is done with the European Union. At last week's Valdai Discussion Forum Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made this quite clear with this statement.
Those people in the West who are responsible for foreign policy and do not understand the
necessity of mutually respectable conversation–well, we must simply stop for a while
communicate with them. Especially since Ursula von der Leyen states that geopolitical
partnership with current Russia's leadership is impossible. If this is the way they want it,
so be it. (H/T Andrei Martyanov)
Lavrov's statements echo a number of statements made in recent months by Russian leadership
that there is no opportunity for diplomacy possible with the United States.
We can now add the European Union to that list. Pepe
Escobar's latest piece goes over Lavrov's comments about the European Union and they are
devastating, as devastating as when he and Putin described the U.S. as " Not
Agreement Capable " a few years ago.
Lavrov reiterated this with the following comments at Valdai last week.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/zV_W3b_4G50
But as badly as the U.S. has acted in recent years in international relations, unilaterally
abrogating treaty after treaty, nominally with the goal of remaking them to be more inclusive,
Lavrov's upbraiding of the current leadership of the European Union is far worse.
Because they have gone along with, if not openly assisted, every U.S.-backed provocation
against Russia for their own advantage. From Ukraine to MH-17, to Skripal to now Belarus and
the ridiculous Navalny poisoning, the EU has proved to be worse than the U.S.
Because there can be no doubt the U.S. views Russia as an antagonist. We're quite clear
about this. But Europe plays off U.S. aggression, hiding in the U.S.'s skirts while telling
Russia, usually through German Chancellor Angela Merkel, "Be patient, we are reluctantly going
along with this." But really they're happy about it.
You do not negotiate with monkeys, you treat them nicely, you make sure that they are not
abused, but you don't negotiate with them, same as you don't negotiate with toddlers. They
want to have their Navalny as their toy–let them. I call on Russia to start wrapping
economic activity up with EU for a long time. They buy Russia's hydrocarbons and hi-tech,
fine. Other than that, any other activity should be dramatically reduced and necessity of the
Iron Curtain must not be doubted anymore.
And the truth is that Russia is dealing with monkeys in the U.S. and toddlers in the EU. And
Martanyov's right that it's time Putin et.al. simply turn their backs on the West and move
forward.
Lavrov's statements at Valdai were momentous. They sent a clear signal that if Europe wants
a future relationship with Russia they will have to change how they do business.
The problem is however, that the EU is suffused with arrogance on the eve of the U.S.
election, mistakenly thinking Joe Biden will beat Trump.
Merkel has betrayed Putin at every turn since 2013. And Germany's appalling behavior over
the Alexei Navalny poisoning was the last straw.
That what was another sabotage effort to stop the Nordstream 2 pipeline and add grist to
Trump's re-election mill was given even a cursory glance by the highest levels of the German
government was insulting enough.
That Merkel allowed her Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to run his mouth on the subject, and
then throw the decision to sanction Russia (again) over this to the EU parliament and give it
any kind of political play was truly treacherous.
Germany has taken the lead in advancing "European integration" and therefore prioritizes
Eastern European member states that push for a more aggressive stance towards Russia.
Economic connectivity with Russia is no longer an instrument for building trust and
cooperation in the pan-European space, rather it was intended to strengthen Germany's
position as the center of the EU. Moscow should work with Berlin to construct Nord Stream 2,
but not forget why Nord Stream 1 was built while South Stream was blocked.
This is a point I've been making for years. Nordstream 2 is a political tool for Germany to
reroute gas coming in from Russia which Merkel can use as a political lever over Poland and the
Visegrads.
And it is the Poles who have consistently shot themselves in the foot by not reconciling
their relationship with Russia, banding together with its Eastern European brothers and
securing an independent source of Russian gas. Putin and Gazprom would happily provide it to
them, if they would but ask.
But they don't and instead turn to the U.S. to be their protectors from both Russia and
Germany, rather than conduct themselves as a sovereign nation.
That said, I think Mr. Diesen misses the larger point here. It is true Germany under Merkel
is looking to expand its control over the EU and set itself up as a superpower for the next
century. Putin himself acknowledged
that possibility at Valdai. That may be more to dig at the U.S. and warn Europe rather than
him actually believing it.
Because under Merkel and the EU Germany is losing its dynamism. And it may even lose control
over the EU if it isn't careful. If you look at the current situation from a German perspective
you realize that Germany's mighty export business is surrounded by hostile foreign powers.
Russia -- Merkel cut off the country from Russian markets. Even though some of the trade
with Russia has returned since sanctions over Crimea went into place in 2014 she hasn't
fought the U.S.'s hyper-aggressive use of sanctions to improve Germany's position.
The U.K. -- French President Emmanuel Macron looks like he's engineered a No-Deal Brexit
with Boris Johnson which will put up major export barriers for Germany into the U.K. cutting
them off from that market.
The U.S. – Trump has all but declared Germany an enemy and when he wins a second
term will tighten the screws on Merkel even tighter.
China – They know that the incoming Great Reset, which will have its Jahr Null
event in Europe likely next year, is all about consolidating power into Europe and sucking it
away from the U.S., a process Trump is dead-set against.
However, don't think for a second that the Commies that run the EU and the World Economic
Forum are teaming up with the Commies in China. Oh no, they have bigger plans than that.
And what's been pretty clear to me is Europe's delusions that it can subjugate the world
under its rubric, forcing its rules and standards on the rest of us, including China, again
allowing the U.S. to act as its proxy while it tries to maintain its standing.
I know what you're thinking. That sounds completely ludicrous.
And you're right, it is ludicrous.
But that doesn't mean it isn't true. This is clearly the mindset we're dealing with in The
Davos Crowd. They engineered a mostly-fake pandemic to accelerate their plans to remake the
world economy by burning it down.
The multi-polar world will see the fading U.S. and U.K. band together while Russia and China
continue to stitch together Asia into a coherent economic sphere. Trump is right to pull the
U.S. out of Central Asia and has gotten nothing but grief from the U.S. establishment while
Europe, through NATO, continues trying to expand to the Russian border, now with openly backing
the attempted coup in Belarus.
This was the dominant theme at Valdai and the focus of Putin's opening remarks.
Uncle Volodya says, "Just because evil liars
stand between us and the gods
and block our view of them
does not mean that the bright halo
that surrounds each liar
is not the outer edges of a god, waiting
for us to find our way around the lie."
The Kyiv Post has always been pretty nationalistic, and never had too much time for
Russia. It has an inconsistent record on the Ukrainian oligarchy, showing occasional flashes of
frankness in which it castigates the idle rich, and depressing runs of puff pieces in which it
canonizes Petro Poroshenko and gnashes its teeth with righteous anger at his detractors.
Several of its regular writers are activists, and their material shows it. Overall, it is the
newspaper of record for Kiev's apologists, and draws a reliable audience of Russophobic
Maidanites hoarsely crying "Yurrup!!!", as if it were some sort of magic answer to all their
problems. But if the paper's material is often delusional, the comments section takes
rollie-eyed psychosis to a whole new level. This is where you get to interact with the
low-information voter, likely from a Ukrainian diaspora in North America, who buys the western
propaganda line wholly and eagerly. Making any remark which appears defensive of Russia is like
a red rag to a bull.
Here, every once in awhile, you run across a different kind of commenter – not just
the usual "Shut your mouth, you Putin troll asswipe!!" who assumes the right to proselytize his
own opinions to his heart's contentment, but will entertain no notion of a dissenting opinion
without shouting that it must have been paid for by Putin and anyone who expresses such
opinions is an employee of the FSB. Get it? Everyone who argues for a free and undivided
Ukraine delivered whole and breathing to Yurrup and its austerity agenda is a patriot who
sounds off because it's the right thing to do; everyone else is paid to lie. Occasionally, you
run across a true apologist; one who is apparently not ignorant, but one who applies his/her
intellect to running interference for the Kiev junta and doing battle on its behalf through
insults, fabrications and assumption of a certain mantle of authority, while devising excuses
for those actions by Kiev that he/she cannot explain away.
I recently did run across just such a person. Attracted to the article "
Ukraine Overturns its Non-Bloc Status. What Next With NATO? " by the sheer zaniness of the
Ukrainian leadership – which keeps bulling ahead with trying to referendum itself into
NATO despite its ongoing border disputes so that it can immediately pull NATO into an Article 5
war with Russia – I read it, and then perused the comments.
I was moved to get involved in the discussion by a comment from Michael Caine – not
the British actor, I'm pretty sure; this individual is not particularly literate but
compensates with stubbornness – who seemed sincere enough, but is fixated on the idea
that Russia (personified, of course, by Putin, as it is whenever it does anything the western
world does not like) has broken international law by acceding to Crimea's request to join the
Russian Federation. This process is invariably described in the Anglospheric press as
"annexation", and we can hardly blame Michael, because high-profile chowderheads all the way up
to and including President Obama have expressed the same opinion, which is completely
unsubstantiated. As we have often discussed, the lifeblood of law is precedent, and a precedent
was established on unilateral declarations of independence with the acceptance of that premise
for the independence of Kosovo. Poland's opinion just happened to be the first I came across,
written by then-Foreign-Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, and it announced smugly that a unilateral
declaration of independence is outside international law and
therefore unregulated by that authority. A state-in-being, saith Radek, is a matter of reality
rather than law, and if you have a population which is distinct by virtue of its language,
customs and cultural attributes, which has its own government, civil institutions and financial
institutions, you are – or you can be – a state by way of a unilateral declaration
of independence.
The Polish opinion was pivotal to the broad recognition of Kosovo, because Poland was the
first East European and the first Slavic nation to recognize it. However – and this is
important – not one other world opinion which supported the recognition of Kosovo
challenged Poland's contention that a unilateral declaration of independence is not an
instrument regulated by international law. Even The Economist , no friend of Russia and
Putin, declared in
advance of the vote that if Crimea chose to detach itself from Ukraine's rule, no court
would be likely to challenge it, while RFE/RL – still less a friend of Russia and Putin
– opined that the Budapest Memorandum (the document in which all the thunderers that
Putin has broken international law vest their hopes) is a diplomatic document rather than a
treaty, and while it is international law, is not
enforceable . Even, if you can imagine, The Hague weighed in,
expressing the legal opinion ,
"Therefore, is the Crimean Parliament vote to join the Russian Federation illegal? The
answer here is no, albeit with the above clarifications and observations. Can the Crimean
population legally exercise its right to external self-determination? The author is of the
opinion that − on the basis of existing international case law − this question can
neither be answered affirmatively or negatively."
All this went about four feet above Mr. Caine's head, because my polite request that he
elaborate on specifically which international law Mr. Putin (who apparently managed the
"annexation" of Crimea singlehandedly) broke received the response that Putin had violated the
law that says Thou Shalt Not Steal, not to mention that other bad one, Thou Shalt Not Kill.
These are ummm not international laws. Although they apply to all observers of the Christian
faith, these are Commandments, and I have yet to see a lawyer hold forth in an international
court on a case in which the Book Of Authorities and Precedents is a stone tablet, although I
should not speak too soon. You never know.
At about this point, The Apologist entered the fray. Under the banner of Swift69, and
plainly one of the protagonists for The Budapest Memorandum, he announced that there was no
unilateral declaration of independence because it was all engineered in Moscow, which allegedly
is a fact that everyone admits.
In point of fact, the Crimean Parliament and City Council of Sevastopol did declare Crimea's
independence, in writing ( here's the
English translation ), and specifically citing the unilateral declaration of independence
of Kosovo as precedent. That was actually in advance of the referendum, which asked respondents
if they did or did not favour Crimea applying to join the Russian Federation. So far as I am
aware nobody has admitted or otherwise affirmed in any way that Crimea's declaration of
independence originated in Moscow. Russia admitted in April 2014 that it had conducted advance polling in Crimea to determine the level of support for
independence, an issue which had been raised on and off since the 90's. Kind of hard to
interpret that as unacceptable interference in a reality that seems to see nothing wrong with
political-activist NGO's operated in Moscow and paid by American think tanks attempting to
amass support for overthrowing and replacing the Russian government, what?
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Up to this point it was just an amusing academic tussle – Clash Of The References, if
you will, although Swift69 actually didn't supply any. But it turned ugly from there.
I wrote, " Meanwhile Ukraine has no room at all to be preaching about international law,
nor do any of its defenders. Indiscriminate attack such as firing short-range ballistic
missiles into civilian population centers is a war crime. "
Swift69 replied, " Ballistic Missies"( sic ) – the word "ballistic" simply
means that it is "on a ballistic trajectory." Every bullet ever fired and every grad ever
launched is a "ballistic missile." While you're clearly trying to use the term to elicit
sympathy based on people's association of the word n the phrase "intercontinental ballistic
missile" or somesuch, it's nonsense. Use of ballistic weapons is no more a "war crime" than use
of gravity is "into civilian centers." what nonsense. "Many of the shocking cases, particularly
those published by the Russian media are greatly exaggerated There's no convincing evidence of
mass killings or graves." – Amnesty International report."
Let's just ponder that for a moment. Swift69 is implying an equivalency between a bullet
which might kill two or three people if it ricochets and hits more than its intended target,
and a fucking ballistic missile
which has a warhead that weighs more than half a ton (1,058 pounds). CNN
reported live that U.S. officials had confirmed Ukrainian forces fired "several" Tochka-U
(SS-21 Scarab) missiles "into areas controlled by pro-Russian separatists". The same source
reported it could kill "dozens". The Tochka-U has a Circular Error Probability (CEP) of 160
meters. That means even in the unlikely event that you were aiming it at a cluster of 20 armed
combatants – from as much as 70 km away – you could only count on the weapon
landing somewhere within 160 meters of them. The Ukrainians fired them into cities in
Donbass. And this shitbag is saying I merely tacked on the word "ballistic" to make it sound
scary, and to win sympathy for those it was fired at which they did not really deserve. Take a
look at the crater – that look like a bullet hole to you?
So, let's review. In fact, Indiscriminate Attackis
a war crime, in accordance with Customary International Humanitarian Law, Rule 12.
Indiscriminate Attack is defined as attack which is (a) not directed at a specific military
objective, (b) employs a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific
military objective, or (c) employs a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be
limited as required by international humanitarian law; and consequently, in each such case, are
of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without
distinction.
Explain to me, if you can, how you can fire a ballistic missile with a circular error
probability of 160 meters (524 feet) into a city which contains both civilians and
paramilitaries, and be reasonably confident you will not kill or injure any civilians, or even
that you know from as far away as 70 km from the city that is your target, what you are
shooting at? How are you going to limit the effects of your attack with a 1000 lb+ warhead so
that it only kills military combatants?
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Even the bullet Captain Sarcastic implied was also a "ballistic missile" could get you in
front of a war crimes tribunal, if you just loosed off some of them into a crowd which was a
composite of civilians and combatants without attempting to differentiate between the two. The
weapon is not the concern – aimed shots in a scenario in which you are attempting to
confine your fire to military targets is. Love of God, how hard is that to grasp?
Swift69 goes on to accuse me of sensationalizing further with the implication that the
Ukrainian army is firing into civilian population centers, and proceeds to conflate that with
an Amnesty International report which accused Russia of propagandizing mass graves, saying
there was no credible evidence of that. The two issues have nothing to do with one another. I
said the Ukrainian army is firing heavy weapons into Donbass cities at a range beyond which it
can discriminate between civilian and military targets, and that considerable loss of life and
tremendous damage has resulted. That is absolutely an
accurate portrayal of the state of affairs .
For a grand finale, Swift69 proceeds to attack the source of an article which reports that
Ukrainian forces or agents of the Ukrainian government have cut off the civilian populations of
cities in eastern Ukraine from water and food and medicines in an attempt to force their
surrender, and that this is also a war crime. That's a good tactic, and I use it sometimes
myself – if you're not comfortable that you can refute what was said, imply the person
who reported it is a lunatic. In this instance, I think there is plenty of corroborating
evidence that forces acting on Kiev's direction did just what I accuse
them of doing .
Kiev is committing war crimes against Ukrainian citizens with the vociferous approval of the
Kyiv Post , the tacit approval of the leadership of NATO countries and the slobbering
whitewash of Kiev's loony-fringe supporters. Shamelessly, right under your nose, and in the
clear presence of condemnatory evidence that should have the lot of them swinging from the
gibbet.
Many of us read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry when we were
children and remember what the main character said: "It's a question of discipline. When
you've finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet. It's very
tedious work, but very easy."
I am sure that we must keep doing this "tedious work" if we want to preserve our
common home for future generations. We must tend our planet.
The subject of environmental protection has long become a fixture on the global
agenda. But I would address it more broadly to discuss also an important task of
abandoning the practice of unrestrained and unlimited consumption – overconsumption
– in favour of judicious and reasonable sufficiency, when you do not live just for
today but also think about tomorrow.
We often say that nature is extremely vulnerable to human activity. Especially when
the use of natural resources is growing to a global dimension. However, humanity is not
safe from natural disasters, many of which are the result of anthropogenic interference.
By the way, some scientists believe that the recent outbreaks of dangerous diseases are a
response to this interference. This is why it is so important to develop harmonious
relations between Man and Nature.
No cheating please. Guess. Who said the above?
Please let us know your first guess in the comments.
Wow! What a mind blunder! Of course, it was VVP. Too much reading! Ha!! Pepe's article
has its own merits. Even more important is
this revealing editorial , "How Russophobia Wrought Death of the United States:"
"The surprise election in 2016 of Donald Trump to the White House so disturbed the
political class that it was compelled to delegitimize his presidency by alleging that it
was due to Russian interference. The relentless and irrational Russophobia to undermine
Trump by his domestic political enemies has only transpired to fatally weaken American
global power. The political squabbling and infighting has wreaked havoc on the moral
authority and legitimacy of American institutions of governance. The legislative
government, the presidency, the judiciary, the intelligence apparatus, the legacy media,
and so on. Every supposed pillar of American democracy has been eroded over the past four
years with alarming speed.
"A big part of this precipitous demise is due to Russophobia: the relentless sowing of
doubt and confusion in American institutions, primarily the presidency, with insinuations
of Russian interference. In their attempts to delegitimize Trump, his domestic enemies
among the U.S. establishment have ended up delegitimizing public esteem of American
democracy. How paradoxical! America's own worst enemy turns out to be itself ." [My
Emphasis]
I've long maintained that the enemies of the USA and its people are ALL Domestic
and have been from the outset. Lots of truth fit into that short essay!
The tone sounds like Vladimir Putin in English translation and the timing of B's post
suggests he said it during his closing speech at this year's Valdai Club meetings. Putin
has always been keen on conservation issues and often spends what free time he has in short
camping adventures. The Siberian tiger conservation program is a pet project of his.
The other possibility might be Chinese President Xi Jinping as the ideas of modest
consumption or consumption that fulfills a person's needs and of humans living in harmony
with nature appear in the speech, and these ideas have been incorporated into recent
Chinese government policies. The drive to eradicate poverty not only achieves one goal
(fulfilling people's needs) but also helps achieve the other, as impoverished communities
are often driven by forces beyond their control into marginal areas where they end up
upsetting the ecology and destroying in order to survive. Among other things his also
brings exotic pathogens in contact with humans through the disturbance of plant and animal
life (insects in particular) and the consumption of bushmeat and its trade.
Significantly in recent years much of the Earth's land surface as measured by satellites
that has become greener has been in China and India as a result of large-scale conservation
and tree-planting schemes and better use of land. This has sometimes involved relocating
entire rural communities in parts of China to areas where they can access services that
help to improve their lives. An example might be a community I read about recently that
lived on top of a small mountain or plateau where the only access to schools and markets
was through a winding series of narrow staircases cut into the mountain's sides. One child
did not start going to school until she was 11 years old because her mother was afraid that
she'd fall while using the stairs. The local authority later built a bridge connecting the
mountain to lower areas, cutting travel time from 3 hours to 1 hour. Recently the entire
community agreed to relocate and its old village on top of the mountain is to be preserved
and developed as a tourist attraction.
Note that not all the questions and answers after the speech have been transcribed
yet.
This is another of Mr.Putins masterpieces of common sense and analysis, courteously and
clearly telling truth as no global 'leader' even could let alone would.
It is an exceptionally important and wide-ranging analysis of the nature of humans, the
planet, and governance.
They Got Out of Their
Tractors
Why the so-called common people are increasingly joining the ranks of the so-called fifth column
Gazeta.ru
August 29, 2016
A
fifth column of tractors? Photo courtesy of @melnichenko_va/Twitter
The arrest of the people involved in the tractor convoy
, as well as new protest rallies in Togliatti after Nikolai
Merkushin, governor of Samara Region announced wage arrears would
"never"
be
paid off, are vivid examples of the top brass's new style of communicating with people. After flirting only four or five years
ago with the common people, as opposed to the
creacles
from
the so-called fifth column, the authorities have, in the midst of a crisis, been less and less likely to pretend they
care about the needs of rank-and-file Russians. Moreover, any reminders of problems at the bottom provokes irritation and an
increasingly repressive reaction at the top.
Previously, top officials, especially in the run-up to elections, preferred
to mollify discontent at the local level by promising people something, and from year to year, the president would even
personally solve people's specific problems, both during his televised town hall meetings (during which, for example, he dealt
with problems ranging from the water supply in a Stavropol village to the payment of wages to workers at a fish factory on
Shikotan
) and
during personal visits, as was the case in
Pikalyovo
,
where chemical plant workers also blocked a federal highway. Nowadays, on the contrary, the authorities have seemingly stopped
pretending that helping the common people is a priority for them.
The people have made no political demands in these cases. Moreover, the
main players in these stories almost certainly belong to the hypothetical loyal majority.
The people who took part in the tractor convoy against forcible land
seizures even adopted the name Polite Farmers, apparently by analogy with the patriotic meme
"polite
people,"
which gained popularity in Russia after the annexation of Crimea.
In 2011–2012, the authorities used approximately the same people to
intimidate street protesters sporting political slogans. That was when the whole country heard of
Uralvagonzavod
,
a tank manufacturer whose workers promised to travel to Moscow to teach the creacles a lesson. Subsequently, the company's
head engineer, Igor Kholmanskih, was unexpectedly
appointed
presidential
envoy to the Urals Federal Distrtict.
Back then, the cultivation of a political standoff between working people
from the provinces and slackers, "State Department agents," and self-indulgent intellectuals from the capitals seemed pivotal,
but in the aftermath of Crimea and a protracted crisis, it has almost been nullified.
The people are still important for generating good ratings [
via
wildly dubious opinion polls
--
TRR
], but it would seem that even
rhetorically they have ceased to be an object of unconditional concern on the part of the government.
Nowadays, the authorities regard the requests and especially the demands of
the so-called common people nearly as harshly as they once treated the
Bolotnaya
Square
protests.
The government does not have the money to placate the common people, so
people have to be forced to love the leadership unselfishly, in the name of stability and the supreme interests of the state.
Since politics has finally defeated the economy in Russia, instead of getting down to brass tacks and solving problems with
employment and wage arrears, the regime generously feeds people stories about war with the West. During a war, it quite
unpatriotic to demand payment of back wages or ask for pension increase. Only internal enemies would behave this way.
"We are not slaves!" Coal Miners on Hunger Strike in Gukovo
. Published on August 25, 2016,
by
Novaya
Gazeta
. Miners in Gukovo have refused a "handout" from the governor of Rostov Region and continued their hunger strike
over unpaid wages. Video by Elena Kostyuchenko. Edited by Gleb Limansky.
So the
coal
miners in Rostov
, who have continued their hunger strike under the slogan "We are not slaves," have suddenly proven to be
enemies, along with the farmers of Krasnodar, who wanted to tell the president about forcible land seizures, and the activists
defending
Torfyanka
Park
in Moscow, who were
detained
in the early hours of Monday morning for, allegedly, attempting to break Orthodox crosses
, and the people defending the
capital's
Dubki
Park
, slated for redevelopment despite the opinion of local residents, and the people who protested against the
extortionate Plato system for calculating the mileage tolls paid by
truckers
,
and just about anyone who is unhappy with something and plans to make the authorities aware of their dissatisfaction.
Grassroots initiatives, especially if they involve protests against the
actions or inaction of the authorities, are not only unwelcome now, but are regarded as downright dangerous, almost as actions
against the state. This hypothesis is borne out by the silence of the parliamentary opposition parties. In the midst of an
election campaign, they have not even attempted to channel popular discontent in certain regions and make it work to their
advantage at the ballot box.
The distinction between the so-called fifth column and the other four has
blurred.
Nowadays, the fifth column can be a woman who asks a governor about back
wages. Someone who defends a city park. Farmers. Coal miners. Even the workers of
Uralvagonzavod
,
which in recent years has been on the verge of bankruptcy. The contracts the state had been throwing the company's way have
not helped, apparently.
If the authorities, especially local authorities simply afraid to show
federal authorities they are incapable of coping with problems, continue to operate only through a policy of intimidation,
they might soon be the fifth column themselves, if only because, sooner or later, they will find themselves in the minority.
Translated by the
Russian Reader.
Thanks
to
Sean
Guillory
f
or the heads-up
"... We, in Russia, went through a fairly long period where foreign funds were very much the main source for creating and financing non-governmental organisations. Of course, not all of them pursued self-serving or bad goals, or wanted to destabilise the situation in our country, interfere in our domestic affairs, or influence Russia's domestic and, sometimes, foreign policy in their own interests. Of course not. ..."
Genuine democracy and civil society cannot be "imported." I have said so many times. They
cannot be a product of the activities of foreign "well-wishers," even if they "want the best
for us." In theory, this is probably possible. But, frankly, I have not yet seen such a thing
and do not believe much in it. We see how such imported democracy models function. They are
nothing more than a shell or a front with nothing behind them, even a semblance of sovereignty.
People in the countries where such schemes have been implemented were never asked for their
opinion, and their respective leaders are mere vassals. As is known, the overlord decides
everything for the vassal. To reiterate, only the citizens of a particular country can
determine their public interest.
We, in Russia, went through a fairly long period where foreign funds were very much the
main source for creating and financing non-governmental organisations. Of course, not all of
them pursued self-serving or bad goals, or wanted to destabilise the situation in our country,
interfere in our domestic affairs, or influence Russia's domestic and, sometimes, foreign
policy in their own interests. Of course not.
There were sincere enthusiasts among independent civic organisations (they do exist), to
whom we are undoubtedly grateful. But even so, they mostly remained strangers and ultimately
reflected the views and interests of their foreign trustees rather than the Russian citizens.
In a word, they were a tool with all the ensuing consequences.
A strong, free and independent civil society is nationally oriented and sovereign by
definition. It grows from the depth of people's lives and can take different forms and
directions. But it is a cultural phenomenon, a tradition of a particular country, not the
product of some abstract "transnational mind" with other people's interests behind it.
You and I have wandered together on this long journey through the Inferno of Lyttenburgh's
brain. We reached the epicenter of Russian cultural Hell, where a Satanic Gerontocracy ™
of handshakeable kreakles impose their pornographic "Visions" of High Art upon a
mouth-breathing bydlo who only want to see trite spectacles, and who are incapable of
appreciating the True Genius of the Artistic Mind.
A singing dancing porno Jesus? A kangaroo eating jelly at the Last Supper? Why not!?
Which reminds me, I should probably explain those terms up there which I put in italics. For
those not in the know, " handshakeable " is another of those winged words invented by,
probably, dissident blogger Lev Shcharansky . Who, as I mentioned before, has
exerted more influence over the modern Russian language (well, at least its Internet version)
than Ilf, Petrov, Griboedov, and Pushkin combined. Shcharansky earned his chops by popularizing
words and expressions suitable for flaying the Soviet and now Russian dissident intelligentsia,
aka "The Scorpions in the Nest" ™. In Russian the word is
Рукопожатный
(ruko-po-zhat-ny), from "ruka" ("hand") and "po-zhat" ("to press"). This "internet meme" of the
"handshakeable person" is defined as "a person to whom the Russian liberal Opposition is
inclined to shake hands with". Quite simple, no?
As for "bydlo", that is an ancient Slavic, and even Indo-European word. The ancient
Indo-European root was something like *bʰuH , and it meant "to be". As in Hamlet's
"to be or not to be". Russian and all Slavic not to mention most European languages use the
same verb, namely, "byt". In West Slavic languages, such as Polish and Czech, a derived word
"bydlo" came to mean a place where people settled. Then the meaning shifted from "place" to
"property or stuff", like household stuff, and from there to "domestic animals". In this sense
of the meaning, the word was borrowed from West Slavic
into Russian . Russians, always on the lookout for new ways to insult their friends and
neighbors, were, like, "We need a word just like that to describe our domestic animals, and
also certain persons who look and behave like domestic animals". Hence, bydlo .
With that bit of house-keeping out of the way, let us return to Lyttenburgh. Having passed
the epicenter of Inferno, we are now in the field of reverse gravity. What seems up is down,
and vice versa. Who knows, we may yet emerge, popping out of some volcanic crater in Iceland or
New Zealand, or somewhere like that.
"The skies gonna open
People going pray and crawl
It's gonna rain down fire
It's gonna burn us all"
– Christian Kane, "L.A. song"
This happened a year and a half ago. As time will tell us – no one learned anything
from this earlier incident. Maybe because at the moment of its eruption in February-March of
2015 there were plenty of other issues closer to home to occupy the general discourse of
Russian people. Hence a scandal in the cultural sphere just failed to generate a significant
resonance at the time to produce a serious discussion within society.
All sides of the conflict were dissatisfied with its resolution. The artistic intelligentsia
warped the whole story into the now well-known myth about "creeping censorship" and continued
to enjoy their Fronde . The people were dissatisfied that they were ignored, scoffed at
and offended by the self-proclaimed new High Priesthood of the Art. Real members of the real
world religions made their views on the scandal abundantly clear. This also raised the ire of
the kreakls, who saw no controversy in demanding a limit to the clergy's right of freedom of
speech. With the conflict not resolved, with tensions still high and simmering just beneath the
surface of deceiving calm, with lessons unlearned and the State aloof and unresponsive to its
role as the keeper of peace and high arbiter, new scandals and conflicts were bound to
happen.
Pugachev in a Cage!
When the people don't have a voice they tend to lash out. This is a fact of life, a fact of
history and a fact of the present day, as a lot of exalted alien beings inhabiting safe spaces
of Facebook, Tumblr and politically correct hangouts found to their stupefied dismay only
recently, and who, probably, will keep finding it in the future till they learn the lesson and
change some of their dearly held preconceptions. Lashing out in question is always an ugly,
destructive affair. Revolting peasants of the Jacquerie, German Peasant War, Khmelnitsky's uprising and
Pugachev's
rebellion committed uncountable number of violent crimes and atrocities. They were
criminals by anyone's standards, and the Powers That Be had to suppress them. Yet, dismissing
them outright without recognizing both the pressing issues that made people rise up and the
fact, that they were denied any say in legally addressing their grievances, puts these events
out of context.
Desperate people are prone to desperate measures. Lacking a clear moral authority to lead
them and rein in the worst expressions of violent urges, then something else entirely,
something less benevolent and more unhinged is bound to attempt to ride this tiger of an
awakened, self-conscious and angry population. Some con artists, fanatics, goofballs and
demagogues are bound to appear and attempt to hijack the legitimate protest or even try to
discredit it while overstepping the law.
Bydlo Fight Back
Due to the all-prevailing narrative, which places squarely all possible and impossible
crimes against humanity on Stalin; and to the generally cherished ignorance of history --
people forget that it was in the reign of the "Dear and Beloved" Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev that the
atheist and anti-religious propaganda reached an exorbitant and all penetrating level in the
Soviet Union. This is all part of our history, which is always better to know than pretend it
never happened.
Look out! Enteo is out of his cage!
It's anyone's guess what were the driving imperatives of the people, organizing the
exhibition in Manezh expo-hall in Moscow in August 2015, when they decided to feature mainly
"sculptures" on religious themes of the so-called nonconformist artists from 1954-68. The
exhibition was attacked by one man freak show Dmitry Tsorionov aka
Enteo . Former liberast, proponent of the alternative spiritual practices (read: sects and
cults) and a connoisseur of mind-expanding ingredients (read: drugs) Enteo is the violent,
always angry born again self-proclaimed zealot of the true Christianity in the form of his
organization "God's Will". The official Church and the authorities showed him their silent and
tacit support, while his group was disrupting attempts to hold gay-prides (not that it would
require a lot of manpower or effort), but what he did at Manezh clearly shocked and dismayed
them. Enteo and his own cultists entered the hall where the exhibition was taking place,
screeched out their displeasure with what they saw and attempted to deface the objects of
"art". Thankfully, like virtually anything produced in the USSR back then, said "statues"
proved to be nigh indestructible, so Enteo and Co succeed only in smashing an Ikea made plate,
on which one of the "exhibits" was standing. Security did absolutely nothing to stop them.
As the result of this escapade Tsorionov lost even the tacit support of the officials, and
the public opinion of him and his vigilantes became much more negative. Manezh expo-hall
filed an official request to the police , accusing Enteo of vandalism and hooliganism. One
month later, he was found guilty of
petty hooliganism and sentenced to 10 days of arrest. Same people, who deemed Pussy Riot's
and "artist" Pavlensky's escapades a form of "creative protest" and "modern art-events", while
bemoaning any attempts of the state to characterize their actions as unlawful, were less
forgiving in Enteo's case with his very own "happening" and "performance". But, as said Dmitriy
Anatolyevich Medvedev in his capacity as then president of Russia (and as was aptly
demonstrated in cases of Enteo, Pavlensky and the former art-director Mezdrich, who won't
answer for the mysterious disappearance of the state funds in his opera) – "The System
must learn how to forgive".
Again – nothing came out of that, sides of the conflict exchanged volleys of
accusations and no lessons were learned. Again everyone had been left guessing when and what
will explode next time. Surely enough, something exploded, riling up two clearly incomparable
in numbers sides even more in their non-acceptance of each other.
Dmitry Zakharov protests against art depicting Ukrainian National Guard as heroes
In September 2016 a group of Byelarussian members of the artistic intelligentsia (and local
Fronde to bat'ka Lukashenko) held a photo-exhibition at the Sakharov Center, Moscow,
depicting "Heroes of Donbass". In their version – members of the so-called volunteer
battalions of the National Guard were these heroes. People, killing their former countrymen,
women, children and elderly – depicted as smiling, nice, hearty persons. This most
"balanced" and "neutral" exhibition proclaimed them as the people, fighting against the
"Separatists" – all in accordance to the Vision of the Artist. Needless to say, that such
interpretation was met with
most loud protests from the people of Russia. Equally unnecessary would be pointing out,
that we are talking about an "event" sanctioned by our always shy and hands-off Ministry of
Culture in their own building. It turned ugly very soon – photos were sprayed with red paint
by one of the enraged visitors – an artist himself.
Sergeii Lukashevsky: Always fair and balanced.
Most progressive intelligentsia of Russia deemed these actions of protest "barbarous", once
again confirming everyone's suspicions about whose side they were supporting in the Ukrainian
civil war. [yalensis hint: Russia's "progressive intelligentsia" mostly supports the
Ukrainian government side in that war, although they won't always admit it out loud.]
Art-Director of the Sakharov Center
Sergey Lukashevsky admitted that he knew what kind of reaction such an exhibition could
produce. Still, he decided to stage it, arguing that last year his center produced a similar
exhibition, only from the People's Republics side – he was just striving for "balance"
and "neutrality".
More Scandals Involving Children And Animals
At the same time, another scandal was in full swing, once again polarizing society into two
numerically unequal camps. Again, it was because of yet another example of the generous
permissiveness of our Ministry of Culture. Photo exhibition of Jock Sturges "art" drew a
proverbial tsunami of people's wrath. The artistic intelligentsia couldn't just deny itself the
pleasure of prodding a tiger, safely locked behind bars. While pointing out that from a purely
judicial point of view the exhibit was not violating any Russian laws. The people answered with
stating the obvious – there are underage completely nude girls on this photo exhibition.
How can any normal, non-pervert person claim that taking photos of them and then making their
photos available for "appreciation" among the connoisseurs of such things is normal? Kreakls
answered with wailing, gnashing of teeth and condemnation of the "spiritual paupers", incapable
of seeing and understating the Art. In their opinion, it was the Regime's guilt. If only it
could cough up more money and make the "appreciation of culture" taught at schools then the
people will grow up as highly-artistic persons, with broad views on reality at large and new
sets of values. These suggestions were made live, on state owned "Kremlin-controlled" TV
channels with no ill consequences to the members of artistic intelligentsia. What is more
important, IMO, is that no one dared to ask these fine specimens and results of countless
generations of "progress" and "higher culture", how do they suggest an underage kid would be
taught to appreciate the "positive artistic eroticism" of photos of equally underage
kids.
Jock Sturges art photography
Again the Ministry of Culture stood aloof, again nothing was done on the official level
– because Russia, no matter what the detractors say, has no censorship. Some people
staged one-person protest against the exhibit – to the apparent displeasure of the
so-called Russian liberals. Others went much far and beyond the law. A group calling itself
"The Union of Russian Officers" (with no official status or even real officers among their
numbers) organized a picket at the entrance of the expo-hall, and one of their number entered
the accursed placed armed with a can full of urine, to consecrate the exhibits with its
content. He succeeded in this endeavor, which later translated into his detainment and arrest.
Aristocrats of the Spirit responsible for this scandal wallowed (and enjoyed!) in their newly
acquired status of Victims of the Regime – because how else can you explain their
decision to have no security on site, or that they did not call the police the first moment
they saw trouble brewing on the horizon?
The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
It was exactly against this that Konstantin Raikin decided to raise his voice. Being a
member of the Aristocracy of the Spirit he and the likes of him never doubted for a moment that
all protests against the sacred Art were fake, staged, paid by the Regime, which uses these
fake protestors as cat's-paws in its quest to squash already threatened Freedom of Expression
in This Country. The idea that there is such thing as self-aware narod , instead of a
silent quietly mewling herd of mostly stupid and submissive bydlo never crossed his or
other's minds. For them it is all old "The Artist vs the State" struggle, and the people,
public, society, spectators – they do not fit into the narrative. Since XIX century the
so-called liberal intelligentsia in Russia was fashionably in opposition to the Regime –
and it was the first to crawl begging said regime to suppress the revolting masses, which more
than anything else had frightened them.
"Ladies and gentlemen: On your right is an Old Master painting. On your left, a stuffed dog
wearing a birthday cap."
A Ministry of Culture self-contradictory passive, all permissiveness and unable to defend
their own official program, an ossified if not degenerative modus Vivendi of the vast
majority of representatives of the so-called creative classes and the un-diminishing anger and
rejection of both the "post-modern values" and the legislation, paradoxically protecting it, by
the people deprived of any say, would mean only one thing – such scandals will happen
more and more in the future. Just to demonstrate that even the nearly universal condemnation of
Raikin's haughtiness by the common people is not a big deal to the Aristocracy of the Spirit,
yet another scandal
erupted last week . Russian society, still reeling after the criminal affair featuring
girl-students from Khabarovsk
mutilating animals on-line , now was not prepared for a state-sanctioned, highly artistic
dead-animal mutilating fete – in the Hermitage, Saint-Petersburg, of all places! The
Hermitage is ruled by a true Aristocrat – the infamous M.B. Piotrovsky , who, literally,
inherited the title of the head of one of (if not the) most important museums of Russia from
his father. No scandal or accusation ever harmed his handshakable status or deprived him from
the favour of the Ministry of Culture. Surely, a person who allowed enormous graft and theft of
objects of art in Hermitage in the past will survive the present day scandal unscathed, while
accusing all those opposing this most wondrous exhibition as "hired slanderers".
Note: I wrote about Hermitage museum scandal nearly 2 weeks ago. Unsurprisingly, I was
correct in my prediction about the autcome and that Piotrovsky will steadfastly defend his
nobbish position on the "art".
"Position of the Hermitage – there should not be censorship. This was in the
context of the controversial exhibition by Jan Fabre with stuffed animals, as told to "Echo
of Petersburg" Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky.
"We are defending our position that there was must be no censorship from the
government, nor the censorship from the crowd. So that museums within bounds of their
rights and powers could be able to work, and be protected, "- said Piotrowski to
Echo."
I reiterate once again. These shockingly life-like stuffd animals, hanged around famous
paintings in a way that would make any fan of BDSM and animal mutiliation proud and
salivating – this is "art". People who come to the Hermitage museum, who pay rate
steep price for the tickets, who usually come from the backgrounds of those, who are
willing to come and appreciate the art in the first place – they are "the crowd".
Despite all this controversy, the exhibition won't be closed – that's the power of
Piotrovsky. It will continue no matter what till April 2017.
Tramp was essentially the President from military industrial complex and Israel lobby. So he was not played. That's naive. He
followed the instructions.
On March 20, 2018, President
Donald Trump
sat beside Saudi crown prince Muhammed bin Salman at the White House and lifted a giant map that said
Saudi weapons purchases would support jobs in "key" states -- including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Ohio, all
of which were crucial to Trump's
2016 election victory
.
"Saudi Arabia has been a very great friend and a big purchaser of
equipment but if you look, in terms of dollars, $3 billion, $533 million, $525 million -- that's peanuts for you. You
should have increased it," Trump
said
to the prince, who was (and still is) overseeing a military campaign in Yemen that has deployed U.S. weaponry to commit
scores
of alleged war crimes.
Trump has used his job as commander-in-chief to be America's arms-dealer-in-chief
in a way no other president has since Dwight Eisenhower, as he prepared to leave the presidency, warned in early 1961
of the military-industrial complex's political influence. Trump's posture makes sense personally ― this is a man who
regularly
fantasizes
about violence, usually toward foreigners ― and he and his advisers see it as politically useful, too. The president
has repeatedly appeared at weapons production facilities in swing states,
promoted
the head of Lockheed Martin using White House resources, appointed defense industry employees to top government jobs
in an unprecedented way and expanded the Pentagon's budget to near-historic highs ― a guarantee of future income for
companies like Lockheed and Boeing.
Trump is "on steroids in terms of promoting arms sales for his own
political benefit," said William Hartung, a scholar at the Center for International Policy who has tracked the defense
industry for decades. "It's a targeted strategy to get benefits from workers in key states."
In courting the billion-dollar industry, Trump has trampled on moral
considerations about how buyers like the Saudis misuse American weapons, ethical concerns about conflicts of interest
and even part of his own political message, the deceptive
claim
that he is a peace candidate. He justifies his policy by citing job growth, but data from
Hartung
,
a prominent analyst, shows he exaggerates the impact. And Trump has made clear that a major motivation for his defense
strategy is the possible electoral benefit it could have.
Next month's election
will show if the bargain was worth it. As of now, it looks like Trump's bet didn't pay off
― for him, at least. Campaign contribution records, analysts in swing states and polls suggest arms dealers have given
the president no significant political boost. The defense contractors, meanwhile, are expected to
continue
getting richer, as they have in a dramatic
way
under Trump.
Playing Corporate Favorites
Trump has thrice chosen the person who decides how the Defense Department
spends its gigantic budget. Each time, he has tapped someone from a business that wants those Pentagon dollars. Mark
Esper, the current defense secretary, worked for Raytheon; his predecessor, Pat Shanahan, for Boeing; and Trump's first
appointee, Jim Mattis, for General Dynamics, which reappointed him to its board soon after he left the administration.
Of the senior officials serving under Esper, almost half have connections
to military contractors,
per
the Project on Government Oversight. The administration is now rapidly trying to fill more Pentagon jobs under the guidance
of a former Trump campaign worker, Foreign Policy magazine recently
revealed
― prioritizing political reasons and loyalty to Trump in choosing people who could help craft policy even under a
Joe Biden
presidency.
Such personnel choices are hugely important for defense companies'
profit margins and risk creating corruption or the impression of it. Watchdog groups argue Trump's handling of the hiring
process is more evidence that lawmakers and future presidents must institute rules to limit the reach of military contractors
and other special interests.
"Given the hundreds of conflicts of interest flouting the rule of
law in the
Trump administration
, certainly these issues have gotten that much more attention and are that much more salient
now than they were four years ago," said Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs at Common Cause, a nonpartisan
good-government group.
The theoretical dangers of Trump's approach became a reality last
year, when a former employee for the weapons producer Raytheon used his job at the State Department to advocate for a
rare emergency declaration allowing the Saudis and their partner the United Arab Emirates to buy $8 billion in arms ―
including $2 billion in Raytheon products ― despite congressional objections. As other department employees warned that
Saudi Arabia was defying U.S. pressure to behave less brutally in Yemen, former lobbyist Charles Faulkner led a unit
that urged Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo
to give the kingdom more weapons. Pompeo
pushed
out Faulkner soon afterward, and earlier this year, the State Department's inspector general
criticized
the process behind the emergency declaration for the arms.
MOHAMED AL-SAYAGHI / REUTERS
Red
Crescent medics walk next to bags containing the bodies of victims of Saudi-linked airstrikes on a Houthi detention center
in Yemen on Sept. 1, 2019. The Saudis military campaign in Yemen has relied on U.S. weaponry to commit scores of alleged
war crimes.
Even Trump administration officials not clearly connected to the
defense industry have shown an interest in moves that benefit it. In 2017, White House economic advisor Peter Navarro
pressured
Republican lawmakers to permit exports to Saudi Arabia and Jared
Kushner, the president's counselor and son-in-law, personally
spoke
with Lockheed Martin's chief to iron out a sale to the kingdom, The New York Times found.
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When Congress gave the Pentagon $1 billion to develop medical supplies
as part of this year's
coronavirus
relief package, most of the money went to defense contractors for projects like jet engine parts instead,
a Washington Post investigation
showed
.
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"It's a very close relationship and there's no kind of sense that
they're supposed to be regulating these people," Hartung said. "It's more like they're allies, standing shoulder to shoulder."
Seeking Payback
In June 2019, Lockheed Martin announced that it would close a facility
that manufactures helicopters in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and employs more than 450 people. Days later, Trump tweeted
that he had asked the company's then-chief executive, Marillyn Hewson, to keep the plant open. And by July 10, Lockheed
said
it would do so ― attributing the decision to Trump.
The president has frequently claimed credit for jobs in the defense
industry, highlighting the impact on manufacturing in swing states rather than employees like Washington lobbyists, whose
numbers have also
grown
as he has expanded the Pentagon's budget. Lockheed has helped him in his messaging: In one instance in Wisconsin, Hewson
announced
she was adding at least 45 new positions at a plant directly after Trump spoke there, saying his tax cuts for corporations
made that possible.
Trump is pursuing a strategy that the arms industry uses to insulate
itself from political criticism. "They've reached their tentacles into every state and many congressional districts,"
Scherb of Common Cause said. That makes it hard for elected officials to question their operations or Pentagon spending
generally without looking like they are harming their local economy.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Democrat who represents Coatesville,
welcomed
Lockheed's change of course, though she warned, "This decision is a temporary reprieve. I am concerned that Lockheed
Martin and [its subsidiary] Sikorsky are playing politics with the livelihoods of people in my community."
The political benefit for Trump, though, remains in question, given
that as president he has a broad set of responsibilities and is judged in different ways.
"Do I think it's important to keep jobs? Absolutely," said Marcel
Groen, a former Pennsylvania Democratic party chair. "And I think we need to thank the congresswoman and thank the president
for it. But it doesn't change my views and I don't think it changes most people's in terms of the state of the nation."
With polls showing that Trump's disastrous response to the
health pandemic
dominates voters' thoughts and Biden sustaining a lead
in surveys of most swing states
, his argument on defense industry jobs seems like a minor factor in this election.
Hartung of the Center for International Policy drew a parallel to
President George H.W. Bush, who during his 1992 reelection campaign promoted plans for Taiwan and Saudi Arabia to purchase
fighter jets produced in Missouri and Texas. Bush
announced
the
decisions
at events at the General Dynamics facility in Fort Worth, Texas, and the McDonnell Douglas plant in St. Louis that made
the planes. That November, as Bill Clinton defeated him, he lost Missouri by the highest
margin
of any Republican in almost 30 years and won Texas by a slimmer
margin
than had become the norm for a GOP presidential candidate.
MANDEL NGAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
President
Donald Trump greets then-Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson at the Derco Aerospace Inc. plant in Milwaukee on July 12,
2019. Trump does not appear to be winning his political bet that increased defense spending would help his political
fortunes.
Checking The Receipts
The defense industry can't control whether voters buy Trump's arguments
about his relationship with it. But it could, if it wanted to, try to help him politically in a more direct way: by donating
to his reelection campaign and allied efforts.
Yet arms manufacturers aren't reciprocating Trump's affection. A
HuffPost review of Federal Election Commission records showed that top figures and groups at major industry organizations
like the National Defense Industrial Association and the Aerospace Industries Association and at Lockheed, Trump's favorite
defense firm, are donating this cycle much as they normally do: giving to both sides of the political aisle, with a slight
preference to the party currently wielding the most power, which for now is Republicans. (The few notable exceptions
include the chairman of the NDIA's board, Arnold Punaro, who has given more than $58,000 to Trump and others in the GOP.)
Data from the Center for Responsive Politics
shows
that's the case for contributions from the next three biggest groups of defense industry donors after Lockheed's employees.
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One smaller defense company, AshBritt Environmental, did
donate
$500,000 to a political action committee supporting Trump ― prompting a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center, which
noted that businesses that take federal dollars are not allowed to make campaign contributions. Its founder
told
ProPublica he meant to make a personal donation.
For weapons producers, backing both parties makes sense. The military
budget will have increased 29% under Trump by the end of the current fiscal year,
per
the White House Office of Management and Budget. Biden has
said
he doesn't see cuts as "inevitable" if he is elected, and his circle of advisers includes many from the national security
world who have worked closely with ― and in many cases worked for ― the defense industry.
And arms manufacturers are "busy pursuing their own interests" in
other ways, like trying to get a piece of additional government stimulus legislation, Hartung said ― an effort that's
underway as the Pentagon's inspector general
investigates
how defense contractors got so much of the first coronavirus relief package.
Meanwhile, defense contractors continue to have an outsize effect
on the way policies are designed in Washington through less political means. A recent report from the Center for International
Policy found that such companies have given at least $1 billion to the nation's most influential think tanks since 2014
― potentially spending taxpayer money to influence public opinion. They have also found less obvious ways to maintain
support from powerful people, like running the databases that many congressional offices use to connect with constituents,
Scherb of Common Cause said.
"This goes into a much bigger systemic issue about big money in politics
and the role of corporations versus the role of Americans," Scherb said.
Given its reach, the defense industry has little reason to appear
overtly partisan. Instead, it's projecting confidence despite the generally dreary state of the global economy: Boeing
CEO Dave Calhoun
has said
he expects similar approaches from either winner of the election,
arguing even greater Democratic control and the rise of less conventional lawmakers isn't a huge concern.
In short, whoever is in the White House, arms dealers tend to do
just fine.
Fight it all you want, but there's nothing you can do. "The emails are Russian" is going to
be the official dominant narrative in mainstream political discourse, and there's nothing you
can do to stop it. Resistance is futile.
Like the Russian hacking narrative, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, the Russian
bounties in Afghanistan narrative, and any other evidence-free framing of events that
simultaneously advances pre-planned cold war agendas, is politically convenient for the
Democratic party and generates clicks and ratings, the narrative that the New York Post
publication of Hunter Biden's emails is a Russian operation is going to be hammered and
hammered and hammered until it becomes the mainstream consensus. This will happen regardless of
facts and evidence, up to and including rock solid evidence that Hunter Biden's emails were not
published as a result of a Russian operation.
This is happening. It's following the same formula all the other fact-free Russia hysteria
narratives have followed. The same media tour by pundits and political operatives saying with
no evidence but very assertive voices that Russia is most certainly behind this occurrence and
we should all be very upset about it.
"To me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work," Russiagate founder
and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is heard assuring CNN's audience .
"Joe Biden – and all of us – SHOULD be furious that media outlets are spreading
what is very likely Russian propaganda," begins and eight-part thread by Democratic Senator
Chris Murphy, who claims the emails are "Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda."
"It's not really surprising at all, this was always the play, but still kind of
head-spinning to watch all the players from 2016 run exactly the same hack-leak-smear op in
2020. Even with everyone knowing exactly what's happening this time," tweets MSNBC's Chris
Hayes.
"How are you all circling the wagons instead of being embarrassed for peddling Russian ops
18 days before the election. It's not enough that you all haven't learned from your atrocious
handling of 2016 -- you are doubling down," Democratic Party think tanker Neera Tanden
tweeted in admonishment of
journalists who dare to report on or ask questions about the emails.
Virtually the entirety of the Democratic Party-aligned political/media class has streamlined
this narrative of Russian influence into the American consciousness with very little inertia,
despite the fact that neither Joe nor Hunter Biden has disputed the authenticity of the emails
and despite a complete absence of evidence for Russian involvement in their publication.
This is surely the first time, at least in recent memory, that we have ever seen such a
broad consensus within the mass media that it is the civic duty of news reporters to try and
influence the outcome of a presidential general election by withholding negative news coverage
for one candidate. There was a lot of fascinated hatred for Trump in 2016, but people still
reported on Hillary Clinton's various scandals and didn't attack one another for doing so. In
2020 that has changed, and mainstream news reporters have now largely coalesced along the
doctrine that they must avoid any reporting which might be detrimental to the Biden
campaign.
"Dem Party hacks (and many of their media allies) genuinely believe it's immoral to report
on or even discuss stories that reflect poorly on Biden. In reality, it's the responsibility of
journalists to ignore their vapid whining and ask about newsworthy stories, even about Biden,"
tweeted The Intercept 's Glenn
Greenwald recently.
"You don't even have to think the Hunter Biden materials constitute some kind of
earth-shattering story to be absolutely repulsed at the authoritarian propaganda offensive
being waged to discredit them -- primarily by journalists who behave like compliant little
trained robots ," tweeted journalist Michael
Tracey.
Last month The Spectator 's Stephen L Miller described how the consensus
formed among the mainstream press since Clinton's 2016 loss that it is their moral duty to
be uncritical of Trump's opponent.
"For almost four years now, journalists have shamed their colleagues and themselves over
what I will call the 'but her emails' dilemma," Miller writes. "Those who reported dutifully on
the ill-timed federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's private server and spillage of
classified information have been cast out and shunted away from the journalist cool kids'
table. Focusing so much on what was, at the time, a considerable scandal, has been written off
by many in the media as a blunder. They believe their friends and colleagues helped put Trump
in the White House by focusing on a nothing-burger of a Clinton scandal when they should have
been highlighting Trump's foibles. It's an error no journalist wants to repeat."
So "the emails are Russian" narrative serves the interests of political convenience,
partisan media ratings, and the national security state's pre-planned agenda to continue
escalating against Russia as part of its
slow motion third world war against nations which refuse to bow to US dictates, and you've
got essentially no critical mainstream news coverage putting the brakes on any of it. This
means this narrative is going to become mainstream orthodoxy and treated as an established
fact, despite the fact that there is no actual, tangible evidence for it.
Joe Biden could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and the mainstream
press would crucify any journalist who so much as tweeted about it. Very
little journalism is going into vetting and challenging him, and a great deal of the energy
that would normally be doing so is going into ensuring that he slides right into the White
House.
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If the mainstream news really existed to tell you the truth about what's going on, everyone
would know about every questionable decision that Joe Biden has ever made, Russiagate would
never have happened, we'd all be acutely aware of the fact that powerful forces are pushing us
into increasingly aggressive confrontations with two nuclear-armed nations, and Trump would be
grilled about
Yemen in every press conference.
But the mainstream news does not exist to tell you the truth about the world. The mainstream
news exists to advance the interests of its wealthy owners and the status quo upon which they
have built their kingdoms. That's why it's
so very, very important that we find ways to break away from it and share information with
each other that isn't tainted by corrupt and powerful interests.
* * *
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I've written) in any way they like free of charge.
Esper's speech demonstrates a confluence of policies, ideas, and funds that permeate
through the system, and are by no means unique to a single service, think tank, or
contractor.
First, Esper consistently situated his future expansion plans in a need to adapt to "an
era of great power competition." CNAS is one of the think tanks leading the charge in
highlighting the threat from Beijing.
They also received at least $8,946,000 from 2014-2019 from the U.S. government and
defense contractors, including over $7 million from defense contractors like Northrop
Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Huntington Ingalls, General Dynamics, and Boeing who would stand
to make billions if the 500-ship fleet were enacted.
It's all about the money. Foreign and domestic policy is always all about the money,
either directly or indirectly. Of course, the ultimate goal is power - or more precisely, the
ultimate goal is relief of the fear of death, which drives every single human's every action,
and only power can do that, and in this world only money can give you power (or so the
chimpanzees believe.)
The problem with American imperialism that like tiger it can't change its spots. In this
sense Trump vs Biden is false dilemma. "Bothe aare worse" as Stalin quipped on the other
occasion. Both still profess "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine at the expense of the standard of
living of the USA people (outside of top 10 or 20%)
The problem with Putin statement is that both candidates are marionette of more powerful
forces. Trump is a hostage of Izreal lobby, which in the USA are mostly consist of rabid
Russophobes (look art Schiff, Schumer and other members of this gang). Biden is a classic
neoliberal warmonger, much like Hillary was, who voted for Iraq war, contributed to color
revolution in Ukraine, and was instrumental in the conversion of Dems into the second war party.
So there is zero choice in the coming election unless you want to punish Trump for the betrayal
of his electorate, which probably is the oonly valid reason to vote for Biden in key states;
otherwise you san safely ignore the elections as youn; influence anythng. In a deep sense this is
a simply legitimization procedure for the role of the "Deep State", not so much real elections as
both cadidates were already vetted by neoliberal establishment
The key problem with voting for Bide is that this way you essentially legitimizing Obama
administration RussiaGate false flag operation. But as Putin said, chances for extending the
Start treaty might worse this self-betrayal.
Like much of the American public, the Russian public is no doubt weary of the prior couple
years of non-stop 'Russiagate' headlines and wild accusations out of Western press, which all
are now pretty much in complete agreement came to absolutely nothing. This is also why the
whole issue has been conspicuously dropped by the Biden campaign and as a talking point among
the Democrats, though in some corners there's been meek attempts to revive it, especially
related to claims of "expected" Kremlin interference in the impending presidential
election.
Apparently seeing in this an opportunity for some epic trolling, Russian President Vladimir
Putin in an interview with Rossiya 1 TV days ago said it was actually the Democratic Party and
the Communist Party which have most in common.
Putin was speaking in terms of historic Soviet communism in the recent interview (Wednesday)
detailed in Newsweek. "The Democratic Party is traditionally closer to the so-called liberal
values, closer to social democratic ideas," Putin began. "And it was from the social democratic
environment that the Communist Party evolved."
"After all, I was a member of the Soviet Communist Party for nearly 20 years" Putin added.
"I was a rank-and-file member, but it can be said that I believed in the party's ideas. I
still like many of these left-wing values. Equality and fraternity. What is bad about them?
In fact, they are akin to Christian values."
"Yes, they are difficult to implement, but they are very attractive, nevertheless. In
other words, this can be seen as an ideological basis for developing contacts with the
Democratic representative."
The Russian president also invoked that historically Russian communists in the Soviet era
would have been fully on board the Black Lives Matter movement and other civil rights related
causes. "So, this is something that can be seen, to a degree, as common values, if not a
unifying agent for us," the Russian president said. "People of my generation remember a time
when huge portraits of Angela Davis, a member of the U.S. Communist Party and an ardent fighter
for the rights of African Americans, were on view around the Soviet Union."
So there it is: Putin is saying his own personal ideological past could be a basis of
"shared values" with a Biden presidency, again, it what appears to be a sophisticated bit of
trolling that he knows Biden won't welcome one bit. Or let's call it a 'Russian endorsement
Putin style'. The Associated Press and others described it as Putin "hedging his bets",
however.
Another interesting part of the interview is where the Russian TV presenter asked Putin the
following question:
"The entire world is watching the final stage of the US presidential race. Much has
happened there, including things we could never imagine happening before but the one constant
in recent years is that your name is mentioned all the time," Zarubin said. "Moreover, during
the latest debates, which have provoked a public outcry, presidential candidate Biden called
candidate Trump 'Putin's puppy.'"
"Since they keep talking about you, I would like to ask a question which you probably will
not want to answer," the interviewer continued. "Nevertheless, here it is: Whose position in
this race, Trump's or Biden's, appeals to you more?"
And here's Putin's response:
"Everything that is happening in the United States is the result of the country's internal
political processes and problems," Putin said. "By the way, when anyone tries to humiliate or
insult the incumbent head of state, in this case in the context you have mentioned, this
actually enhances our prestige, because they are talking about our incredible influence and
power. In a way, it could be said that they are playing into our hands, as the saying
goes."
But on a more serious note Putin pointed out that contrary to the notion some level of
sympathy between the Trump administration and the Kremlin, much less the charge of "collusion",
it remains that US-Russia relations have reached a low-point in recent history under Trump. The
record bears this out.
Putin underscored that "the greatest number of various kinds of restrictions and sanctions
were introduced [against Russia] during the Trump presidency."
"Decisions on imposing new sanctions or expanding previous ones were made 46 times. The
incumbent's administration withdrew from the INF treaty. That was a very drastic step. After
2002, when the Bush administration withdrew from the ABM treaty, that was the second major
step. And I believe it is a big danger to international stability and security," Putin
explained.
"Now the US has announced the beginning of the procedure for withdrawing from the Open
Skies Treaty. We have good reason to be concerned about that, too. A number of our joint
projects, modest, but viable, have not been implemented – the business council project,
expert council, and so on," he concluded.
But then on Biden specifically Putin said that despite "rather sharp anti-Russian rhetoric"
from the Democratic nominee, it remains "Candidate Biden has said openly that he was ready to
extend the New START or to sign a new strategic offensive reductions treaty."
"This is already a very significant element of our potential future cooperation," Putin
added of a potential Biden presidency.
I draw your attention to the irrefutable fact that Mr. Cohen said that the Buk missile, which
brought down Malaysian Flight 370 over the skies of Donbas, was the Ukraine government "playing
with its new toys and made a big mistake." -- and I draw your attention to the irrefutable fact
that Mr. Cohen said that the Buk missile, which brought down Malaysian Flight 370 over the skies
of Donbas, was the Ukraine government "playing with its new toys and made a big mistake."
He was a real giant in comparison with intellectual scum like Fiona Hill, Michael McFaul and other neocons.
Notable quotes:
"... I tried to explain to American friends what was happening, but quickly realized that ultimately, even friends believe what they read in the newspapers, and the newspapers were pushing the Washington line. Except for Steve Cohen. Steve was the only major figure in America who insisted on remembering the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who, like my family members, distrusted and hated the new Kiev government. He spoke of neo-Nazi paramilitiaries who fought for the US-backed government committing war crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine. He spoke the truth, regardless of how unwieldy it was. ..."
"... There's a lot to say about Steve. He was extraordinarily kind, never forgetting that in geopolitics, the ones who have the most to lose aren't strategists but everyday individuals impacted by policy. He was a consummate teacher, insisting on giving mentees the skills to navigate the world, a real proponent of the Teach a man to fish philosophy. He had facets and stories and memories; he lived life with empathy and gusto. ..."
"... Steve's insistence on speaking the truth about Ukraine and US-Russia relations drew all sorts of attention. America was hurtling toward a new cold war with Russia, and Steve well, from the perspective of Washington's foreign policy establishment, Steve was fucking up the narrative. Steve talked about inconvenient things, things like US-backed war criminals and America's own meddling in Russian affairs; in the process, he himself had become inconvenient. ..."
"... After all, this wasn't some random blogger. This was one of America's foremost Russia experts, a tenured professor at Princeton and New York University, someone who didn't just write about history but had dinner with it, had briefed US presidents, and was friends with legends like Mikhail Gorbachev. Steve had clout earned from decades of brilliant work; by 2014, he was using that clout to throw a wrench in the think tank world. ..."
"... It was something far colder, more sustained, something that ironically the Soviets did to dissidents: a relentless crusade to render the target untouchable, a leper without a platform. The barrage of articles and diatribes hurled at Steve in the national press painted him as not just a dissenter but a supporter of dictators and murderers. It was a vicious, prolonged assault carried out by think tank toadies, the kind of people who win races by kneecapping the competition. ..."
"... I'd often talk with Steve after a new hatchet job or smear on national television. Of course, the attacks were hurtful -- the only way to not be affected was to not care, and Steve cared. But I also noticed he was remarkably free of bitterness. Every time I thought he'd snap, he'd return the next day to write, discuss, keep fighting. ..."
"... It took me a couple of years to understand that what kept Steve going was faith in his beloved institutions. He believed in academia, in scholarship, in discourse, debate, and civility. He believed in the capacity of everyday people to explore and engage with their world, he believed in Russia, and he always believed in America. He believed in these things far more than he believed in the power of today's warmongers. ..."
"... In 1967 Noam Chomsky wrote an article in the NY Review entitled "the Responsibility of Intellectuals" the first sentence ran like this: "IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.". Stephen Cohen did precisely that when all the parrots and pundits were lined up against him. ..."
"... Always I was skeptical of prevailing scholarly interpretive trends on the Soviet experience that were echoed by colleagues claiming expertise on the subject. Cohen provided the foundation for my skepticism and invigorated my lectures on American foreign policy. ..."
"... Once Cohen plied his knowledge against the hysterical narrative that culminated in 4 years of frothing neo-McCarthyism (by the freakin' "left," no less), we were no longer gonna see him on the PBS newshour any more likely than we would and will see chris hedges, chomsky, or margaret kimberly. ..."
"... His book War With Russia? was an oasis of counter-narrative when I picked it up. Losing voices like his is immeasurable as we hurtle toward total war with Russia and/or China, both of whom are finally, naturally, and perfectly predictably beginning to draw a line in the sand. ..."
I first reached out to Stephen Cohen because I was losing my mind.
In the spring of 2014, a war broke out in my homeland of Ukraine. It was a horrific war in a
bitterly divided nation, which turned eastern Ukraine into a bombed-out wasteland. But that's
not how it was portrayed in America. Because millions of eastern Ukrainians were against the
US-backed government, their opinions were inconvenient for the West. Washington needed a clean
story about Ukraine fighting the Kremlin; as a result, US media avoided reporting about the
"wrong" half of the country. Twenty-plus million people were written out of the narrative, as
if they never existed.
I tried to explain to American friends what was happening, but quickly realized that
ultimately, even friends believe what they read in the newspapers, and the newspapers were
pushing the Washington line. Except for Steve Cohen. Steve was the only major figure in America
who insisted on remembering the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who, like my family members,
distrusted and hated the new Kiev government. He spoke of neo-Nazi paramilitiaries who fought
for the US-backed government committing war crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine. He
spoke the truth, regardless of how unwieldy it was.
And so I e-mailed him, asking for guidance as I began my own writing career. Of course,
there were many who clamored for Steve's time, but I had an advantage over others. Steve and I
were both night owls, real night owls, the kind who have afternoon tea at three am. It
was then, when the east coast was sleeping, that he became my mentor and friend.
There's a lot to say about Steve. He was extraordinarily kind, never forgetting that in
geopolitics, the ones who have the most to lose aren't strategists but everyday individuals
impacted by policy. He was a consummate teacher, insisting on giving mentees the skills to
navigate the world, a real proponent of the Teach a man to fish philosophy. He had
facets and stories and memories; he lived life with empathy and gusto.
But one thing Steve taught me is to stick to my strengths, and truth be told, there are
others who can describe his life better than I. I'll stick to what I learned during our
conversations at three in the morning, which is that, above all else, Stephen F. Cohen was a
man of faith.
Steve's insistence on speaking the truth about Ukraine and US-Russia relations drew all
sorts of attention. America was hurtling toward a new cold war with Russia, and Steve well,
from the perspective of Washington's foreign policy establishment, Steve was fucking up the
narrative. Steve talked about inconvenient things, things like US-backed war criminals and
America's own meddling in Russian affairs; in the process, he himself had become
inconvenient.
After all, this wasn't some random blogger. This was one of America's foremost Russia
experts, a tenured professor at Princeton and New York University, someone who didn't just
write about history but had dinner with it, had briefed US presidents, and was friends with
legends like Mikhail Gorbachev. Steve had clout earned from decades of brilliant work; by 2014,
he was using that clout to throw a wrench in the think tank world.
The DC apparatchiks couldn't discredit Steve's credentials or track record -- he'd predicted
events in Ukraine and elsewhere years before they occurred. They couldn't intimidate him --
he'd faced far worse threats, like the KGB. Instead, they set out to turn him into an
America-hating, Putin-loving pariah.
This went beyond an ad hominem campaign. It was something far colder, more sustained,
something that ironically the Soviets did to dissidents: a relentless crusade to render the
target untouchable, a leper without a platform. The barrage of articles and diatribes hurled at
Steve in the national press painted him as not just a dissenter but a supporter of dictators
and murderers. It was a vicious, prolonged assault carried out by think tank toadies, the kind
of people who win races by kneecapping the competition.
I'd often talk with Steve after a new hatchet job or smear on national television. Of
course, the attacks were hurtful -- the only way to not be affected was to not care, and Steve
cared. But I also noticed he was remarkably free of bitterness. Every time I thought he'd snap,
he'd return the next day to write, discuss, keep fighting.
It took me a couple of years to understand that what kept Steve going was faith in his
beloved institutions. He believed in academia, in scholarship, in discourse, debate, and
civility. He believed in the capacity of everyday people to explore and engage with their
world, he believed in Russia, and he always believed in America. He believed in these things
far more than he believed in the power of today's warmongers.
Steve liked movies and would often end a lecture with a movie reference to drive home the
thesis. When I think of him, I think of the ending of The Shawshank Redemption , the
line about Andy Dufresne crawling through filth and coming out clean on the other side. Steve
didn't live in a movie; I can't claim he emerged unscathed. What he did was come through
without bitterness or cynicism. He refused to turn away from the ugliness, but he didn't allow
it to blind him to beauty. He walked with grace. And he lost neither his convictions nor his
faith.
Lev
Golinkin Lev Golinkin is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka,
Amazon's Debut of the Month, a Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers program
selection, and winner of the Premio Salerno Libro d'Europa. Golinkin, a graduate of Boston
College, came to the US as a child refugee from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov (now
called Kharkiv) in 1990. His writing on the Ukraine crisis, Russia, the far right, and
immigrant and refugee identity has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los
Angeles Times, CNN, The Boston Globe, Politico Europe, and Time (online), among other venues;
he has been interviewed by MSNBC, NPR, ABC Radio, WSJ Live and HuffPost Live.
Pierre Guerlain says: October 1, 2020 at 12:42 pm
In 1967 Noam Chomsky wrote an article in the NY Review entitled "the Responsibility of
Intellectuals" the first sentence ran like this: "IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals
to speak the truth and to expose lies.". Stephen Cohen did precisely that when all the
parrots and pundits were lined up against him. He was a Mensch. History will bear him
the historian out.
Valera Bochkarev says to Lance Haley: October 1, 2020 at 11:09 am
Hmm, who's the apologist here ?
If the Ukraine is SO sovereign how is it I did not see any outrage in your diatribe
against 'Toria, Pyatt and the rest orchestrating the Maidan putsch or the $5Billion US spent
on softening up the ukraine for the regime change ?
I believe in numbers, as in the number of military bases any given country has surrounding
the ones it wants to subvert, in the amount of money allocated to vilify and eventually bring
down the "unwanted" regimes and the quantity and 'quality' of sanctions imposed against those
regimes; and the sum of all of the above perpetrated against humanity in the past 75 or so
years.
Your vapid drivel, Mr Haley, evaporates almost without a trace once seen with those
parameters in mind.
Numbers don't lie.
Michael Batinski says: September 30, 2020 at 5:48 pm
Let me add from the perspective of an American historian who taught for forty years in a
midwestern university. From the start I depended on William Appleman Williams to keep
perspective and to counter prevailing interpretive trends.
Always I was skeptical of
prevailing scholarly interpretive trends on the Soviet experience that were echoed by
colleagues claiming expertise on the subject. Cohen provided the foundation for my skepticism
and invigorated my lectures on American foreign policy.
I will always be thankful.
Michael Batinski
Tim Ashby says: September 30, 2020 at 2:37 pm
The smothering agitprop in America trumps even Goebbels and co. with its beautifully
dressed overton window and first-amendment-free-press bullshit.
Once Cohen plied his knowledge against the hysterical narrative that culminated in 4 years
of frothing neo-McCarthyism (by the freakin' "left," no less), we were no longer gonna see
him on the PBS newshour any more likely than we would and will see chris hedges, chomsky, or
margaret kimberly.
Let's face it, we were lucky to win the editorial fight to even give him
space in the Nation.
His book War With Russia? was an oasis of counter-narrative when I picked it up. Losing
voices like his is immeasurable as we hurtle toward total war with Russia and/or China, both
of whom are finally, naturally, and perfectly predictably beginning to draw a line in the
sand.
During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties -- three Republicans and three
Democrats. I was at President George W. Bush's side when we were attacked on Sept. 11; as deputy director of the agency, I was with
President Obama when we killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In my 40 years of voting, I have pulled the lever for candidates
of both parties. As a government official, I have always been silent about my preference for president.
No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is
elected as our 45th president.
Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief.
I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president -- keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only
unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.
I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In
these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her
mind if presented with a compelling argument.
I also saw the secretary's commitment to our nation's security; her belief that America is an exceptional nation that must lead
in the world for the country to remain secure and prosperous; her understanding that diplomacy can be effective only if the country
is perceived as willing and able to use force if necessary; and, most important, her capacity to make the most difficult decision
of all -- whether to put young American women and men in harm's way.
Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice, in opposition to some of her most important
colleagues on the National Security Council. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was
a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria.
I never saw her bring politics into the Situation Room. In fact, I saw the opposite. When some wanted to delay the Bin Laden raid
by one day because the White House Correspondents Dinner might be disrupted, she said, "Screw the White House Correspondents Dinner."
In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits
he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief.
These traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions
based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness
to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.
The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump's character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging
our national security.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual
and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities by complimenting
him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated.
Mr. Putin is a great leader, Mr. Trump says, ignoring that he has killed and jailed journalists and political opponents, has invaded
two of his neighbors and is driving his economy to ruin. Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American,
interests -- endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia's annexation of Crimea and giving a green light
to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.
In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.
Mr. Trump has also undermined security with his call for barring Muslims from entering the country. This position, which so clearly
contradicts the foundational values of our nation, plays into the hands of the jihadist narrative that our fight against terrorism
is a war between religions.
In fact, many Muslim Americans play critical roles in protecting our country, including the man, whom I cannot identify, who ran
the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center for nearly a decade and who I believe is most responsible for keeping America safe since the
Sept. 11 attacks.
My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing
now. Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president.
Michael J. Morell was the acting director and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2013.
Truth be told: political operatives own and run our MSM. This is why the press is called
the 'Fourth Estate'.
They are more correctly described as a Fifth Column , one far more open and sworn to
destroy our country and its foundational citizens – and taxpayers – as any that
ever operated during World War II. You would think this would be of vital interest to people
who loudly declare themselves to be "Nazi-punchers", but who time and again show themselves to
be merely low-level street terrorists informed and inspired by Mao's Red Guard and the
irredeemable thugs of the African National Congress.
One wonders what's preventing them from
mimicking the Red Terror waged by the leftists of Spain, when the battle for "freedom" involved
the disinterment of the graves of Catholic clergy to better pose the corpses in blasphemous
positions. Imagine how depraved those Mostly Peaceful protesters had to have been for even a
leftist-supporting site such as Wikipedia to baldly state
The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832
Roman Catholic priests, the vast majority in the summer of 1936 in the wake of the military
coup), attacks on the Spanish nobility, industrialists, and conservative politicians, as well
as the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches.
Directly in the crosshairs this time are small and medium-sized owner-operated businesses
– the true backbone of American freedom and prosperity – who have largely been
sacrificed in exchange for the knock-kneed offerings of Danegeld from our giant conglomerates,
all of whom have prospered immensely from the suffering and privation brought on by the
Democratic lockdown of society – and the total shutdown of our economy.
Think! – have you read a single article charting how the government war on small
business directly enriched Amazon.com and
world's richest autocrat, Jeff Bezos? . who then funnels his windfall into a newspaper that
blatantly pimps for the Democratic Party, which translates into a vast payday for the DNC, not
least from its newly-approved partnership with the shadowy and many-tentacled Soros-surrogate
group, BLM?
The result is what you'd expect when a fringe group operates with the full cooperation and
partnership of major industry and both political parties (don't confuse Trump with a
standard-issue Republican, please – he may have terrible flaws, but that isn't one of
them) – 10% of the population holding the other 90% in a chokehold with only one set of
rules: no arrest and prosecution for Bolshevik violence and terror ..but the zero-tolerance
heavy hand of corrupt Leviathan coming down hard against any and all citizens who fight back
or, eventually – inevitably – who even struggle against their restraints.
Short of the sudden arrival of celestial horsemen to punish the guilty and reward the
set-upon, it has become clear that the only answer is the one that the Powers That Be claim to
be dead set against: racial separatism. (Particularly when we consider that all that will be
necessary to turn America into Hell on earth will be the adoption of Ibram Kendi's First Law,
sometimes known as equality of outcome :
To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the
U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is
evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.
Could any "amendment" be more terrifyingly totalitarian than this?)
White and black separation would, instead, accomplish two goals, both more important than
Kendi's quick fix: we would learn soon enough about actual equality of outcomes (which
is why no Communist, black or white, wants anything to do with the creation of one more failed
basket-case black state), and much more importantly, white families can sleep secure in their
beds at night, without worrying about Apache raids at midnight, egged on and recorded for
"posterity" by that Fourth Estate/Fifth Column referred to up top. Because the fact of the
matter is that, even should some combination of government and law-enforcement halt the burning
and looting of America – as things stand now, none of the worst malefactors will ever see
the inside of a prison cell .which means any ceasefire will only be temporary, to be violently
ripped asunder the moment they sense white Americans have at last lowered their guard once
more. And living in perpetual paranoid readiness for violent uprisings and mindless destruction
is no way to live at all.
Trump has it half right, a border wall is the answer: only it needs to run
lengthwise , between the Southern and Northern borders. If we don't use the next four
years to plan out such a separation, fretting over our children's children will be a fruitless
exercise – those who aren't murdered will be captured and 'go native' .and in case you
haven't looked at a globe lately, there's no place left to run.
As a recovering journalist, I can point out that even on a rinkydink rag in a small city,
where I got fired for being a real journalist back in the early '70's; he who owns the
presses and distribution networks calls the tune. It's a matter of working-class (no matter
how middle-class your income or social-status) versus the ownership class. The latter wins
every time.
Selfishness may be exalted as the root and branch of capitalism, but it doesn't make you
look good to the party on the receiving end or those whose sympathy he earns. For that, you
need a government prepared to do four things, which each have separate dictums based on study,
theorization, and experience. Coercion: Force is illegitimate only if you can't sell it.
Persuasion: How do I market thee? Let me count the ways. Bargaining: If you won't scratch my
back, then how about a piece of the pie? Indoctrination: Because I said so. (And paid for the
semantics.)
Predatory capitalism is the control and expropriation of land, labor, and natural resources
by a foreign government via coercion, persuasion, bargaining, and indoctrination.
At the coercive stage, we can expect military and/or police intervention to repress the
subject populace. The persuasive stage will be marked by clientelism, in which a small
percentage of the populace will be rewarded for loyalty, often serving as the capitalists'
administrators, tax collectors, and enforcers. At the bargaining stage, efforts will be made to
include the populace, or a certain percentage of it, in the country's ruling system, and this
is usually marked by steps toward democratic (or, more often, autocratic) governance.
At the fourth stage, the populace is educated by capitalists, such that they continue to
maintain a relationship of dependency.
The Predatory Debt Link
In many cases, post-colonial states were forced to assume the debts of their colonizers. And
where they did not, they were encouraged to become in debt to the West via loans that were
issued through international institutions to ensure they did not fall prey to communism or
pursue other economic policies that were inimical to the West. Debt is the tie that binds
nation states to the geostrategic and economic interests of the West.
As such, the Cold War era was a time of easy credit, luring postcolonial states to undertake
the construction of useless monoliths and monuments, and to even expropriate such loans through
corruption and despotism, thereby making these independent rulers as predatory as colonizers.
While some countries were wiser than others and did use the funds for infrastructural
improvements, these were also things that benefited the West and particularly Western
contractors. In his controversial work Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins reveals
that he was a consultant for an American firm (MAIN), whose job was to ensure that states
became indebted beyond their means so they would remain loyal to their creditors, buying them
votes within United Nations organizations, among other things.
Predatory capitalists demand export-orientations as the means to generate foreign currency
with which to pay back debt. In the process, the state must privatize and drastically slash or
eliminate any domestic subsidies which are aimed at helping native industry compete in the
marketplace. Domestic consumption and imports must be radically contained, as shown by the
exchange rate policies recommended by the IMF. The costs of obtaining domestic capital will be
pushed beyond the reach of most native producers, while wages must be depressed to an absolute
bare minimum. In short, the country's land, labor, and natural resources must be sold at
bargain basement prices in order to make these goods competitive, in what one author has called
"a spiraling race to the bottom," as countries producing predominantly the same goods engage in
cutthroat competition whose benefactor is the West.
Under these circumstances, foreign investment is encouraged, but this, too, represents a
loaded situation for countries that open their markets to financial liberalization.
If you have ever wondered why Syrian jihadists, or so-called 'moderate opposition', got
support from the woke liberal West, a recent leak by Anonymous reveals it's because Western
governments funded this propaganda.
In the end, it is the sheer childishness of the propaganda which amazes me most, not that
our rulers lie about other countries – I have always known that. But somehow there was a
kernel of truth around which the web of lies was spun, for example about life in the old Soviet
Union.
I began to realise the scope of Western ability to literally invent the most baseless lies
only in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, and only because I knew more about Iraq than any
politician in Britain or America and ten times more than the average made-up telly-dolly
chuntering through their auto-cued war propaganda. The women presenters weren't any better.
This all came flooding back to me when I received an email from Anonymous earlier this week
and then read Ben Norton's excellent analysis of it all in The GrayZone.
If anyone ever wondered how the hordes of head-chopping throat-cutting heart-eating
gay-murdering women-hating 'Jihadists' of the Syrian War ever managed to get a fair press in a
'woke' liberal West that gets hot under the lace collar about JK Rowling novels, the answers
are all in
the Anonymous leak . The principle answer is that you, the taxpayer, paid for it.
That's right. The blizzard of 'White Helmets' (who made it right up to the Oscars to thank
everyone who'd helped them except those that had helped them the most), "chemical-weapons
attacks" and all the paraphernalia of a newly "moderate opposition" in Syria – was all
paid for by YOU. Millions of pounds of British taxpayers' money was revealed to have been spent
secretly on UK support for the throat-cutting coalition of chaos, which for a decade massacred
its way across Syria wearing a snow-white Western beard of respectability.
It would appear that while the US (or rather its milk-cows in the Gulf) was paying for the
lethal-weapons, perfidious Albion was doing what it does best – lying through its teeth
whilst making those being lied to, pay for the privilege. Now that – thanks to the leaks
– we know this, it should put us on guard for the next one. Yet somehow it doesn't, at
least not for the purveyors of the news.
The Lazarus-like resurrection (and photo-shoot) of Russia's opposition figure and Western
darling Alexey Navalny after yet another alleged Novichok (believed to be 5-8 times more toxic
than VX nerve agent) attack without so much as a tracheostomy to show for it is swallowed whole
in yet another anti-Russian public relations offensive.
Grown sane men call my television show to talk about 'concentration camps' in China in
which, we are told, "a million Uighur Muslims" are being held and forcibly sterilised. This is
despite the allegations being largely based on studies backed by the American government and
statements by Western media favourite, German researcher Adrian Zenz. Zenz, who is part of the
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a US-backed advocacy group,
believes that he is "led by God" on his "mission" against China. Meanwhile, according to China's
official statistics the Uighur population in Xinjiang province increased by over 25 percent
between 2010 and 2018, while the Han Chinese rose by only two percent.
The lying industry may be the only sector of the Western economies still in full production.
No need for furlough or bounce-back loans. The lie-machines never still. No smoke is usually
detected from their chimneys, but inside, their pants are well and truly on fire.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
"... The blogger Caitlin Johnstone accurately states that these most of these mainstream corporate journalists are really *narrative managers* in that their primary role is to peddle the official narrative of the US corporate/political establishment for any given topic. ..."
"... I would add that the managing editors of these "journalists"/narrative managers would be more honestly described as "handlers," to use the parlance of spooks. ..."
"... Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus reality" - that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one coordinated narrative, you can't set "reality". ..."
"... In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power, due to cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate may *say* they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own internal belief systems. So again, waste of time to try ..."
snake , Sep 22 2020 0:59 utc | 22 can we not invent a method that can counter this tactic of using propaganda to control
the narrative?
1) Hack them. Release their planning documents, emails, phone calls, etc. showing how the scam was set up.
2) Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus reality"
- that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one coordinated
narrative, you can't set "reality".
3) In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power, due to
cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate may *say*
they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own internal belief
systems. So again, waste of time to try.
Well....as always, and especially if it involves anything even remotely relating to 'Russia', or Iran, or whatever adversarial
operational target of the day might be -- one can reliably count on our very own "Izvestia on the Hudson" to faithfully execute
their officially sanctioned nation security state propaganda mission by dutifully steno-graphing as much dis/mis-information as
their NSA/CIA/Pentagon handlers request (require) from them.
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper's movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic
was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called
"the narrative." We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with
editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the
mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting
National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: "My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?"
The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper's daily Page One meeting:
"We set the agenda for the country in that room.
The blogger Caitlin Johnstone accurately states that these most of these mainstream corporate journalists are really *narrative
managers* in that their primary role is to peddle the official narrative of the US corporate/political establishment for any given
topic.
I would add that the managing editors of these "journalists"/narrative managers would be more honestly described as "handlers,"
to use the parlance of spooks.
In fact, it would be apt to described venerable institution of journalism itself as an intelligence operation.
@snake | Sep 22 2020 0:59 utc | 22 can we not invent a method that can counter this tactic of using propaganda to control the
narrative?
1) Hack them. Release their planning documents, emails, phone calls, etc. showing how the scam was set up.
2) Waste of time. They control the media. The Internet may have lots of influence, but it still does not set "consensus
reality" - that remains with the MSM. The MSM issues one coordinated narrative. The Internet is all over the place. Without one
coordinated narrative, you can't set "reality".
3) In addition, those who issue the narrative and control the MSM have the power. People want to believe those in power,
due to cognitive dissonance - otherwise they'd have to accept that everyone ruling their lives is a corrupt liar. The electorate
may *say* they understand that their rulers are corrupt - but they can't act* on that realization without compromising their own
internal belief systems. So again, waste of time to try.
A very good article. A better title would be "How neoliberalism collapsed" Any religious doctrine sonner or later collased
under the weight of corruption of its prisets and unrealistic assumptions about the society. Neoliberalism in no expection as in
heart it is secular religion based on deification of markets.
He does not discuss the role of Harvard Mafiosi in destruction of Russian (and other xUSSR republics) economy in 1990th, mass
looting, empowerment of people (with pensioners experiencing WWII level of starvation) and creation of mafia capitalism on post
Soviet state. But the point he made about the process are right. Yeltsin mafia, like Yeltsin himself, were the product of USA and
GB machinations
Notable quotes:
"... If the US (and the UK, if as usual we tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and endangering the world. ..."
"... One of the most malign effects of western victory in 1989-91 was to drown out or marginalise criticism of what was already a deeply flawed western social and economic model. In the competition with the USSR, it was above all the visible superiority of the western model that eventually destroyed Soviet communism from within. ..."
"... These beliefs interacted to produce a dominant atmosphere of "there is no alternative," which made it impossible and often in effect forbidden to conduct a proper public debate on the merits of the big western presumptions, policies or plans of the era ..."
"... This was a sentiment I encountered again and again (if not often so frankly expressed) in western establishment institutions in that era: in economic journals if it was suggested that rapid privatisation in the former USSR would lead to massive corruption, social resentment and political reaction; in security circles, if anyone dared to question the logic of Nato expansion ..."
"... Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history. This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media ..."
"... By claiming for the US the right of unilateral intervention anywhere in the world and denying other major powers a greater role in their regions, this strategy essentially extended the Monroe Doctrine (which effectively defined the "western hemisphere" as the US sphere of influence) to the entire planet: an ambition greater than that of any previous power. The British Empire at its height knew that it could never intervene unilaterally on the continent of Europe or in Central America. The most megalomaniac of European rulers understood that other great powers with influence in their own areas of the world would always exist. ..."
"... "A stable and healthy polity and economy must be based on some minimal moral values" ..."
"... Many liberals gave the impression of complete indifference to the resulting immiseration of the Russian population in these years. At a meeting of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington that I attended later, former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar boasted to an applauding US audience of how he had destroyed the Russian military industrial complex. The fact that this also destroyed the livelihoods of tens of millions of Russians and Ukrainians was not mentioned. ..."
"... This attitude was fed by contempt on the part of the educated classes of Moscow and St Petersburg for ordinary Russians, who were dubbed Homo Sovieticus and treated as an inferior species whose loathsome culture was preventing the liberal elites from taking their rightful place among the "civilised" nations of the west. This frame of mind was reminiscent of the traditional attitude of white elites in Latin America towards the Indio and Mestizo majorities in their countries. ..."
"... I vividly remember one Russian liberal journalist state his desire to fire machine guns into crowds of elderly Russians who joined Communist demonstrations to protest about the collapse of their pensions. The response of the western journalists present was that this was perhaps a little bit excessive, but to be excused since the basic sentiment was correct. ..."
"... If the post-Cold War world order was a form of US imperialism, it now looks like an empire in which rot in the over-extended periphery has spread to the core. The economic and social patterns of 1990s Russia and Ukraine have come back to haunt the west, though so far thank God in milder form. The massive looting of Russian state property and the systematic evasion of taxes by Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs was only possible with the help of western banks, which transferred the proceeds to the west and the Caribbean. This crime was euphemised in the western discourse (naturally including the Economist ) as "capital flight." ..."
"... The indifference of Russian elites to the suffering of the Russian population has found a milder echo in the neglect of former industrial regions across Britain, Western Europe and the US that did so much to produce the votes for Brexit, for Trump and for populist nationalist parties in Europe. The catastrophic plunge in Russian male life expectancy in the 1990s has found its echo in the unprecedented decline in white working-class male life expectancy in the US. ..."
"... Perhaps the greatest lesson of the period after the last Cold War is that in the end, a stable and healthy polity and economy must be based on some minimal moral values. ..."
"... Those analysing the connection between Russia and Trump's administration have looked in the wrong place. The explanation of Trump's success is not that Putin somehow mesmerised American voters in 2016. It is that populations abandoned by their elites are liable to extreme political responses; and that societies whose economic elites have turned ethics into a joke should not be surprised if their political leaders too become scoundrels. ..."
A s the US prepares to plunge into a new cold war with China in which its chances do not
look good, it's an appropriate time to examine how we went so badly wrong after "victory" in
the last Cold War. Looking back 30 years from the grim perspective of 2020, it is a challenge
even for those who were adults at the time to remember just how triumphant the west appeared in
the wake of the collapse of Soviet communism and the break-up of the USSR itself.
Today, of the rich fruits promised by that great victory, only wretched fragments remain.
The much-vaunted "peace dividend," savings from military spending, was squandered. The
opportunity to use the resources freed up to spread prosperity and deal with urgent social
problems was wasted, and -- even worse -- the US military budget is today higher than ever.
Attempts to mitigate the apocalyptic threat of climate change have fallen far short of what the
scientific consensus deems to be urgently necessary. The chance to solve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and stabilise the Middle East was thrown away even before 9/11 and
the disastrous US response. The lauded "new world order" of international harmony and
co-operation -- heralded by the elder George Bush after the first Gulf War -- is a tragic joke.
Britain's European dream has been destroyed, and geopolitical stability on the European
continent has been lost due chiefly to new and mostly unnecessary tension with Moscow. The one
previously solid-seeming achievement, the democratisation of Eastern Europe, is looking
questionable, as Poland and Hungary (see Samira Shackle, p20) sink into semi-authoritarian
nationalism.
Russia after the Cold War was a shambles and today it remains a weak economy with a limited
role on the world stage, concerned mainly with retaining some of its traditional areas of
influence. China is a vastly more formidable competitor. If the US (and the UK, if as usual we
tag along) approach the relationship with Beijing with anything like the combination of
arrogance, ignorance, greed, criminality, bigotry, hypocrisy and incompetence with which
western elites managed the period after the Cold War, then we risk losing the competition and
endangering the world.
One of the most malign effects of western victory in 1989-91 was to drown out or marginalise
criticism of what was already a deeply flawed western social and economic model. In the
competition with the USSR, it was above all the visible superiority of the western model that
eventually destroyed Soviet communism from within. Today, the superiority of the western model
to the Chinese model is not nearly so evident to most of the world's population; and it is on
successful western domestic reform that victory in the competition with China will depend.
Hubris
Western triumph and western failure were deeply intertwined. The very completeness of the
western victory both obscured its nature and legitimised all the western policies of the day,
including ones that had nothing to do with the victory over the USSR, and some that proved
utterly disastrous.
As Alexander Zevin has written of the house journal of Anglo-American elites, the
revolutions in Eastern Europe "turbocharged the neoliberal dynamic at the Economist ,
and seemed to stamp it with an almost providential seal." In retrospect, the magazine's 1990s
covers have a tragicomic appearance, reflecting a degree of faith in the rightness and
righteousness of neoliberal capitalism more appropriate to a religious cult.
These beliefs interacted to produce a dominant atmosphere of "there is no alternative,"
which made it impossible and often in effect forbidden to conduct a proper public debate on the
merits of the big western presumptions, policies or plans of the era. As a German official told
me when I expressed some doubt about the wisdom of rapid EU enlargement, "In my ministry we are
not even allowed to think about that."
This was a sentiment I encountered again and again (if not often so frankly expressed) in
western establishment institutions in that era: in economic journals if it was suggested that
rapid privatisation in the former USSR would lead to massive corruption, social resentment and
political reaction; in security circles, if anyone dared to question the logic of Nato
expansion; and almost anywhere if it was pointed out that the looting of former Soviet
republics was being assiduously encouraged and profited from by western banks, and regarded
with benign indifference by western governments.
The atmosphere of the time is (nowadays notoriously) summed up in Francis Fukuyama's The
End of History , which essentially predicted that western liberal capitalist democracy
would now be the only valid and successful economic and political model for all time. In fact,
what victory in the Cold War ended was not history but the study of history by western
elites.
"The US claiming the right of unilateral intervention anywhere in the world was an
ambition greater than that of any previous power"
A curious feature of 1990s capitalist utopian thought was that it misunderstood the
essential nature of capitalism, as revealed by its real (as opposed to faith-based) history.
One is tempted to say that Fukuyama should have paid more attention to Karl Marx and a famous
passage in The Communist Manifesto :
"The bourgeoisie [ie capitalism] cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole
relations of society All fixed, fast-frozen relations with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can
ossify the bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market drawn from under the
feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old established national industries
have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed "
Then again, Marx himself made exactly the same mistake in his portrayal of a permanent
socialist utopia after the overthrow of capitalism. The point is that utopias, being perfect,
are unchanging, whereas continuous and radical change, driven by technological development, is
at the heart of capitalism -- and, according to Marx, of the whole course of human history. Of
course, those who believed in a permanently successful US "Goldilocks economy" -- not too hot,
and not too cold -- also managed to forget 300 years of periodic capitalist economic
crises.
Though much mocked at the time, Fukuyama's vision came to dominate western thinking. This
was summed up in the universally employed but absurd phrases "Getting to Denmark" (as if Russia
and China were ever going to resemble Denmark) and "The path to democracy and the free
market" (my italics), which became the mantra of the new and lucrative academic-bureaucratic
field of "transitionology." Absurd, because the merest glance at modern history reveals
multiple different "paths" to -- and away from -- democracy and capitalism, not to mention
myriad routes that have veered towards one at the same time as swerving away from the
other.
Accompanying this overwhelmingly dominant political and economic ideology was an American
geopolitical vision equally grandiose in ambition and equally blind to the lessons of history.
This was summed up in the memorandum on "Defence Planning Guidance 1994-1999," drawn up in
April 1992 for the Bush Senior administration by Under-Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and subsequently leaked to the media. Its central message was:
"The US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds
the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or
pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests We must maintain the
mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global
role "
By claiming for the US the right of unilateral intervention anywhere in the world and
denying other major powers a greater role in their regions, this strategy essentially extended
the Monroe Doctrine (which effectively defined the "western hemisphere" as the US sphere of
influence) to the entire planet: an ambition greater than that of any previous power. The
British Empire at its height knew that it could never intervene unilaterally on the continent
of Europe or in Central America. The most megalomaniac of European rulers understood that other
great powers with influence in their own areas of the world would always exist.
While that 1992 Washington paper spoke of the "legitimate interests" of other states, it
clearly implied that it would be Washington that would define what interests were legitimate,
and how they could be pursued. And once again, though never formally adopted, this "doctrine"
became in effect the standard operating procedure of subsequent administrations. In the early
2000s, when its influence reached its most dangerous height, military and security elites would
couch it in the terms of "full spectrum dominance." As the younger President Bush declared in
his State of the Union address in January 2002, which put the US on the road to the invasion of
Iraq: "By the grace of God, America won the Cold War A world once divided into two armed camps
now recognises one sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America."
Nemesis
Triumphalism led US policymakers, and their transatlantic followers, to forget one cardinal
truth about geopolitical and military power: that in the end it is not global and absolute, but
local and relative. It is the amount of force or influence a state wants to bring to bear in a
particular place and on a -particular issue, relative to the power that a rival state is
willing and able to bring to bear. The truth of this has been shown repeatedly over the past
generation. For all America's overwhelming superiority on paper, it has turned out that many
countries have greater strength than the US in particular places: Russia in Georgia and
Ukraine, Russia and Iran in Syria, China in the South China Sea, and even Pakistan in southern
Afghanistan.
American over-confidence, accepted by many Europeans and many Britons especially, left the
US in a severely weakened condition to conduct what should have been clear as far back as the
1990s to be the great competition of the future -- that between Washington and Beijing.
On the one hand, American moves to extend Nato to the Baltics and then (abortively) on to
Ukraine and Georgia, and to abolish Russian influence and destroy Russian allies in the Middle
East, inevitably produced a fierce and largely successful Russian nationalist reaction. Within
Russia, the US threat to its national interests helped to consolidate and legitimise Putin's
control. Internationally, it ensured that Russia would swallow its deep-seated fears of China
and become a valuable partner of Beijing.
On the other hand, the benign and neglectful way in which Washington regarded the rise of
China in the generation after the Cold War (for example, the blithe decision to allow China to
join the World Trade Organisation) was also rooted in ideological arrogance. Western
triumphalism meant that most of the US elites were convinced that as a result of economic
growth, the Chinese Communist state would either democratise or be overthrown; and that China
would eventually have to adopt the western version of economics or fail economically. This was
coupled with the belief that good relations with China could be predicated on China accepting a
so-called "rules-based" international order in which the US set the rules while also being free
to break them whenever it wished; something that nobody with the slightest knowledge of Chinese
history should
have believed.
Throughout, the US establishment discourse (Democrat as much as Republican) has sought to
legitimise American global hegemony by invoking the promotion of liberal democracy. At the same
time, the supposedly intrinsic connection between economic change, democracy and peace was
rationalised by cheerleaders such as the New York Times 's indefatigable Thomas
Friedman, who advanced the (always absurd, and now flatly and repeatedly falsified) "Golden
Arches theory of Conflict
Prevention." This vulgarised version of Democratic Peace Theory pointed out that two countries
with McDonald's franchises had never been to war. The humble and greasy American burger was
turned into a world-historical symbol of the buoyant modern middle classes with too much to
lose to countenance war.
Various equally hollow theories postulated cast-iron connections between free markets and
guaranteed property rights on the one hand, and universal political rights and freedoms on the
other, despite the fact that even within the west, much of political history can be
characterised as the fraught and complex brokering of accommodations between these two sets of
things.
And indeed, since the 1990s democracy has not advanced in the world as a whole, and belief
in the US promotion of democracy has been discredited by US patronage of the authoritarian and
semi-authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India and elsewhere. Of the predominantly
Middle Eastern and South Asian students whom I teach at Georgetown University in Qatar, not one
-- even among the liberals -- believes that the US is sincerely committed to spreading
democracy; and, given their own regions' recent history, there is absolutely no reason why they
should believe this.
The one great triumph of democratisation coupled with free market reform was -- or appeared
to be -- in the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, and this success was
endlessly cited as the model for political and economic reform across
the globe.
But the portrayal of East European reform in the west failed to recognise the central role
of local nationalism. Once again, to talk of this at the time was to find oneself in effect
excluded from polite society, because to do so called into question the self-evident
superiority and universal appeal of liberal reform. The overwhelming belief of western
establishments was that nationalism was a superstition that was fast losing its hold on people
who, given the choice, could everywhere be relied on to act like rational consumers, rather
than citizens rooted in one particular land.
The more excitable technocrats imagined that nation state itself (except the US of course)
was destined to wither away. This was also the picture reflected back to western observers and
analysts by liberal reformers across the region, who whether or not they were genuinely
convinced of this, knew what their western sponsors wanted to hear. Western economic and
cultural hegemony produced a sort of mirror game, a copulation of illusions in which local
informants provided false images to the west, which then reflected them back to the east, and
so on.
Always the nation
Yet one did not have to travel far outside the centres of Eastern European cities to find
large parts of populations outraged by the moral and cultural changes ordained by the EU, the
collapse of social services, and the (western-indulged) seizure of public property by former
communist elites. So why did Eastern Europeans swallow the whole western liberal package of the
time? They did so precisely because of their nationalism, which persuaded them that if they did
not pay the cultural and economic price of entry into the EU and Nato, they would sooner or
later fall back under the dreaded hegemony of Moscow. For them, unwanted reform was the price
that the nation had to pay for US protection. Not surprisingly, once membership of these
institutions was secured, a powerful populist and nationalist backlash set in.
Western blindness to the power of nationalism has had several bad consequences for western
policy, and the cohesion of "the west." In Eastern Europe, it would in time lead to the
politically almost insane decision of the EU to try to order the local peoples, with their
deeply-rooted ethnic nationalism and bitter memories of outside dictation, to accept large
numbers of Muslim refugees. The backlash then became conjoined with the populist reactions in
Western Europe, which led to Brexit and the sharp decline of centrist parties across the
EU.
More widely, this blindness to the power of nationalism led the US grossly to underestimate
the power of nationalist sentiment in Russia, China and Iran, and contributed to the US attempt
to use "democratisation" as a means to overthrow their regimes. All that this has succeeded in
doing is to help the regimes concerned turn nationalist sentiment against local liberals, by
accusing them of being US stooges.
"A stable and healthy polity and economy must be based on
some minimal moral values"
Russian liberals in the 1990s were mostly not really US agents as such, but the collapse of
Communism led some to a blind adulation of everything western and to identify unconditionally
with US policies. In terms of public image, this made them look like western lackeys; in terms
of policy, it led to the adoption of the economic "shock therapy" policies advocated by the
west. Combined with monstrous corruption and the horribly disruptive collapse of the Soviet
single market, this had a shattering effect on Russian industry and the living standards of
ordinary Russians.
Many liberals gave the impression of complete indifference to the resulting immiseration of
the Russian population in these years. At a meeting of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington
that I attended later, former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar boasted to an applauding US audience
of how he had destroyed the Russian military industrial complex. The fact that this also
destroyed the livelihoods of tens of millions of Russians and Ukrainians was not mentioned.
This attitude was fed by contempt on the part of the educated classes of Moscow and St
Petersburg for ordinary Russians, who were dubbed Homo Sovieticus and treated as an
inferior species whose loathsome culture was preventing the liberal elites from taking their
rightful place among the "civilised" nations of the west. This frame of mind was reminiscent of
the traditional attitude of white elites in Latin America towards the Indio and Mestizo
majorities in their countries.
I vividly remember one Russian liberal journalist state his desire to fire machine guns into
crowds of elderly Russians who joined Communist demonstrations to protest about the collapse of
their pensions. The response of the western journalists present was that this was perhaps a
little bit excessive, but to be excused since the basic sentiment was correct.
The Russian liberals of the 1990s were crazy to reveal this contempt to the people whose
votes they needed to win. So too was Hillary Clinton, with her disdain for the "basket of
deplorables" in the 2016 election, much of the Remain camp in the years leading up to Brexit,
and indeed the European elites in the way they rammed through the Maastricht Treaty and the
euro in the 1990s.
If the post-Cold War world order was a form of US imperialism, it now looks like an empire
in which rot in the over-extended periphery has spread to the core. The economic and social
patterns of 1990s Russia and Ukraine have come back to haunt the west, though so far thank God
in milder form. The massive looting of Russian state property and the systematic evasion of
taxes by Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs was only possible with the help of western banks,
which transferred the proceeds to the west and the Caribbean. This crime was euphemised in the
western discourse (naturally including the Economist ) as "capital flight."
Peter Mandelson qualified his famous remark that the Blair government was "intensely relaxed
about people becoming filthy rich" with the words "as long as they pay their taxes." The whole
point, however, about the filthy Russian, Ukrainian, Nigerian, Pakistani and other money that
flowed to and through London was not just that so much of it was stolen, but that it was
escaping taxation, thereby harming the populations at home twice over. The infamous euphemism
"light-touch regulation" was in effect a charter
for this.
In a bitter form of poetic justice, however, "light-touch regulation" paved the way for the
2008 economic crisis in the west itself, and western economic elites too (especially in the US)
would also seize this opportunity to move their money into tax havens. This has done serious
damage to state revenues, and to the fundamental faith of ordinary people in the west that the
rich are truly subject to the same laws as them.
The indifference of Russian elites to the suffering of the Russian population has found a
milder echo in the neglect of former industrial regions across Britain, Western Europe and the
US that did so much to produce the votes for Brexit, for Trump and for populist nationalist
parties in Europe. The catastrophic plunge in Russian male life expectancy in the 1990s has
found its echo in the unprecedented decline in white working-class male life expectancy in the
US.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of the period after the last Cold War is that in the end, a
stable and healthy polity and economy must be based on some minimal moral values. To say this
to western economists, businessmen and financial journalists in the 1990s was to receive the
kindly contempt usually accorded to religious cranks. The only value recognised was shareholder
value, a currency in which the crimes of the Russian oligarchs could be excused because their
stolen companies had "added value." Any concern about duty to the Russian people as a whole, or
the fact that tolerance of these crimes would make it grotesque to demand honesty of policemen
or civil servants, were dismissed as irrelevant sentimentality.
Bringing it all back home
We in the west are living with the consequences of a generation of such attitudes. Western
financial elites have mostly not engaged in outright illegality; but then again, they usually
haven't needed to, since governments have made it easy for them to abide by the letter of the
law while tearing its spirit to pieces. We are belatedly recognising that, as Franklin Foer
wrote in the Atlantic last year: "New York, Los Angeles and Miami have joined London as
the world's most desired destinations for laundered money. This boom has enriched the American
elites who have enabled it -- and it has degraded the nation's political and social mores in
the process. While everyone else was heralding an emergent globalist world that would take on
the best values of America, [Richard] Palmer [a former CIA station chief in Moscow] had
glimpsed the dire risk of the opposite: that the values of the kleptocrats would become
America's own. This grim vision is now nearing fruition."
Those analysing the connection between Russia and Trump's administration have looked in the
wrong place. The explanation of Trump's success is not that Putin somehow mesmerised American
voters in 2016. It is that populations abandoned by their elites are liable to extreme
political responses; and that societies whose economic elites have turned ethics into a joke
should not be surprised if their political leaders too become scoundrels.
"... There is no chance of mending relations and even less of achieving some security partnership between US and Russia. The rift will only keep on widening as US political and financial elites are growing increasingly desperate (and thus even more aggressive) while Russia abandons its attempts to please the haters and moves its focus on to its future prospective partners who have genuine interest in cooperating with Russia and achieving common goals.... including opposing the common enemy if you like! Well at least I hope so: the only reason why US wish to get closer to Russia would be to stab it in the back... one more time! ..."
Speaking as an Independent, I say that our country, the USA, has engineered past confilcts and wars in order to feed the military
industrial complex. Not so much that it results in a nuke-shooting war, but in a regular non-nuke shooting war. The solution?
Send the sons and daughters of the politicians into direct combat, every time they approve another war. That should keep things
a bit more peaceful.
Professor Cohen is this nation's most objective and therefore most valuable thinker on Russia! The charge that his views are
"not patriotic" is a compliment rather than the insult they intended. A scholar's views are only valuable to the public and, more
importantly, policy makers, if they are OBJECTIVE!!! Which is to say that he follows the FACTS wherever they lead!
Any "discussion" with no mention of the supranational central bank cartel is intentional deceptive omission. The "brass ring"
is forced use of petro-dollars. The central bank stock holders and bankers loaning all dollars into existence as national debt,
do not care who owns land. They care who pays off national debts and interest on debt. Civil war is their racket. There are no
sovereign nations. No genuine nations that create their medium of exchange publicly. No national people. Just participants in
an extortion or its victims. The "Elite" collect on money they created as loans in their central banking accounts. All others
are only human numbers assigned billing addresses.
Welcome to the New World Order ....where Multinational corporations rule & their profits are what are most important..... NOT
nation states it's the 99.9% against the .01% and they use MSM propaganda & fear to control the DUMB masses thinking
I just discovered John Batchelor Show on which Cohen has a guest spot- I just was drawn to this man's thinking, probably because
I had made up my mind about Russia during the Ukraine crises. Seeing the US has ruin every country we have gone into- I'm on Russia's
side, especially where Russia and Ukraine has a history, on that side of the world.
38:49 - Apologies for the somewhat Utopian
question here. I agree with everything Cohen has said, but regarding cause of jihadist terrorism ( ie implosion of the economies
in the region), does it make sense to discuss primarily this game of terrorist whack a mole (bombing, invading and crushing Jihadist
insurgencies)? Is there any point in talking about a pro active policy of recreating sustainable, stable economies in the region?
What would that even look like?
Not very many average Americans would be able to easily access and watch this. Average Americans still consume mainly mainstream
media. Too bad, because this lecture would have opened their eyes and have blown up their brain-contaminated minds by the CNN,
the New York Times and alike.
I agree wholeheartedly Loane. Have always been extremely impressed with and appreciative of Cohen's carefully & thoughtfully
considered contribution. We in the US have gone a bit off the deep end when it comes to this deeply embedded belief in exceptionalism
and superiority, and have been extremely rude to much of the rest of the world in the process. It amazes me how patient Russia
has been with us, waiting for us to come around to a more sober understanding of the world we live in today. I have to conclude
that what we are experiencing here in the US is a perennial phenomenon that comes with the end of all empires throughout history,
the mission creep of over-extending resources and the big one, seemingly blind hubris.
There is no chance of mending relations and even less of achieving some security partnership between US and Russia. The rift
will only keep on widening as US political and financial elites are growing increasingly desperate (and thus even more aggressive)
while Russia abandons its attempts to please the haters and moves its focus on to its future prospective partners who have genuine
interest in cooperating with Russia and achieving common goals.... including opposing the common enemy if you like! Well at least
I hope so: the only reason why US wish to get closer to Russia would be to stab it in the back... one more time!
NATO'S reason to exist ended when the Warsaw Pact was demolished. It was created to confront the socialist Warsaw Pact but
today ALL of the members of the pact are part of NATO, except Russia. So why is it still operating? Who are they confronting?
They are a bunch of bureaucrats looking for a reason to stay employed in an organization that lost its excuse to be. However,
their behavior has gone from increasing security to actually becoming a menace to trigger a nuclear war to destroy life on earth.
It will take a Republican President to turn our relationships with hostile nations around. For some irrational reasoning, the
current administration refuses negotiation with it's enemies. Somehow this is going to create understanding. and a less dangerous
world. I don't see a continuation of this Administrations policy anything but reckless . I am assuming this policy has been one
determined through Clinton, and will remain so. Clinton has said on a number of occasions, it is the Obama Administration's policies
that will be hers as well. As an ex cold warrior, who has spent a lot of time chasing Soviet boomers in the North Atlantic, I
am not willing to gamble my children and grand children's lives . It is a dangerous and ego driven pissing match. Let us start
talking , This administration and families can climb into their luxury nuclear bomb proof bunkers...... My family and most Americans
don't have that luxury.
Dr. Cohen, so Putin gave the Northern Alliance to the USA after 911 to bludgeon Afghanistan for hiding Bin Laden? Paul Craig
Robert, David Ray Griffin and a growing list of Americans believe 911 was a total bamboozle. If that is true which it looks increasingly
like it was, does that mean Putin was playing along with the our Reichstag fire? What does that make Putin? NATO should have been
totally remade after 1986, but it wasn't and we simply missed a huge opportunity not for worldwide U.S. hegemony, but for a new
umbrella of security by super powers in alliance. Obviously, the proliferation of ethno-religious groups was in Putin's mind when
he welcomed us into Afghanistan, but damn it man, tell people EXACTLY why we and the Russians want to be in the Golden Crescent
besides the extraction of minerals.
Julia Ioffe is a joke -- she is essentially a typical "national security parasite" and of the level that surprisingly, is
lower that Max Boor, although previously I thought this is impossible. Julia Ioffe is very typical of the anti-Russian thinking
in the West.
This incessant Russophobia constantly being trumpeted by the Washington militarist imperialists must stop. It's putting the
world on the brink of nuclear war.
Stephen Cohen's a godsend along with a handful of the other intellectuals out there speaking and writing the truth that penetrates
the miasma of disinformation, half-truths and exaggerations emanating from the state-corporate nexus in the American mass media.
Cohen, along with John Pilger, James Petras, Robert Parry, Michael Parenti, John Pilger, Eva Bartlett, Diana Johnstone and
Paul Craig Roberts must be read widely in order for folks to get a grasp of where the Washington imperialist ruling class is driving
the world.
at 25:40 he just destroys her totally. what
a point he made, amazing!! "thank you professor" the guy on the left wants to end Cohen's carnage of the so called experts. Cohen
made minced meat out of em. Fact after fact...stonewalled em both. Listen to her, ISIS doesn't have nuke's, she obviously doesn't
have a clue.
Cohen is always cogent and convincing. One area I wish some historian would look into is how "Russia-gate" is not echoing Cold
War themes, but echoing themes from the German Nazis in particular their belief about a great Jewish conspiracy against Europe.
Even Putin recently remarked on all these accusations: "It reminds me of anti-Semitism, A dumb man who can't do anything would
blame the Jews for everything." Look at how Putin is drawn and pictured on major outlets. The NYTimes blamed resistance to TPP
on Putin.
The Russians like the Jews are behind every social problem. Popular culture shows and speaks of Russia in the same way Nazi
propagandists wrote about Russia.
Undermining Western liberal democracies, Jews were compared to spiders catching people in the webs. Same with Putin. Pick up
Hitler's speech after the invasion of the Soviet Union justifying it., Echos? Accidental rhetoric of conspiracies ?
"to look past a long list of transgressions and abuses..." this is what I absolutely hate about America, they are all so stupid
and ignorant to their own countries misdeeds it is unbelievable, infuriating beyond belief. The US is currently fighting 7 wars
simultaneously, which it all started itself under false pretences and hid the real reason beneath a thick layer of BS propaganda
and misinformation.
The secession of Crimea is the least egregious event of the entire conflicts history. The EU and US have pumped billions of
dollars into the coup which took place weeks before the Crimean referendum, on the 20th of February 2014, 2 weeks prior to that,
an intercepted phone conversation between Victoria Nuland (Assistant Secretary of State of the United States to Europe) and Geoffrey
Pyatt (US Ambassador to the Ukraine) was leaked on February 4th, 2014. In this phone conversation, they describe key positions
within the Ukrainian government being filled by Klitshko and Yatz... fast forward a few weeks, who do we see? Klitsh and Yatz!
It was the most obvious sponsored coup in history.
Putin snatched the Crimean peninsula from NATO, who wanted to seize Russias military harbour in Sevastopol (which the Russians
have used to supply Syria, this was one and a half years before they entered the conflict directly, apart from being a very important
strategic harbour in general), by suggesting a referendum to the local government and they accepted.
Why? Because they were ethnic Russians and knew who gained power in Kiev, the neo-Nazi, Bandera-worshipping OUN, which the
US has nourished, supported and developed for the last 100 years within the Ukrainian territory. These Nazis hate Russians, they
have a deep seeded hatred of all things Russian which has been indoctrinated and drilled into them by the CIA for decades, the
first thing they did after seizing power was to demote the Russian language from the official list of languages of the Ukraine.
They have since honoured Ukrainian Nazi-collaborators from WWII by erecting statues, renaming streets, creating new holidays
etc. This is just one example of US misinformation and propaganda, nothing they say accurately describes the truth, nothing, not
one thing has it's bases in reality. Be it about Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and what have you, it's all lies and propaganda
to mask their intentions.
North Korea is another example. North Korea is a hornets nest they kick once in a while to scare the Japanese and South Koreans
into tolerating US occupation longer. Everything North Korea does is a direct response to threats and intimidations by the US.
They staged a drill off the coast of North Korea which they called "Decapitation" for F's sake.
They have ratcheted up the tension again these past few months to sneak in their THAAD weapons stations, before the new President
was chosen. And these THAAD systems have absolutely nothing to do with North Korea, it's against China and Russia, North Korea
is a pretext.
The still active war, which has merely been under a seize fire for decades, against North Korea, could have been ended before
there was colour television, but the US needs North Korea to exist in order to justify their occupation of S.Korea and Japan.
And by the way, the CrowdStrike guy testified in 2017 that there was ZERO PROOF that the Russians hacked the DNC, but Schiff
hid that for 2 years until John Ratcliff threatened to declassify it, then Schiff's sorry ass released the interviews. So, this
man was 100 percent right, there is ZERO PROOF the Russians or anyone hacked the DNC. Its a damned lie, and it was always a lie.
As usual, the journalists and leftist have nothing to offer- no facts, no forensic evidence, no truth. Only speculation hyperbole
and hysteria. I don't believe Russia are the good guys but give me a break in all this crap!
why did cohen tell everyone even potential 'terrorists' that there is too much of exactly what 'terrorists' wish to get their
hands on in the former soviet states?!!? if he is 'so afraid' of 'terrorism...' WHY did he say THAT?!!? not very bright... or
perhaps he is FOS. idk?! wth?! SMH. maybe e is trying to inform people who r not 'terrorists,' so that people know n can figure
out how to address the issues...?
Yet, for any terrorists who wanted to know how to get materials he spoke of, now they may know a region where they could potentially
go to attain the materials... maybe in 'terrorists' circles they all know this already? it just seems concerning, is all...
Beth Lemmon, 2 years ago (edited)
Love Stephen Cohen, he is spot on and right about most if not all points, he's fair, wicked smart and sober minded. However
he isn't right about POTUS Trump. If anyone has been watching this type of discourse about world geopolitics it looks like the
NWO wants wars to depopulate the earth, set up a OWG and a utopia. It's so blatantly obvious to those who are honest and not ideologically
possessed.
They recruit their stupid Antifa army and zombie possessed minions to do their dirty work in the streets. They want send our
amazing military to do the fighting wars that are just to feed the MIC, and does nothing for America's good.
Vaccine against coronaviruses is a very tricky business as the virus tend to mutate with
time. Still it looks like Russian found some nw avenue to tackle this problem which might be more
efficient then alternatives.
Western reporters to not like to correct their own false reporting. They rather reinforce it
as much as possible. Only when overwhelmed by the facts will they silently admit that they were
wrong in the first place. Here is a prime example of how that's done.
In mid-August we exposed how 'western' media lied about the approval for phase-3 testing of
the Russian Sputnik vaccine against Covid-19. They said that Russia claimed the vaccine was
ready to go population wide. That never was the case.
Russia has not approved a vaccine against Covid-19 and it is not skipping large-scale
clinical trials. The Russia regulator gave a preliminary approval for a vaccine candidate to
start the large-scale clinical trial. [...]
Science Magazine is one of the few media who
got it right : ...
One of the false reports we pointed out was by the New York Times Moscow
correspondent Andrew E. Kramer:
Russia has become the first country in the world to approve a vaccine for the coronavirus,
President Vladimir V. Putin announced on Tuesday, though global health authorities say the
vaccine has yet to complete critical, late-stage clinical trials to determine its safety and
effectiveness.
...
By skipping large-scale clinical trials, the Russian dash for a vaccine has raised widespread
concern that it is circumventing vital steps -- and potentially endangering people -- in
order to score global propaganda points.
Russia had, as we and Science Magazine reported, never the intent to skip
large-scale clinical trials. Kramer made that up.
In new report today Kramer reinforces his previous false and disproven claims to lament
about an alleged slow distribution of the Sputnik vaccine in Russia:
More than a month after becoming the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, Russia
has yet to administer it to a large population outside a clinical trial, health officials and
outside experts say.
The approval, which came with much fanfare, occurred before Russia had tested the vaccine
in late-stage trials for possible side effects and for its disease-fighting ability. It was
seen as a political gesture by President Vladimir V. Putin to assert victory in the global
race for a vaccine.
It is not clear whether the slow start to the vaccination campaign is a result of limited
production capacity or second thoughts about inoculating the population with an unproven
product.
The Times author reinforces his own lie that Russia had declared its vaccine ready
for population wide application. It had never done that. The official registration of the
vaccine by the relevant authorities was only a necessary precondition to start the large scale
phase-3 testing of the vaccine. There never was a Russian intent to distribute the vaccine to a
large population without phase-3 testing.
In the bottom third of his long piece Kramer comes near to admitting that. There he
describes that the Sputnik phase-3 testing is now ongoing. That contradicts all of his previous
reporting on the issues though he himself never says that. But even now he is getting the
details wrong:
The trial in Russia began on Sept. 9, and Russian officials have said they expect early
results before the end of the year, though the Gamaleya Institute, the scientific body that
developed the vaccine, has scheduled the trial to continue until May.
That timeline is similar to the testing schedules announced by the three pharmaceutical
companies testing potential vaccines in the United States, AstraZeneca, Moderna and
Pfizer.
...
The Russian late-stage, or Phase 3, clinical trial is being carried out entirely in Moscow,
where 30,000 people will receive the vaccine and 10,000 will get a placebo.
Yevgenia Zubova, a spokeswoman for the Moscow city health department, said in an interview
that the vaccine was available only to trial participants.
Those last two paragraphs, which completely debunk Kramer's original reporting, should have
been at the very top of the piece. They are buried down in paragraph 23 and 24 of a 29
paragraphs story that starts out with an epic repeat of the previously made false claims.
Post-registration clinical trials involving more than 40,000 people in Russia will be
launched in a week starting from August, 24. A number of countries, such as UAE, Saudi
Arabia, Philippines and possibly India or Brazil will join the clinical trials of Sputnik V
locally. [...] Mass production of the vaccine is expected to start in September 2020.
That testing of Sputnik V will also happen outside of Moscow has been confirmed
by recent reports :
Russia's sovereign wealth fund will supply 100 million doses of its potential coronavirus
vaccine to Indian drug company Dr Reddy's Laboratories, the fund said on Wednesday, as Moscow
speeds up plans to distribute its shot abroad.
...
Dr Reddy's, one of India's top pharmaceutical companies, will carry out Phase III clinical
trials of Sputnik-V in India, RDIF said.
It is not Russia that is fudging the testing of its vaccine. It is the Trump administration
that is
planning to do so out of political reasons:
We have the protocols. Now we know how there will very likely be an Emergency Use Approval
(EUA) for a vaccine prior to November 3. The company and political motivations are fully
aligned.
In contrast to the U.S. the Russian testing of its Sputnik vaccine will be -as usual- of
high integrity and will strictly follow the protocols such trials are supposed to follow. In
paragraph 29, the very last one in today's NYT story, the author at last admits as
much :
[W]hen medicines are tested, Russia has an exceptionally good track record on managing
clinical trials , according to a database of U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspections of
clinical trials around the world. The F.D.A. found a lower percentage of trials with problems
in Russia than in any other European country or the United States.
If I get the chance to chose a vaccine for myself I will rather take the one which was
developed by a highly qualified state financed research institution and approved in Russia than
one developed by some profit oriented pharmaceutic conglomerate that is in cahoots with a
politicized regulator under the Trump administration.
Posted by b on September 20, 2020 at 12:12 UTC |
Permalink
If I get the chance to chose a vaccine for myself I will rather take the one which was
developed by a highly qualified state financed research institution and approved in Russia
than one developed by some profit oriented pharmaceutic conglomerate that is in cahoots
with a politicized regulator under the Trump administration.
To top it off, Gamaleya's vaccine simply has the better science behind it. It uses two
human adenoviruses, in opposition to the single chimpanzee adenovirus used by the AstraZeneca
one (the Chinese one also uses only one adenovirus, but I don't remember if it is human or
chimpanzee).
No other laboratory in the world is using Gamaleya's technology - which it already
dominates. Two American laboratories (Moderna and one more that I forgot the name) are
testing the untried and dangerous mRNA technology. It is very unlikely those two mRNA
vaccines will ever come out to the public; those two labs probably just cashed in their USD 2
billion checks they received from the USG.
This gives force to my original hypothesis: the Anglo-Saxon laboratories are exploiting
exotic technologies for their vaccines because they want something the can patent, thus
charging astronomical prices to the national governments and thus emerge from this pandemic
even richer.
--//--
Speaking of AstraZeneca (Oxford), it released its blueprints yesterday after "public
pressure":
The USG is, behind the scenes (I already posted the link here in the open thread),
extremely worried about this vaccine.
AstraZeneca will try to get what it can get, but the fact is it's game over for them. The
thing here is that the Gamaleya alternative is better and if the USA (where the vaccine
makers will really make money) wants to get political, it will simply opt for one of the many
American vaccines that will come out - ready or not, satisfactory or not - next year. As a
British vaccine, AstraZeneca-Oxford will, at best, have to do with the British market, which
is very tiny for a big pharmaceutical company.
It is better if they just cancel the trials and abandon production.
If I had money I'd fly to Russia for their vaccine. They made theirs for the people and in
Amerika we make it for profits and protect the makes from lawsuits.
To be frank, at this point, ironically, it's Big Pharma's own self-interest that might help
us to counter Trump's lunacy. There are enough anti-vaxxers around for them not to want a
screwed up vaccine and a big scandal that would only comfort the vaxxers and sow mistrust
among the population. They need people to assume vaccines are well done and mostly harmless
if they want to keep making profit with them. Trump is only interested in a victory in the
next few weeks, Pharma business is interested in making profits for the next decades.
That's quite a damning indictment of our Western system, but then 2020 is a milestone, the
threshold beyond which it won't be possible to consider the Western liberal capitalistic
system as the superior one, if not the best one possible - quite the opposite.
The Kramer reporting is highly unusual. Normally the important information should be in the
third paragraph from the end and now it's in the sixth and seventh last.
Anyway, while I agree that this vaccine should be treated as an entirely legitimate effort
I want to add:
- phase 1/2 testing did appear a too lightweight and the article on it in the Lancet has been
criticized by russian scientists (
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/09/08/leading-scientists-question-highly-improbable-russian-vaccine-results-published-in-lancet-a71384).
- one family of vaccines can be more controversial and experimental than another and the
judgement of the testers can take this in account when considering shortcuts.
- One should distinguish what the makers of the vaccine claim with the political
(exaggerated) statements from Putin about it .
- The statements on testing on the Sputnikvaccine have changed over time. In the beginning it
said 2000 people in Russia and it listed 4 more countries(UAE, KSA, Brazil,Mexico). That was
insufficient. Several of these countries have been omitted since, and others have been added.
One can say that the intent to do decent testing was always there but the confirmed planning
was not.
- rollout to large population was impossible anyway at an early stage because the production
capacity was limited.
Kramer is not wrong, he simply lies. In the Relotius media this is standard practice when
covering politically sensitive topics, combined with omissions.
Of course, many well-researched and truthful articles are published in the nyt, faz, nzz etc.
That is exactly what makes these media so refined and what they base their claim to be
quality media on. One lies and distort as little and as targeted as possible.
The Europena and Australian vassals of the USA would not be given a choice to choose the more
authetic option of the vaccine. But Israel would probably opt for the Russian version without
consequence. It's over for the West!
Nobody is saying the Gamaleya vaccine will be the second coming of the polio vaccine.
Whichever COVID-19 vaccine comes out will inevitably be imperfect (in relation to the already
tested and tried vaccines everybody takes nowadays).
Your worries are all legitimate. Indeed, Gamaleya publicly admitted phases 1 and 2 of its
trials has small samples of subjects.
However, you also have to take into account that the science is solid (two human
adenoviruses, a tested and tried technology) and that Gamaleya is the center of excellence in
adenovirus vaccine technology. That's why - and not because it is Russian - we can trust
Gamaleya's vaccine is, given the circumstances (pandemic), reliable. The fact Gamaleya
already dominated the adenovirus technology also explains why it was the first laboratory to
come out with a solution - it simply used a tested and tried method it already dominated,
while the other pharmaceuticals are basically having to relearn how to develop a vaccine
and/or are adventuring in uncharted territory because they want something they can
patent.
So yes, we can search and find defects in Gamaleya's trials - but the strongest argument
in its favor is not the trials, it's the solid science and technology behind it.
Vk and the wabbit - right on. And Thanks to you, B, for this clear and straightforwardly
informative piece (as usual).
Is it any surprise that the NYT uses the usual propaganda format of truth (when it accords
with the ruling elites perspective) and lies (when "reporting on" what is happening in those
"bad hat" countries)? And might I add that NPR and the BBC World Service do exactly the same
thing, boosting the US-UK-NATO worldview (which equals the western
corporate-captitalist-imperialist, oh so exceptional, ruling elites world position) while
denigrating Russia, China, Iran (and now Lukashenko - indeed the Beeb refuses to pronounce
his name properly, always reducing it to the feminine form, and believe me, as born and
raised Brit, that's deliberate) via lies, lies and more lies. And via those weasely words:
"likely," "Highly likely" and so on and on ....
All that this latest vaccine competition (western) will produce is more anti-vaxxers. And
this time round, sensibly so.
Tuyzefot (5): it is common for the NYT to lead with propaganda and bury the facts at the end
of the article.
I noticed it decades ago in articles covering Palestine. I learned to skip whatever was
printed on the front page and immediately jump to the final five paragraphs found deep within
the paper. I guess they print the facts at all there only as a bizarre way of covering their
asses in a feeble attempt at integrity.
The vaccine uses a unique two-vector human adenovirus technology which no-one else in
the world currently has for COVID-19.
[...]
On the surface the Sputnik V trial with 76 participants seems smaller in size compared
to 1,077 people that, for example, AstraZeneca had in its Phase 1-2 studies. However,
the design of the Sputnik V trial was much more efficient and based on better
assumptions.
[...]
The post-registration studies involving more than 40,000 people started in Russia on
August 26, before AstraZeneca has started its Phase 3 trial in the U.S. with 30,000
participants. Clinical trials in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Philippines,
India and Brazil will begin this month. The preliminary results of the Phase 3 trial will
be published in October-November 2020.
[...]
Q.: Why has the Sputnik V vaccine already become eligible for emergency use
registration?
Because of the very positive results of the Phase 1-2 trials and because the human
adenoviral vector-based delivery platform has been proven the safest vaccine delivery
platform over decades including through 75 international scientific publications and in
more than 250 clinical trials.
[...]
Some other companies are using human adenoviral vector-based platforms for their
COVID-19 vaccines. For example, Johnson & Johnson uses only Ad26 vector and China's
CanSino only Ad5 while Sputnik V uses both of these vectors. The work of Johnson &
Johnson and CanSino not only validates the Russian approach but also shows Sputnik V's
advantage as studies have demonstrated that two different vectors produce better
results than one.
[...]
The monkey adenovirus and mRNA vaccines have never been used and approved before and
their research is lagging the proven human adenoviral vector-based platform by at least 20
years. However, their developers have already secured supply contracts worth billions of
dollars from Western governments and may potentially apply for fast-track registration --
while receiving full indemnity at the same time.
At the end of the Q&A, Dmitriev counters his Western colleagues:
Question 1: Are there any long-term studies of mRNA and monkey adenovirus vector-based
technologies for carcinogenic effects and impact on fertility? (Hint: there are none)
Question 2: Could their absence be the reason why some of the leading pharmaceutical
firms making COVID-19 vaccines based on these technologies pushed the countries buying
their vaccines for full indemnification from lawsuits if something goes wrong?
Question 3: Why is Western media not reporting a lack of long term studies for mRNA and
monkey adenoviral vector-based vaccines?
The constant Russia bashing is a disconnect from the truth and the real world.
It is annoying to wade through.
Far more important, it is crippling for a nation if its leadership actually does
disconnect from reality and believe its own fantasy.
Disconnect from reality, belief in convenient fantasy, is exactly how the Democrats went
from losing with Hillary to running again with Hillary II, the same donors and advisers and
influence peddlers pushing the same right wing triangulation by the Democratic Party.
Maybe they can squeak out a win this time. It should not be close.
Far more important, there are things that need doing, things that would win like health
care for all, that they simply won't offer or run on. We are not going to get from them what
we need, we know that, and that is why they again have a squeaker election even against a
joke like Trump.
Perfect example of the free and unfettered press at work. What do you mean we're just a
propaganda rag? See, right down at the bottom, the bit you didn't bother to read down to,
right next to the denture ad, we told the truth. So there! Balanced and accurate reporting!
Trump's "national security" state has managed to kill 200000 by him the autocrat in chief to
come out and tell the truth as he admitted so to Woodward. This fucking American national
security phobia is costing American lives more than all past 70 years of national security
wars.
@JohnH 13 , it was hm, a joke. There is indeed rule of thumb that you have to look fore the
third to last paragraph. I upgraded it into something of a law, which is then violated in
this case.
@vk 10, I wouldn't call it my worries, just that I think B. posted a version which was too
simple and rosy. In the meantime I saw your post 14 which I roughly expected but hadn't read
about yet.
Andrew Kramer's reporting on the Sputnik V vaccine is deliberately written to discredit the
Russians and anything and everything they do, which includes the way they conduct scientific
and medical research (because it's govt-funded, not funded by global pharmaceutical
corporations) and the way they run their healthcare system (not privatised).
First, Kramer says the Kremlin approved the vaccine: this is to set up Moscow and Putin in
particular as rash, so that the supposed "roll-out" of the vaccine can be (secondly)
portrayed as inefficient.
Kramer knows he is lying which is why his piece is long (he knows most NYT readers are
time-poor and want the celebrity news and baseball results) and the most important
information is squeezed into the last two paragraphs of his article.
I tried linking to that Moscow Times article at your link and either I hit a dead end or
the newspaper removed the article, which does not surprise me since that newspaper is as
credible as The New York Times. It used to be given away f o r free in Moscow but I believe
it now exists only as an online paper.
@Jen, you have to remove the last two characters ').' because I omitted a space. The article
in the moscow times is ok and not too alarming. It is also not discrediting the lancet
article. Just raising concerns.
"... As soon as Novichok was mentioned, I knew it was geopolitics and not internal Russian politics. ..."
"... NOVICHOK is a highly toxic and contagious substance. The reason why "it didn't kill the Skripals" is because it was never used on the Skripals just as it has not been used on Navalny. In both cases there would have been dozens of collateral victims. From the moment Navalny started to reel with pain during the domestic commercial flight to 4 days later when amid treatment in Berlin it is reasonable to estimate that 300 to 400 people had been in his proximity. Not one of them has shown or known to have contaged symptons. Let us list the narrative. ..."
"... I think my estimate of a total 300 to 400 people within the first 3 to 4 days having been within close proximity to Navalny is quite reasonable. If he was really was infected with an horrific chemical warfare agent, why would he even be allowed into Germany ? ..."
"... In political terms he is a cult leader of an SPB/Moscow elitist metropolitan cult that does not give a damn about most of Russia. ..."
"... Who benefits? For certain not the Joe Publics of UK, Russia and Germany but maybe the likes of Exxon, chevron, bp etc might. ..."
"... I suspected Navalny may be connected to our 'trusted friend' Browder. Now I know for sure. ..."
"... At some point, as background noise, there was some news read out on the radio. After the segment about the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, NordStream 2 and possible EU sanctions the taxi driver shook his head and said thoughtfully: "Yeah, mommy is stuck " ..."
"... "What mommy?" asked the taxi driver. "That same one, Angela Merkel. You know why Navalny was surrendered to Germany? Let me explain." And then, for a quarter of an hour, the taxi driver presented a coherent theory of what happened, worthy of study at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which answered all the questions that had been bothering me. ..."
"... Operatives at the German Ministry of International Affairs, who sympathized with Schröder's SPD, got in touch with Yulia Navalny (his wife) and offered to hospitalize him in a clinic in Germany. Yulia agreed, and appealed to Putin. ..."
"... The next day Berlin announced that analysis results showed poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor. This was its last warning shot. Then there was another phone call, to warn that the next time "Novichok" will be found. Moscow refused, and promised Minsk a billion dollars on that very day. ..."
"... There followed an attempt by Fritz Merz, Angela Merkel's deputy in the DCU, to lean on Merkel to shut down NordStream 2, but he swiftly got his ears boxed by the business lobby of German companies that invested in this pipeline and, whining and whimpering, crawled back into his hole. ..."
"... Then Lukashenko, being a tough nut to crack, presented an intentionally amateurish intercept of secret diplomatic communications between Poland and Germany in which they discussed their plans for poisoning Navalny. Now they are sitting in Warsaw and Berlin and have no idea how to respond to this movie -- to deny or to pretend that they didn't notice it. What a dilemma! ..."
"... If Merkel announces that it is the crime of the century in which a great Russian opposition figure has been fiendishly poisoned with "Novichok," then she would be obligated to sever all relations with the bloody regime and present evidence. But there won't be any evidence to present. And nobody will allow her to freeze the completion of the pipeline. Otherwise German companies, which invested in NordStream 2 will take the Reichstag even ahead of the irate German citizens. In either case, DCU/CSU will face a defeat. ..."
"... But what about Russia's friend Gehrhard Schröder? Being the chairman of the board of the NordStream 2 company and head of the SPD, he looks into the future with confidence and optimism. In any case, CDU/CSU will be deflated and SPD will reinforce its position in the Bundestag and either independently or in coalition with other parties will install its own leader as Bundeskanzler. NordStream 2, which has been in political limbo for a few years, will be completed and enter into service at full rated capacity very quickly. ..."
A 33-year-old young woman who recently flew in from London. On August 15 she celebrated her birthday and then went with Navalny
on the working trip. When the plane urgently landed in Omsk for Navalny's hospitalization, the woman also remained on the ground
in the 'Ibis Siberia Omsk' hotel, waiting for Alexei to recover. She left from Russia to Britain on August 22.
Maria Konstantinovna Pevchikh (Мария Константиновна Певчих) born in 1987, russian. In 2010 she graduated from the sociological
faculty of Moscow Lomonosov State University.
Lives in London. Fond of sports, trains under the program of "Navy Seals", an elite US military unit, owns bookstores in the
UK and Australia.
Have close ties with Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yevgeny Chichvarkin. Joined Navalny's activity in 2009. At that time, she was
22-year-old and worked as an assistant to one of the British parliamentarians.
It is alleged that the family and relatives do not know this woman.
The investigation previously published a chronology of events here https://ria.ru/20200821/khronologiya-1576110899.html
They discovered that in Tomsk the blogger's company has booked seven rooms for four people, Navalny himself spent the night in
a different room that was recorded in his name.
"WTF are you talking about? The USA is perfectly willing to fight Russia to the last European NATO member.."
Peter. An Ex-CIA man, of whom I've long forgotten his name used to say the same thing about Saudi Arabia, that the Saudis were
willing to fight Iran down to the last American soldier.
Myth, the US state blames the pusillanimity of the public for its tactics of ultraviolence. The Russians would be drowning
in their own blood were it not for Russian military power and the Chinese alliance.
"Recall that Alexei Navalny has two suspended sentences and is involved in several criminal cases at once.
"In December last year, he was sentenced in the case of embezzlement of money from the Yves Rocher company to a three and a
half years suspended sentence. His brother Oleg was sentenced to a real three and a half years in prison.
In 2013, Navalny, who in 2009 worked as an adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, was found guilty of embezzling property
of the state-owned company Kirovles and sentenced to five years in a general regime colony. He was taken into custody in the courtroom
and placed in a pre-trial detention center, but the very next day the Kirov regional court changed the measure of restraint to
a recognizance not to leave. As a result, the sentence was changed to a suspended one.
In addition, the Investigative Committee is investigating the case of the theft of 100 million rubles from the SPS party against
Alexei Navalny since the end of December 2012.
Activists of Navalny's team – deputy of the Zyuzino metropolitan area Konstantin Yankauskas, as well as entrepreneurs Nikolai
Lyaskin and Vladimir Ashurkov – are suspected of fraud related to violation of the procedure for financing the campaign in the
election of the mayor of Moscow.
Navalny has repeatedly found himself in the role of a defendant in claims for the protection of honor and dignity – for throwing
slanderous publications into the Internet. So, recently, the Lublin Court of Moscow satisfied such a claim by the chairman of
the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Innovative Development and Entrepreneurship Igor Rudensky."
I have the same feeling as you. Russophobia simply indicates the bastards are working together against us the steeple. Chinaphobia
maybe indicates the Chinese leadership and US leadership jointly want to cull the older generation with bio warfare.
Since none of UK , US. Russia nor China are democracies, their only task is to manage the narrative they tell the people. If
I was to go out and buy a product made in China, half the cost would be for transport or profit to the dealer. That is a shared
enterprise. One party for example manufactures a diesel generator, while the Western parties sit on their bums and take profit.
You are really missing the point. NOVICHOK which you should know was developed (though not originally invented) in a lab in
Soviet Uzbekistan, which following post Soviet independence, was dismantled by the CIA who took the samples back home to the USA.
So it is the Americans not the Russians who have the original well-spring.
NOVICHOK is a highly toxic and contagious substance. The reason why "it didn't kill the Skripals" is because it was never
used on the Skripals just as it has not been used on Navalny. In both cases there would have been dozens of collateral victims.
From the moment Navalny started to reel with pain during the domestic commercial flight to 4 days later when amid treatment in
Berlin it is reasonable to estimate that 300 to 400 people had been in his proximity. Not one of them has shown or known to have
contaged symptons. Let us list the narrative.
Original domestic commercial flight, passengers, crew & colleagues travelling with him
Ambulance to Russian hospital in Omsk ambulance crew
Doctors, nurses, officials, press and Navalny family at hospital in Omsk
German doctors arrived the next day, working along side Russian doctors whom they praised and credited with saving Navalny's
life.
Russian doctors agree to release Navalny for medivac transport against their own medical advice, respecting Navalny family
wishes.
Ambulance crew once again takes Navalny in the reverse direction back to the airport where the private jet was waiting.
Introducing the patient with the "military grade nerve agent" oozing out of his skin to a new flight crew.
Plane lands in Berlin and a German ambulance crew now handles the human chemical warfare torpedo. Note the German ambulance
crew members had short sleeves. If the German Gov believed there was a possibility of a Novichok type substance at play why
was the official greeting party not all dressed up like those Mi5 Salisbury central casting extras in Hazmat suits?
The convoy arrives at the hospital in Berlin handing Navalny over to the German team no doubt comprised of endless staff
members.
I think my estimate of a total 300 to 400 people within the first 3 to 4 days having been within close proximity to Navalny
is quite reasonable. If he was really was infected with an horrific chemical warfare agent, why would he even be allowed into
Germany ?
As for Navalny and the Russian administration and the Russian public, they both view him as useful but not likeable. The Putin
administration has made good use of reports by Navalny's anti-corruption group to expose both people in government and in business.
The Russian public watches the Youtube videos of Navalny's reports to the tune of millions of hits & clicks. However as a person
Alexei Navalny is not like and for good reason. This is reflected in his 2% poll rated that due to all the current focus has moved
up to 4% for Navalny as a potential "politician" (he is actually already a failed one) 4% is his high water mark.
The likes of The Guardian and The Independent have portrayed Navalny over the years as some kind of Russian Nelson Mandela
when in fact Navalny is a better educated more sophisticated Tommy Robinson. Only Navalny is even more racist than so-called "Tommy
Robinson" as I don't even recall him ever saying "All Muslims are cockroaches" as Navalny was once quoted to have said.
In political terms he is a cult leader of an SPB/Moscow elitist metropolitan cult that does not give a damn about most
of Russia. He and his political cohorts such as Ms Sobol offer not one single policy for the people of the Russian Heartland.
Who are far better cared for and better represented by Valdimir Putin, whom the Heartland people lovingly address as Vladimirovich,
President Putin's middle name. Navalny is even more Neo-Liberal and far less small "l" liberal in general values and mindset than
President Putin.
The description is very accurate, and the definition of "elite metropolitan cult" hit the bull's eye. Young people think that
being an oppositionist is being active, fashionable, trendy (also at protests you can post photos on Instagram!) Unfortunately,
if they are asked specific questions, they cannot answer. They are there for self-expression.
--
People follow ideas, Navalny's idea is not clear, where is the plan, where is the perspective? Looking at Navalny's activity,
I feel they are trying to sell me something.
E.g. his website promotes the Smart Voting system https://navalny.com/p/6418/
the title is "Do you want it like in Belarus? Here is a list of candidates, find yours"
the first paragraph point is "to support the rebellious people in word, action and money is very right, but you may do even
more right thing "
the second "it is impossible to use your vote wisely without our smart voting system", a call to action "register"
the third "a few brave Spartans (sic!) broke through Putin's evil cordons and you can support them here is how:
1. Check out the list of candidates. Transfer money to someone you like
Well, actually I sell something myself and I wright similar marketing texts. Compare:
"Are you in search of Boho, Ethnic or Tribal fashion? You're in the right place Our unique *** is the way to express your style!
Does your daughter think of cutting off her gorgeous long hair? Get a pair of our *** for her to show your love and care Here
is how: visit our shop *** Choose the one you like and let us work on the perfect *** crafted especially for you "
When people create an online store of political candidates, it is not credible. Our electoral system means collecting signatures,
real signatures of living people, not collecting money.
Thank you for your courage to speak the truth Mr. Murray. I am trying to do it sometimes too here in the Netherlands, but I
am an engineer, not a politician or journalist, so my means and persuasive talents are limited. However – to stay on the topic
of poison – it feels good to see that the anti-Russian propaganda has not poisoned all minds in West Europe yet.
It's only today that I've realised who is Prigozhin. He is the owner of Concord group, they were those russian with whom Trump
conspired to win elections!
Prigozhin sent 1 million roubles to Charite for Navalny.
He demands 88 millions, I wrote about it previously. It is a demand due to court's decision. I don't think it was издевательство,
it looks more like Prigozhin is afraid of being accused of poisoning 🙂
Russophobes these days, which is an enormous section of the population, will believe anything dastardly about that country
and its leadership. The narrative here, that doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny as Murray shows, is that the Russians
are bumbling villains that couldn't kill a wet paper bag.
Another narrative is that they didn't kill Navalny on purpose. It's just "a warning", etc.. A villain is a villain.
One BS story is as good as another. Of course, there should be a delay between one fiction and the next one. However, the old
saying still applies: throw enough sh*t and something is bound to stick.
At the interpersonal level, it's sometimes simpler to simply exaggerate the exaggeration: e.g., Putin is a villain and look
at what he did to dirty my underwear; there's a Putin under your bed; yeah, and what about the bad weather we've been having?
Putin, of course.
And it's not like any of this is new, e.g., US President Reagan: "Russia has been outlawed forever. Bombing begins in 5 minutes."
It so happened that yesterday I was coming home in a taxi. The taxi driver, who looked like Bill Murray, turned out to be very
talkative: during the trip, as often happens, we touched on all subjects, from the weather to blondes behind the wheel.
At some point, as background noise, there was some news read out on the radio. After the segment about the poisoning of
Alexei Navalny, NordStream 2 and possible EU sanctions the taxi driver shook his head and said thoughtfully: "Yeah, mommy is stuck
"
"What mommy?" I inquired.
"What mommy?" asked the taxi driver. "That same one, Angela Merkel. You know why Navalny was surrendered to Germany? Let
me explain." And then, for a quarter of an hour, the taxi driver presented a coherent theory of what happened, worthy of study
at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which answered all the questions that had been bothering me.
This is how it all came down.
At the beginning of August everybody was preparing for the elections in Belarus -- Belarus itself, as well as Russia and countries
in the EU. It was an exciting game in which everybody placed bets on their own candidate. But I must immediately warn you that
what we were observing was just the visible part of the iceberg, while the underwater currents were known only to a few.
Moscow and Minsk were demonstratively smashing dishes, shouting at each other and pulling each other by the hair, creating
the illusion of a complete break in relations. This was as intended!
Europe, content and relaxed, was rubbing its hands and already seeing how it will very soon kick out "Europe's last dictator"
and install a Belorussian Juan Guaido clone in Minsk, grabbing this delectable piece for itself.
The elections were held. Everybody froze. Not bothering to wait for the election results to come in, on orders from the Polish
provocateur [Telegraph channel] Nexta the Belorussian white-red-white [Nazi occupation flag] opposition marched into battle.
At first everything was going to plan. Excited white-red-white crowds flooded the streets and started threatening the police,
officials and journalists, starting skirmishes and strikes. Slovak and Spanish ambassadors in Belarus spoke out in support of
the protesters and "came over to the side of the people." This was also as intended. It looked like just a bit more of this and
["Europe's last dictator"] Lukashenko would fall.
But then Moscow entered into the game. It recognized the outcome of the elections [which Lukashenko won] and started to support
him organizationally, informationally and financially. Europe had to ramp up pressure. But how?
Nexta was crapping bricks and exhorting the white-red-white activists to get more active, but they just couldn't get any traction
in their attempts to seize power. They turned out to be too weak compared to their own people.
And then, luckily, Navalny was poisoned. In any case, that's what some people imagined.
Operatives at the German Ministry of International Affairs, who sympathized with Schröder's SPD, got in touch with Yulia
Navalny (his wife) and offered to hospitalize him in a clinic in Germany. Yulia agreed, and appealed to Putin.
Then the German minister of foreign affairs walked into Bundeskanzlerin's office and laid his joker on the table: "We
can take away Navalny for treatment. If Moscow tries to prevent this, we will cause a loud scandal. We'll get his body and then
decide how to play this." Merkel found this proposal attractive and, not thinking too long, agreed. Moscow did not object to Navalny's
transfer.
After Navalny was brought to Germany and delivered to the Charité clinic in a cortège consisting of 12 cars, mommy Angela called
Moscow and demanded: Russia must stop supporting Lukashenko, otherwise we will announce that Navalny had been poisoned with "Novichok."
Moscow refused and increased support of Lukashenko, declaring that it has created a reserve of special forces to be sent into
Belarus and take control -- just in case anyone makes a sudden move.
The next day Berlin announced that analysis results showed poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor. This was its last
warning shot. Then there was another phone call, to warn that the next time "Novichok" will be found. Moscow refused, and promised
Minsk a billion dollars on that very day.
At that point, Berlin's patience ran out. Navalny was immediately transferred to a military hospital, where it was immediately
"discovered" that he had been poisoned with "Novichok." It was not possible to find "Novichok" while he was at Charité because
journalists and officials could demand to see the test results, while at a military hospital such requests would be denied: the
information is secret. But not even "Novichok" could force Moscow to stop supporting Minsk. Russia's prime minister Mikhail Mishustin
was dispatched to Minsk with a briefcase bulging with papers to sign.
There followed an attempt by Fritz Merz, Angela Merkel's deputy in the DCU, to lean on Merkel to shut down NordStream 2,
but he swiftly got his ears boxed by the business lobby of German companies that invested in this pipeline and, whining and whimpering,
crawled back into his hole.
Then Lukashenko, being a tough nut to crack, presented an intentionally amateurish intercept of secret diplomatic communications
between Poland and Germany in which they discussed their plans for poisoning Navalny. Now they are sitting in Warsaw and Berlin
and have no idea how to respond to this movie -- to deny or to pretend that they didn't notice it. What a dilemma!
The interim result is thus as follows: Navalny is alive and well, sitting quietly in a German military hospital and inquiring
periodically when he will be allowed to go home. But he won't be allowed to go home any time soon.
Now, a year ahead of elections, parliamentary electoral campaign is starting in Germany. Merkel's DCU/CSU coalition doesn't
have a lot of popular support as it is. Some people are even now ready to take the Reichstag with their bare hands and put their
own flag on top of it. And then we have this toxic story with "Novichok"!
If Merkel announces that it is the crime of the century in which a great Russian opposition figure has been fiendishly
poisoned with "Novichok," then she would be obligated to sever all relations with the bloody regime and present evidence. But
there won't be any evidence to present. And nobody will allow her to freeze the completion of the pipeline. Otherwise German companies,
which invested in NordStream 2 will take the Reichstag even ahead of the irate German citizens. In either case, DCU/CSU will face
a defeat.
But if she slams the transmission into reverse, apologizes and returns Navalny to Russia, claiming that what happened was an
unfortunate series of errors, and punishes everybody who had put her in this situation to the full extent of German law, this
won't save the situation either. German voter's won't forgive Merkel over the loss of Germany's international authority, loss
of influence in Europe and total incompetence in handling foreign affairs, and will still punish her at the polls.
Therefore, her only choice is to bide her time, sitting with one buttock on each of two chairs -- blaming Russia for deploying
"Novichok" and simultaneously supporting the completion of NordStream 2. But we are about to see a flood of eyewitness reports,
photographs and documents from the various hospitals where the VIP patient has been treated, knocking out one of the two chairs.
And so the possibility that Merkel's retirement will occur before her term is up should not be dismissed. In that case, she will
have been unable to beat Helmut's Kohl's 16-year record as Bundeskanzler.
But what about Russia's friend Gehrhard Schröder? Being the chairman of the board of the NordStream 2 company and head
of the SPD, he looks into the future with confidence and optimism. In any case, CDU/CSU will be deflated and SPD will reinforce
its position in the Bundestag and either independently or in coalition with other parties will install its own leader as Bundeskanzler.
NordStream 2, which has been in political limbo for a few years, will be completed and enter into service at full rated capacity
very quickly.
When we rolled up to my house, the taxi driver asked: "Do you play chess?"
"Sometimes," I nodded.
In chess, there is a variation called "poisoned pawn." Your opponent, trying to gain material advantage, takes this pawn, ends
up trapped and inevitably loses.
As I was getting out of the taxi, somewhat perplexed, I asked the taxi driver where he got all this information. He smiled
a sad Bill Murray smile and answered: "From my brother. He lives in Germany and also works as a taxi driver." It was at this moment
that I realized that taxi drivers know everything.
April 12,
2018Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard00:47:39 12/04/2018ria.ru
Vladimir Sivkovich headed the commission of inquiry of the Verkhovna Rada in the case of
"Viktor Yushchenko's poisoning" . Yushchenko's team actively inflated the story of
"poisoning" , the image of a victim helped him to become the President. However, the
Rada commission found out that there wasn't any poisoning, and at the same time Yushchenko
refused to cooperate with the investigation. Moreover, as Sivkovich told the correspondent of
RIA Novosti, people from the president's environment made their own conclusion for the Austrian
doctors and asked to "freeze" the investigation.
What conclusions did the commission come to?
"The main conclusion is that there isn't any proof of deliberate poisoning. There aren't
any suspects or accused in this case. All the story with poisoning is simply political
PR."
There was the narrative that Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxine
"All experts who we talked to affirm: dioxine will decompose in an organism only 7-10
years later. The consequences are incurable. And Yushchenko was able to miraculously
recover."
There wasn't any dioxine in his blood?
"We aren't aware of any. He refused to cooperate with us and didn't present blood samples
to the commission. He didn't cooperate not only with us, but also with the Prosecutor-General's
Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These departments were headed by people who he
appointed. And he even didn't trust them."
Yushchenko gave his blood to an Austrian clinic
"I contacted these doctors. Some blood was given to them. But what blood -- they don't
know. Dioxine could've been added to it later. And in general it is necessary to understand
that dioxine is a weapon of mass destruction. This is 'agent Orange', which the Americans used
in Vietnam. If Yushchenko was indeed poisoned with dioxine, then there would be many victims,
and not just Yushchenko. It simply doesn't logically correspond."
Where then did the narrative about dioxine come from?
"They looked at approximate symptoms. Like what the Vietnamese had. And straight off
invented it."
What happened to Yushchenko back then?
"We investigated the fact of supposed poisoning. No proof of poisoning was found. Nobody
poisoned Yushchenko! What actually happened Yushchenko underwent certain medical procedures in
order to look better. Experts who we spoke to affirm: after such a procedure it is necessary to
stick to a diet. For example, it is forbidden to take alcohol. I know for sure that Yushchenko
sometimes drank, there are photos. It is also important to understand that he had pancreatitis.
All of this was superimposed on each other."
Who knew that there wasn't any poisoning?
"Everyone in Yushchenko's HQ knew. All his management knew very well. When Yushchenko
stated that he had been poisoned, the SBU was immediately suspected. And when I headed the
parliamentary commission, I was allowed to listen to staff recordings. I don't know on what
basis they recorded HQ employees. Perhaps there was some criminal case. I listened to these
recordings for 3 days, and all of them knew very well that there was no poisoning. And the
current president – Petro Poroshenko – also knows about this. And Yushchenko was
then treated at the expense of Poroshenko.
This imaginary poisoning was the main secret of Yushchenko, his weak point. Those who
were aware of this could blackmail the President. It was caught on a 'hook'. In Ukraine every
President has a secret: for Kuchma it is 'Gongadze's case' and Melnichenko's films, for
Yanukovych it is criminal record, and Yushchenko had a false poisoning."
Who invented this narrative?
"David Zhvaniya, who was a part of the 'Our Ukraine' party, directly stated to our
commission: the leadership of this party falsified the poisoning. Dioxine was somehow
externally added to Yushchenko's blood sample. And this sample was sent to the Austrian clinic.
And it is precisely for this reason that he refused to give a blood test for our commission: if
he was really poisoned, then he would be the first to be interested in it. What reason did he
have to refuse, in this case?
The text for the Austrian doctors was thought up by the vice speaker Aleksandr Zinchenko.
He wrote it himself and sent it to the clinic, and the doctors simply voiced it."
Was the commission put under pressure?
"I will say it like this. People from Yushchenko's environment asked me to 'freeze' the
work. This was the agreement: they promised not to promote the poisoning topic any more if we
don't investigate this story. But in 2009 Yushchenko violated the agreement -- and the
commission resumed its work.
There unambiguously wasn't any poisoning. No proof of poisoning was provided, this is an
entirely political story. The loud accusation was hurled, while there was no proof. This is
very similar to the affair with Skripal's poisoning -- it's the same
mechanism."
Crisis of neoliberal undermines the USA supremacy and the US elite hangs by the stras to the Full Specturm Domionanc edoctrine,
whih it now can't enforce and which is financially unsustainable for the USA.
Collapse of neoliberalism means the end of the USA supremacy and the whole political existence on the USA was banked on this
single card.
Notable quotes:
"... In America, this unfortunate status quo in support of primacy persists even in the Trumpian Age and within debates around the eccentric and unconventional presidency of Donald Trump. In fact, despite all the talk of political polarization in the United States, it appears that when it comes to naming new threats and enemies to "contain," "deter," and deem "existential," bipartisan consensus is found swiftly and quite readily. ..."
"... In a recent speech delivered in Europe, the U.S. defense secretary and former corporate lobbyist for Raytheon, Mark Esper, unified these two faces of the Janus that embodies the North Atlantic foreign policy establishment. Esper referred to both China and Russia as disruptive forces working to unravel the international order, which "we have created together," and called on the international community to preserve that order by countering both powers. As it stands, we are on the path to a series of cold wars throughout this century, if not a hot conflict between rival great powers that could spiral into World War III. Despite increased calls for realism and restraint in foreign policy, primacy is alive and well. ..."
"... There is, however, a more significant psychosociological reason for the blob's remarkable persistence. When it comes to foreign policy, Western policymakers today suffer from a Manichean worldview, a caustic mindset crystalized during a decades-running Cold War with the Soviet Union. ..."
"... Frozen in this Cold War mindset, the Atlanticist blob has internalized the bipolar moment that followed the Second World War, treating it as a permanent fixture and the normal state of the international system. In fact, the bipolar and unipolar periods we have undergone over the past 75 years are nothing but aberrations and historical anomalies. In truth, the reality of the international system tends toward multi-polarity -- and at long last it appears that the system is self-correcting. The North Atlantic establishment came of age during that time of exception, forming its (liberal) identity through the process of "alterity" and in a nemetic opposition to communism. ..."
"... Not surprisingly then, the North Atlantic elites continue to seek adversaries to demonize and "monsters to destroy" in order to justify their moral universalism and presumed ideological superiority, doing so under the garb of a totalizing and absolutist idea of exceptionalism. ..."
The international order is no longer bipolar, despite the elites' insistence otherwise.
Fortunately there is hope for change.
Despite its many failings and high human, social, and economic costs, American foreign
policy since the end of the Second World War has shown a remarkable degree of continuity and
inflexibility. This rather curious phenomenon is not limited to America alone. The North
Atlantic foreign policy establishment from Washington D.C. to London, which some have aptly
dubbed the "blob," has doggedly championed the grand strategic framework of "primacy" and armed
hegemony, often coated with more docile language such as "global leadership," "American
indispensability," and "strengthening the Western alliance."
In America, this unfortunate status quo in support of primacy persists even in the Trumpian
Age and within debates around the eccentric and unconventional presidency of Donald Trump. In
fact, despite all the talk of political polarization in the United States, it appears that when
it comes to naming new threats and enemies to "contain," "deter," and deem "existential,"
bipartisan consensus is found swiftly and quite readily.
On the Left, and in the wake of
President Trump's election, the Democratic establishment began fixating its wrath on
Russia–adopting a confrontational stance toward Moscow and fueling fears of a renewed
Cold War. On the Right, the realigning GOP has increasingly, if at times inconsistently,
singled out China as the greatest threat to U.S. national security, a hostile attitude further
exacerbated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alarmingly, Joe Biden, the Democratic
presidential nominee, has recently joined the hawkish bandwagon toward China, even attempting
to outflank Trump on this issue and attacking the president's China policy as too weak and
accommodating of China's rise.
In a recent speech delivered in Europe, the U.S. defense secretary and former corporate
lobbyist for Raytheon, Mark Esper, unified these two faces of the Janus that embodies the North
Atlantic foreign policy establishment. Esper referred to both China and Russia as disruptive
forces working to unravel the international order, which "we have created together," and called
on the international community to preserve that order by countering both powers. As it stands,
we are on the path to a series of cold wars throughout this century, if not a hot conflict
between rival great powers that could spiral into World War III. Despite increased calls for
realism and restraint in foreign policy, primacy is alive and well.
Indeed, the dominant tendency among many foreign policy observers is to overprivilege the
threat of rising superpowers and to insist on strong containment measures to limit the spheres
of influence of the so-called revisionist powers. Such an approach, coupled with the prospect
of ascendant powers actively resisting and confronting the United States as the ruling global
hegemon, has one eminent International Relations scholar warning of the Thucydides Trap.
There are others, however, who insist that the structural shifts undermining the liberal
international order mark the end of U.S. hegemony and its "unipolar moment." In realist terms,
what Secretary Esper really means to protect, they would argue, is a conception of
"rules-based" global order that was a structural by-product of the Second World War and the
ensuing Cold War and whose very rules and institutions were underwritten by U.S. hegemony. This
would be an exercise in folly -- not corresponding to the reality of systemic change and the
return of great power competition and civilizational contestation.
What's more, the sanctimony of this "liberal" hegemonic order and the logic of democratic
peace were both presumably vindicated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its totalitarian
system, a black swan event that for many had heralded the "end of history" and promised the
advent of the American century. A great deal of lives, capital, resources, and goodwill were
sacrificed by America and her allies toward that crusade for liberty and universality, which
was only the most recent iteration of a radically utopian element in American political thought
going back to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Alas, as it had eluded earlier generations of
idealists, that century never truly arrived, and neither did the empire of liberty and
prosperity that it loftily aimed to establish.
Today, the emerging reality of a multipolar world and alternate worldviews championed by the
different cultural blocs led by China and Russia appears to have finally burst the bubble of
American Triumphalism, proving that the ideas behind it are "not simply obsolete but absurd."
This failure should have been expected since the very project the idealists had espoused was
built on a pathological "savior complex" and a false truism that reflected the West's own
absolutist and distorted sense of ideological and moral superiority. Samuel Huntington might
have been right all along to cast doubt on the long-term salience of using ideology and
doctrinal universalism as the dividing principle for international relations. His call to
focus, instead, on civilizational distinction, the permanent power of culture on human action,
and the need to find common ground rings especially true today. Indeed, fostering a spirit of
coexistence and open dialogue among the world's great civilizational complexes is a fundamental
tenet of a cultural realism.
And yet, despite such permanent shifts in the global order away from universalist
dichotomies and global hegemony and toward culturalism and multi-polarity, there exists a
profound disjunction between the structural realities of the international system and the often
business-as-usual attitude of the North Atlantic foreign policy elites. How could one explain
the astonishing levels of rigidity and continuity on the part of the "blob" and the
military-industrial-congressional complex regularly pushing for more adventurism and
interventionism abroad? Why would the bipartisan primacist establishment, which their allies in
the mainstream media endeavor still to mask, justify such illiberal acts of aggression and
attempts at empire by weaponizing the moralistic language of human rights, individual liberty,
and democracy in a world increasingly awakened to arbitrary ideological framing?
There are, of course, systemic reasons behind the power and perpetuation of the blob and the
endurance of primacy. The vast economic incentives of war and its instruments, institutional
routinization and intransigence, stupefaction and groupthink of government bureaucracy, and the
significant influence of lobbying efforts by foreign governments and other vested interest
groups could each partly explain the remarkable continuity of the North Atlantic foreign policy
establishment. The endless stream of funding from the defense industry, neoliberal and
neoconservative foundations, as well as the government itself keeps the "blob" alive, while the
general penchant for bipartisanship around preserving the status quo allows it to thrive. What
is more, elite schools produce highly analytic yet narrowly focused and conventional minds that
are tamed to be agreeable so as to not undermine elite consensus. This conveyor belt feeds the
"blob," supplying it with the army of specialists, experts, and wonks it requires to function
as a mind melding hive, while in practice safeguarding employment for the career bureaucrats
for decades to come.
There is, however, a more significant psychosociological reason for the blob's remarkable
persistence. When it comes to foreign policy, Western policymakers today suffer from a
Manichean worldview, a caustic mindset crystalized during a decades-running Cold War with the
Soviet Union. The world might have changed fundamentally with the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989, the bipolar structure of the international system might have ended irreversibly, but the
personnel -- the Baby Boomer Generation elites conducting foreign policy in the North Atlantic
-- did not leave office or retire with the collapse of the USSR. They largely remain in power
to this day.
Every generation is forged through a formative crisis, its experiences seen through the
prism that all-encompassing ordeal. For the incumbent elites, that generational crisis was the
Cold War and the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation. The dualistic paradigm of the
international system during the U.S.-Soviet rivalry bred an entire generation to see the world
through a black-and-white binary. It should come as no surprise that this era elevated the
idealist strain of thought and the crusading, neo-Jacobin impulse of U.S. foreign policy
(personified by Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson) to new, ever-expanding heights. Idealism
prizes a nemesis and thus revels in a bipolar order.
Frozen in this Cold War mindset, the Atlanticist blob has internalized the bipolar moment
that followed the Second World War, treating it as a permanent fixture and the normal state of
the international system. In fact, the bipolar and unipolar periods we have undergone over the
past 75 years are nothing but aberrations and historical anomalies. In truth, the reality of
the international system tends toward multi-polarity -- and at long last it appears that the
system is self-correcting. The North Atlantic establishment came of age during that time of
exception, forming its (liberal) identity through the process of "alterity" and in a nemetic
opposition to communism.
Not surprisingly then, the North Atlantic elites continue to seek adversaries to demonize
and "monsters to destroy" in order to justify their moral universalism and presumed ideological
superiority, doing so under the garb of a totalizing and absolutist idea of exceptionalism.
After all, a nemetic zeitgeist during which ideology reigned supreme and realism was routinely
discounted was tailor-made for dogmatic absolutism and moral universalism. In such a zero-sum
strategic environment, it was only natural to demand totality and frame the ongoing
geopolitical struggle in terms of an existential opposition over Good and Evil that would quite
literally split the world in two.
Today, that same kind of Manichean thinking continues to handicap paradigmatic change in
foreign policy. A false consciousness, it underpins and promotes belief in the double myths of
indispensability and absolute exceptionality, suggesting that the North Atlantic bloc holds a
certain monopoly on all that is good and true. It is not by chance that such pathological
renderings of "exceptionalism" and "leadership" have been wielded as convenient rationale and
intellectual placeholders for the ideology of empire across the North Atlantic. This sense of
ingrained moral self-righteousness, coupled with an attitude that celebrates activism,
utopianism, and interventionism in foreign policy, has created and reinforced a culture of
strategic overextension and imperial overreach.
It is this very culture -- personified and dominated by the Baby Boomers and the blob they
birthed -- that has made hawkishness ubiquitous, avoids any real reckoning as to the limits of
power, and habitually belittles calls for restraint and moderation as isolationism. In truth,
however, what has been the exceptional part in the delusion of absolute exceptionalism is Pax
Americana, liberal hegemony, and the hubris that animates them having gone uncontested and
unchecked for so long. That confrontation could begin in earnest by directly challenging the
Boomer blob itself -- and by propagating a counter-elite offering a starkly different
worldview.
Achieving such a genuine paradigm shift demands a generational sea-change, to retire the old
blob and make a better one in its place. It is about time for the old establishment to forgo
its reign, allowing a new younger cohort from among the Millennial and post-Millennial
generations to advance into leadership roles. The Millennials, especially, are now the largest
generation of eligible voters (overtaking the Baby Boomers) as well as the first generation not
habituated by the Cold War; in fact, many of them grew up during the "unipolar moment" of
American hegemony. Hence, their generational identity is not built around a dualistic alterity.
Free from obsessive fixation on ideological supremacy, most among them reject total global
dominance as both unattainable and undesirable.
Instead, their worldview is shaped by an entirely different set of experiences and
disappointments. Their generational crisis was brought on by a series of catastrophic
interventions and endless wars around the world -- chief among them the debacles in Afghanistan
and Iraq and the toppling of Libya's Gaddafi -- punctuated by repeated onslaughts of financial
recessions and domestic strife. The atmosphere of uncertainty, instability, and general chaos
has bred discontent, turning many Millennials into pragmatic realists who are disenchanted with
the system, critical of the pontificating establishment, and naturally skeptical of lofty
ideals and utopian doctrines.
In short, this is not an absolutist and complacent generation of idealists, but one steeped
in realism and a certain perspectivism that has internalized the inherent relativity of both
power and truth. Most witnessed the dangers of overreach, hubris, and a moralized foreign
policy, so they are actively self-reflective, circumspect, and restrained. As a generation,
they appear to be less the moralist and the global activist and more prudent, level-headed, and
temperamentally conservative -- developing a keen appreciation for realpolitik, sovereignty,
and national interest. Their preference for a non-ideological approach in foreign policy
suggests that once in power, they will be less antagonistic and more tolerant of rival powers
and accepting of pluralism in the international system. That openness to civilizational
distinction and global cultural pluralism also implies that future Millennial statesmen will
subscribe to a more humble, less grandiose, and narrower definition of interest that focuses on
securing core objectives -- i.e., preserving national security and recognizing spheres of
influence.
Reforming and rehabilitating the U.S. foreign policy establishment will require more than
policy prescriptions and comprehensive reports: it needs generational change. To transform and
finally "rein in" North Atlantic foreign policy, our task today must be to facilitate and
expedite this shift. Once that occurs, the incoming Millennials should be better positioned to
discard the deep-seated and routinized ideology of empire, supplanting it with a greater
emphasis on partnership that is driven by mutual interests and a general commitment to sharing
the globe with the world's other great cultures.
This new approach calls for America to lead by the power of its example, exhibiting the
benefits of liberty and a constitutional republic at home, without forcibly imposing those
values abroad. Such an outlook means abandoning the coercive regime change agendas and the
corrosive projects of nation-building and democracy promotion. In this new multipolar world,
America would be an able, dynamic, and equal participant in ensuring sustainable peace
side-by-side the world's other great powers, acting as "a normal country in a normal time."
Reflecting the spirit of republican governance authentically is far more pertinent now and
salutary for the future of the North Atlantic peoples than is promulgating the utopian image of
a shining city on a hill.
Arta Moeini is research director at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy and a postdoc
fellow at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship. Dr. Moeini's latest project advances a
theory of cultural realism as a cornerstone to a new understanding of foreign policy.
The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy will be co-sponsoring "The Future of Grand Strategy
in the Post-COVID World," with TAC, tonight at 6 p.m. ET. Register for free here
.
I always assumed that Trump was the candidate of MIC in 2016 elections, while Hillary was the
candidate of "Intelligence community." But it looks like US military is infected with desperados
like Mattis and Trump was unable fully please them despite all his efforts.
But it looks like US military is infected with desperados like Mattis and Trump was unable
fully please them despite all his efforts. Military desperados are not interested in how many
American they deprived of decent standard of living due to outside military expenses. All they
want is to dominate the word and maintain the "Full Spectrum Dominance" whatever it costs.
It is Trump's tortured relationship with the military that stands out the most, especially
as told through the eyes of former Secretary of Defense Jim 'Mad Dog' Mattis, a retired marine
general. It is clear that Bob Woodward spent hours speaking with Mattis -- the insights,
emotions and internal voice captured in the book show a level of intimacy that could only be
reached through in-depth interviews, and Woodward has a well-earned reputation for getting
people to speak to him.
The book makes it clear that Mattis viewed Trump as a threat to the US' standing as the
defender of a rules-based order -- built on the back of decades-old alliances -- that had been
in place since the end of the Second World War.
It also makes it clear that Mattis and the military officers he oversaw placed defending
this order above implementing the will of the American people, as expressed through the free
and fair election that elevated Donald Trump to the position of commander-in-chief. In short,
Mattis and his coterie of generals knew best, and when the president dared issue an order or
instruction that conflicted with their vision of how the world should work, they would do their
best to undermine this order, all the while confirming to the president that it was being
followed.
This trend was on display in Woodward's telling of Trump's efforts to forge better relations
with North Korea. At every turn, Mattis and his military commanders sought to isolate the
president from the reality on the ground, briefing him only on what they thought he needed to
know, and keeping him in the dark about what was really going on.
In a telling passage, Woodward takes us into the mind of Jim Mattis as he contemplates the
horrors of a nuclear war with North Korea, and the responsibility he believed he shouldered
when it came to making the hard decision as to whether nuclear weapons should be used or not.
Constitutionally, the decision was the president's alone to make, something Mattis begrudgingly
acknowledges. But in Mattis' world, he, as secretary of defense, would be the one who
influenced that decision.
Mattis, along with the other general officers described by Woodward, is clearly gripped with
what can only be described as the 'Military Messiah Syndrome'.
What defines this 'syndrome' is perhaps best captured in the words of Emma Sky, the female
peace activist-turned adviser to General Ray Odierno, the one-time commander of US forces in
Iraq. In a frank give-and-take captured by Ms. Sky in her book 'The Unravelling', Odierno spoke
of the value he placed on the military's willingness to defend "freedom" anywhere in the world.
" There is, " he said, " no one who understands more the importance of liberty and
freedom in all its forms than those who travel the world to defend it ."
Ms. Sky responded in typically direct fashion: " One day, I will have you admit that the
[Iraq] war was a bad idea, that the administration was led by a radical neocon program, that
the US's standing in the world has gone down greatly, and that we are far less safe than we
were before 9/11. "
Odierno would have nothing of it. " It will never happen while I'm the commander of
soldiers in Iraq ."
" To lead soldiers in battle ," Ms. Sky noted, " a commander had to believe in the
cause. " Left unsaid was the obvious: even if the cause was morally and intellectually
unsound.
his, more than anything, is the most dangerous thing about the 'Military Messiah Syndrome'
as captured by Bob Woodward -- the fact that the military is trapped in an inherited reality
divorced from the present, driven by precepts which have nothing to with what is, but rather by
what the military commanders believe should be. The unyielding notion that the US military is a
force for good becomes little more than meaningless drivel when juxtaposed with the reality
that the mission being executed is inherently wrong.
The 'Military Messiah Syndrome' lends itself to dishonesty and, worse, to self-delusion. It
is one thing to lie; it is another altogether to believe the lie as truth.
No single
general had the courage to tell Trump allegations against Syria were a hoax
The cruise missile attack on Syria in early April 2017 stands out as a case in point. The
attack was ordered in response to allegations that Syria had dropped a bomb containing the
sarin nerve agent on a town -- Khan Shaykhun -- that was controlled by Al-Qaeda-affiliated
Islamic militants.
Trump was led to believe that the 59 cruise missiles launched against Shayrat Airbase --
where the Su-22 aircraft alleged to have dropped the bombs were based -- destroyed Syria's
capability to carry out a similar attack in the future. When shown post-strike imagery in which
the runways were clearly untouched, Trump was outraged, lashing out at Secretary of Defense
Mattis in a conference call. " I can't believe you didn't destroy the runway !",
Woodward reports the president shouting.
" Mr. President ," Mattis responds in the text, " they would rebuild the runway in
24 hours, and it would have little effect on their ability to deploy weapons. We destroyed the
capability to deploy weapons " for months, Mattis said.
" That was the mission the president had approved, " Woodward writes, clearly
channeling Mattis, " and they had succeeded ."
The problem with this passage is that it is a lie. There is no doubt that Bob Woodward has
the audio tape of Jim Mattis saying these things. But none of it is true. Mattis knew it when
he spoke to Woodward, and Woodward knew it when he wrote the book.
There was no confirmed use of chemical weapons by Syria at Khan Shaykhun. Indeed, the
forensic evidence available about the attack points to the incident being a false flag effort
-- a successful one, it turns out -- on the part of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists to
provoke a US military strike against Syria. No targets related to either the production,
storage or handling of chemical weapons were hit by the US cruise missiles, if for no other
reason than no such targets could exist if Syria did not possess and/or use a chemical weapon
against Khan Shaykhun.
Moreover, the US failed to produce a narrative of causality which provided some underlying
logic to the targets that were struck at Khan Shaykhun -- "Here is where the chemical weapons
were stored, here is where the chemical weapons were filled, here is where the chemical weapons
were loaded onto the aircraft." Instead, 59 cruise missiles struck empty aircraft hangars,
destroying derelict aircraft, and killing at least four Syrian soldiers and up to nine
civilians.
The next morning, the same Su-22 aircraft that were alleged to have bombed Khan Shaykhun
were once again taking off from Shayrat Air Base -- less than 24 hours after the US cruise
missiles struck that facility. President Trump had every reason to be outraged by the
results.
But the President should have been outraged by the processes behind the attack, where
military commanders, fully afflicted by 'Military Messiah Syndrome', offered up solutions that
solved nothing for problems that did not exist. Not a single general (or admiral) had the
courage to tell the president that the allegations against Syria were a hoax, and that a
military response was not only not needed, but would be singularly counterproductive.
But that's not how generals and admirals -- or colonels and lieutenant colonels -- are
wired. That kind of introspective honesty cannot happen while they are in command.
Bob Woodward knows this truth, but he chose not to give it a voice in his book, because to
do so would disrupt the pre-scripted narrative that he had constructed, around which he bent
and twisted the words of those he interviewed -- including the president and Jim Mattis. As
such, 'Rage' is, in effect, a lie built on a lie. It is one thing for politicians and those in
power to manipulate the truth to their advantage. It's something altogether different for
journalists to report something as true that they know to be a lie.
On the back cover of 'Rage', the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Robert Caro is quoted from
a speech he gave about Bob Woodward. " Bob Woodward ," Caro notes, " a great
reporter. What is a great reporter? Someone who never stops trying to get as close to the truth
as possible ."
After reading 'Rage', one cannot help but conclude the opposite -- that Bob Woodward has
written a volume which pointedly ignores the truth. Instead, he gives voice to a lie of his own
construct, predicated on the flawed accounts of sources inflicted with 'Military Messiah
Syndrome', whose words embrace a fantasy world populated by military members fulfilling
missions far removed from the common good of their fellow citizens -- and often at conflict
with the stated intent and instruction of the civilian leadership they ostensibly serve. In
doing so, Woodward is as complicit as the generals and former generals he quotes in misleading
the American public about issues of fundamental importance.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Scott Ritter
is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ' SCORPION
KING : America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the
Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff
during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter
@RealScottRitter
Whichever construct you want to believe, the fact remains that US has continued to sow
instability around the world in the name of defending the liberty and freedom. Which brings
to the question how the world can continue to allow a superpower to dictate what's good or
bad for a sovereign country.
Johan le Roux Jewel Gyn 18 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 03:42 AM
The answer you seek is not in the US's proclaimed vision of 'democracy' ot 'rescuing
populations from the clutches of vile dictators.' They just say that to validate their
actions which in reality is using their military as a mercenary force to secure and steal the
resources of countries.
Joaquin Montano 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 04:57 PM
Bob Woodward was enshrined as a great, heroic like journalist by the Hollywood propaganda
machine, but reality is he is a US Security agent pretending to be a well informed/connected
journalist. And indeed, he is well informed/connected, since he was a Naval intelligence man,
part responsible of the demise of the Nixon administration when it fell out of grace with the
powerful elites, and the Washington Post being well connected with the CIA, the rest is
history. And as they say, once a CIA man, always a CIA man.
That is correct. Woodward is a Naval intelligence man. The elite in the US was not happy
about Nixon's foreign policy and his detante with the Soviet Union. Watergate was invented,
and Nixon had nothing to do with it. However, it brought him down, thank's to Woodward.
NoJustice Joaquin Montano 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:48 PM
But he also exposed Trump's lies about Covid-19.
lectrodectus 17 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 04:45 AM
Another first class article by ....Scott .. The book makes it clear that Mattis viewed Trump
as a threat to the Us' standing as the defender of a " rules -based order -built on the back
of decades -old alliances-that had been in place since the end of the second World War". It
also makes it clear that " Mattis and the Military officials he oversaw placed defending this
order above the implementing the will of the American People " These old Military Dinosaurs
simply can't let go of the past, unfortunately for the American people / the World I can't
see anything ever changing, it will be business as usual ie, war after War after War.
Jonny247364 lectrodectus 5 minutes ago 17 Sep, 2020 09:53 PM
Just because donny signs a dictact it does not equate to the will of the americian people.
The americian people did not ask donny to murder Assad.
neeon9 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:56 PM
"a threat to the US’ standing as the defender of a rules-based order –" Who made
that a thing? who voted for the US to be the policeman of the planet? and who said their
"rules" are right? I sure didn't, nor did anyone I know, even my american friends don't know
whose idea it was!
fezzie035fezzm 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:29 PM
It's interesting to note that every president since J.F.K. has got America into a military
conflict, or has turned a minor conflict into a major one. Trump is the exception. Trump
inherited conflicts (Afghanistan, Syria etc) but has not started a new one, and he has spent
his three years ending or winding down the conflicts he had inherited.
NoJustice fezzie035fezzm 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:34 PM
Trump increased military deployment to the Middle East. He increased military spending. He
had a foreign general assassinated. He had missiles fired into Syria. He vetoed a bill that
would limit his authority to wage war. Trump is not an exception.
T. Agee Kaye 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 05:59 PM
Good op ed. 'Rage is built on a lie' applies to many things.
E_Kaos T. Agee Kaye 7 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 02:46 PM
True, the beginning of a new narrative and the continuation of an old narrative.
PYCb988 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 07:25 PM
Something's amiss here. Mattis was openly telling the press that there was no evidence
against Assad. Just Google: Mattis Newsweek Assad.
erniedouglas 12 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 09:14 AM
What was Watergate? Even bet says there were tapes of a private relationship between Nixon
and BB Rebozo.
allan Kaplan 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:03 PM
Continuation of a highly organized and tightly controlled disinformation campaign to do one
singularly the most significant and historically one of the most illegal act of American
betrayal... overthrow American elections at any and all costs to install one of the most
deranged, demoralized sold out brain dead Biden and his equally brown nosing Harris only to
unseat a legally and democratically elected US president according to our Constitution! Will
their evil acts against America work? I doubt it! But at a price that America has never
before seen. Let's sit back and watch this Rose Bowl parade of America's dirtiest of the
dirty politics!
E_Kaos allan Kaplan 7 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 02:49 PM
"brown nosing harris", how apropos with the play on words.
Bill Spence allan Kaplan 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:29 PM
Both parties and their politicians are totally corrupt. Why would anyone support one side
over the other? Is that because you believe the promises and lies?
custos125 17 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 04:35 AM
Is there any evidence that both Mattis and Woodward knew that the allegations of a Syrian use
of chemical weapons by plane were not true, a false flag? On the assumption of this use, the
capacity to fly such attack and deploy such weapons was destroyed for some time. I recommend
reading of Rage, it is quite interesting, even if some people will not like it and try to
keep people away from the book.
E_Kaos custos125 7 hours ago 17 Sep, 2020 02:58 PM
My observations were: 1 - where were the bomb fragments 2 - why use rusted gas cylinders 3 -
how do you attach a rusted gas cylinder to a plane 4 - were the rusted gas cylinders tossed
out of a plane 5 - how did the rusted gas cylinders land so close to each other My conclusion
- False Flag Incident
neeon9 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:58 PM
The is only one threat to peace in the world, and it's the US/Israeli M.I.C.. War mongering
children, who actually believe, against all reason, that they are the most worthy and
entitled race on earth! they are not. The US has been responsible for more misery in the
world than any other state, which isn't surprising given how many Nazi's were resettled there
by the Jews. They are also the only Ppl on the planet who think a nuclear war is winnable!
How strange is that!
NoJustice 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:22 PM
So everything is a lie because Woodward didn't mention that there was no evidence found that
linked the Syrian government to the chemical attack?
Strongbo50 6 minutes ago 17 Sep, 2020 09:58 PM
The left is firing up the Russian Interference narrative again, how Russia is trying to take
the election. The real truth is in plain sight, The main stream media is trying to deliver
Biden a win, along with google yahoo msn facebook and twitter. I say, come on Russia, if you
can help stem that tide of lies please Mr Putin help. That's a joke but the media is real.
And Woodward in his old age wants one more trophy on his mantle.
CuttySark 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 05:41 PM
Trump has become the great white whale. Seems like there are Ahab's everywhere willing to
shoot their hearts upon the beast to bring it down whatever the cost. I think it was this
kind of rage and attitude that got Adolf off to a good start.
NoJustice CuttySark 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 05:44 PM
He's an easy target because he keeps screwing up.
Gryphon_ 1 day ago 16 Sep, 2020 06:59 PM
The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Never in my life have I seen a
newspaper that lies as much as the post. Bob Woodward works for the post.
"... There has been a long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia's western border. In addition, the United States initiated "rotational" deployments of its forces to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be unnecessarily provocative. ..."
"... Such provocative political steps, though, are now overshadowed by worrisome U.S. and NATO military moves. Weeks before the formal announcement on July 29, the Trump administration touted its plan to relocate some U.S. forces stationed in Germany. When Secretary of Defense Mike Esper finally made the announcement, the media's focus was largely on the point that 11,900 troops would leave that country. ..."
"... Among other developments, there already has been a surge of alarming incidents between U.S. and Russian military aircraft in that region. Most of the cases involve U.S. spy planes flying near the Russian coast -- supposedly in international airspace. On July 30, a Russian Su-27 jet fighter intercepted two American surveillance aircraft; according to Russian officials, it was the fourth time in the final week of July that they caught U.S. planes in that sector approaching the Russian coast. Yet another interception occurred on August 5, again involving two U.S. spy planes. Still others have taken place throughout mid-August. It is a reckless practice that easily could escalate into a broader, very dangerous confrontation. ..."
"... The growing number of such incidents is a manifestation of the surging U.S. military presence along Russia's border, especially in the Black Sea . They are taking place on Russia's doorstep, thousands of miles away from the American homeland. Americans should consider how the United States would react if Russia decided to establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. ..."
"... I think this has been bipartisan policy since at least 1947. Unlikely to change anytime soon, even with realists gaining ground. Perhaps expanding NATO east, sending support to Ukraine, and intervening in Syria (despite attempts to leave, the best we can get at this point are small troop reductions that most likely are redeployed to neighboring countries) aren't the best idea after all? ..."
"... they think Russia is a weak state and can do nothing therefore they are free to do as they please. ..."
"... the US leadership wants ether country to take a shot at some thing US. Then then can scream and stomp their feet that no one on earth is allowed to trade with ether country and the US can block all trade with ether country. ..."
"... The other thing at play is Americans love it when their leaders act like gangsters. That's why leaders do it. Nothing will get you votes faster in the US than saying your going to kill people. I see US citizens try that non-sense about it's all Washington we don't want that. But you keep voting for people that are going to give you the next war fix. When you stop they will stop. ..."
"... if people are convinced that Russia is a weak state -- then it is easier to approve adventures abroad -- including ringing Russia. ..."
"... Please explain to me, a Russian person, what kind of anti-American policy Russia is spreading in countries? If we exclude acts of counteraction against American expansion and aggression against Russia? ..."
"... The only people that are destroying Americans are within our borders, wielding power to fulfill their mission -- enrich themselves, keep the borders open, and our military all over the globe. ..."
"... I think there is a third option besides escalation and deescalation - exhaustion. Projecting power across the globe is expensive, it is a slow but steady drain on US resources, which are needed elsewhere (for example to quell the riots in major US cities). ..."
"... I see it as exhaustion by corruption. The US military is increasingly bureaucratic, political and ineffectual. Our weapons are gold-plated, hyper-tech focused and require highly-skilled people to maintain them, which means we can't quickly train new people up. The weapons themselves are so complex and expensive that there is no way to manufacture them at scale quickly. ..."
"... Read Jean Lartegy's "The Centurions." That is the direction where the tactically brilliant, but strategically incompetent US military leadership is headed. ..."
"... Stop focusing on what Trump says and look at what his administration does. Troops in Poland and Eastern Europe, Nord Stream 2, intrusive US reconnaissance flights along Russia's borders, support of Ukraine, interference with Russian patrols in Syria, the continuing attempt to destabilize Assad in Syria, the destruction of JCPOA, global sanctions campaign on Russia among others, withdrawal from arms control treaties, accusation that Russia was cheating on INF treaty, hiring dozens of anti-Russia hardliners, etc, etc. ..."
"... I don't think US-Russian cooperation is doable at this point--or any time soon. Given how erratic US policy is--yawing violently from one direction to another--Russia has no reason to accept the damage to its relationship with China that shifting to a strategic arrangement with the US would entail. The risk is too high and the potential rewards too uncertain. ..."
"... We have pretty much alienated the Russian state under Putin, and now we're trying to wait him out, with the expectation that there is no one of his capabilities to maintain the strategic autonomy of the Russian state in the longer term and that once he exits the scene, some Yeltsin-like stooge will present himself. ..."
"... Everyone is focusing on Russia because of the Russia hoax. Dems started a new cold war based on an irrational fear that Russia was threatening our democracy. ..."
"... The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael McFaul. ..."
Tensions are becoming dangerous in Syria and on Russia's back doorstep. US soldiers stand
near US and Russian military vehicles in the northeastern Syrian town of al-Malikiyah (Derik)
at the border with Turkey, on June 3, 2020. (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
A dangerous vehicle collision between U.S and Russian soldiers in Northeastern Syria on Aug.
24 highlights the fragility of the relationship and the broader test of wills between the two
major powers.
According to White House
reports and a Russian video that went viral this week, it appeared that as the two sides
were racing down a highway in armored vehicles, the Russians sideswiped the Americans, leaving
four U.S. soldiers injured. It is but the latest clash as both sides continue their patrols in
the volatile area. But it speaks of bigger problems with U.S. provocations on Russia's backdoor
in Eastern Europe.
A sober examination of U.S. policy toward Russia since the disintegration of the Soviet
Union leads to two possible conclusions. One is that U.S. leaders, in both Republican and
Democratic administrations, have been utterly tone-deaf to how Washington's actions are
perceived in Moscow. The other possibility is that those leaders adopted a policy of maximum
jingoistic swagger intended to intimidate Russia, even if it meant obliterating a constructive
bilateral relationship and eventually risking a dangerous showdown. Washington's latest
military moves, especially in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, are stoking alarming
tensions.
There has been a
long string of U.S. provocations toward Russia. The first one came in the late 1990s and
the initial years of the twenty-first century when Washington violated tacit promises given to
Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if Moscow accepted a united Germany within
NATO, the Alliance would not seek to move farther east. Instead of abiding by that bargain, the
Clinton and Bush administrations successfully pushed NATO to admit multiple new members from
Central and Eastern Europe, bringing that powerful military association directly to Russia's
western border. In addition, the United States initiated "rotational" deployments of its forces
to the new members so that the U.S. military presence in those countries became permanent in
all but name. Even Robert M. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both George W.
Bush and Barack Obama, was uneasy
about those deployments and conceded that he should have warned Bush in 2007 that they might be
unnecessarily provocative.
As if such steps were not antagonistic enough, both Bush and Obama sought to bring Georgia
and Ukraine into NATO. The latter country is not only within what Russia regards as its
legitimate sphere of influence, but within its core security zone. Even key European members of
NATO, especially France and Germany, believed that such a move was unwise and blocked
Washington's ambitions. That resistance, however, did not inhibit a Western effort to meddle in Ukraine's
internal affairs to help
demonstrators unseat Ukraine's elected, pro-Russia president and install a new, pro-NATO
government in 2014.
Such provocative political steps, though, are now overshadowed by worrisome U.S. and
NATO military moves. Weeks before the formal announcement on July 29, the Trump administration
touted its plan to relocate some U.S. forces stationed in Germany. When Secretary of Defense
Mike Esper finally made the announcement, the media's focus was largely on the point that
11,900 troops would leave that country.
However, Esper
made it clear that only 6,400 would return to the United States; the other nearly 5,600
would be redeployed to other NATO members in Europe. Indeed, of the 6,400 coming back to the
United States, "many of these or similar units will begin conducting rotational deployments
back to Europe." Worse, of the 5,600 staying in Europe, it turns out that at least 1,000 are going
to Poland's eastern border with Russia.
Another result of the redeployment will be to boost U.S. military power in the Black Sea.
Esper confirmed that various units would "begin continuous rotations farther east in the Black
Sea region, giving us a more enduring presence to enhance deterrence and reassure allies along
NATO's southeastern flank." Moscow is certain to regard that measure as another on a growing
list of Black Sea provocations by the United States.
Among other developments, there already has been a surge of alarming incidents between
U.S. and Russian military aircraft in that region. Most of the cases involve U.S. spy planes
flying near the Russian coast -- supposedly in international airspace. On July 30, a Russian
Su-27 jet fighter
intercepted two American surveillance aircraft; according to Russian officials, it was the
fourth time in the final week of July that they caught U.S. planes in that sector approaching
the Russian coast. Yet
another interception occurred on August 5, again involving two U.S. spy planes. Still
others have
taken place throughout mid-August. It is a reckless
practice that easily could escalate into a broader, very dangerous confrontation.
The growing number of such incidents is a manifestation of the surging U.S. military
presence along Russia's border,
especially in the Black Sea . They are taking place on Russia's doorstep, thousands of
miles away from the American homeland. Americans should consider how the United States would
react if Russia decided to establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico,
operating out of bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
The undeniable reality is that the United States and its NATO allies are crowding Russia;
Russia is not crowding the United States. Washington's bumptious policies already have wrecked
a once-promising bilateral relationship and created a needless new cold war with Moscow. If
more prudent U.S. policies are not adopted soon, that cold war might well turn hot.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a
contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more
than 850 articles on international affairs. His latest book is NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur
(2019).
I mean, I think this has been bipartisan policy since at least 1947. Unlikely to change
anytime soon, even with realists gaining ground. Perhaps expanding NATO east, sending
support to Ukraine, and intervening in Syria (despite attempts to leave, the best we can
get at this point are small troop reductions that most likely are redeployed to neighboring
countries) aren't the best idea after all?
This is a very anti American article! Patriots know that where the U.S. gives political
or economic ground Russia and other adversaries will fill the vacum with policies intended
to destroy American peoeple. So no, it is not a bad idea to be involved in Syria and
Ukraine in fact it is a very good idea.
The entire framing of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood as "pro American"
and those who oppose them as "anti American" is delusional.
Russia is a weak state trying to maintain its natural spheres of influence along the Curzon
line. Why has the State Department/ Pentagon decided to try and roll this back? How the F
to they expect Russia to react. How would America react if a foreign power tried to turn
Mexico into a strategic asset. So why is it ok to make Ukraine into a Nato member? It's
reckless and ultimately it is pointless. Weakening Russia further serves little strategic
purpose and potentially threatens to destabilize the Balkans and mid east with Turkish
adventurism. What will America do if the Turks seize Rhodes under some pretext?
Syria is another case of State Department midwits not understanding the results of their
regime change. What purpose does it serve to put a Sunni extremist government in Damascus.
How hateful do you have to be to subject Syria's minorities to genocide at the hands of an
ISIS sympathetic government? How do you delude yourself that such a regime will serve
America's interests in the long run? So you can own Iran before the election? You are
trading victory today for permanent loss tomorrow. It's insane.
Just like you, they think Russia is a weak state and can do nothing therefore they are free to do as they please.
Also, since Turkey is a NATO member and as such an ally to the U.S. shouldn't you be cheering in good faith for Turkey
and against Russia?
You got that one. Because Turkey is a thorn in NATO side. It has massive economic
interests in Russia, China and the rest of Asia. The "adventure" in Syria is coordinated
with Russia to the last detail, while playacting tensions. US problem in Syria is not
Russia or Turkey, but Russia AND Turkey.
As US is frowning at Egypt Al-Sisi , or Saudi MBS -- it is because they frown at Egypt
AND Russia, as well as Saudi Arabia AND Russia.
Basically, countries nominally counted in OUR camp are frowned upon when collaborating with
the ENEMY countries.
Our foreign policy is stuck in Middle East -- and cannot get unstuck. Cannot be better
illustrated then Pompeo addressing Republican convention from Jerusalem.
The only way Russia can challenge encirclement is by challenging US in its home away
from home -- Middle East. And creating new realities in the ground by collaborating with
the countries in the region -- undermining monopoly.
And as the entire world is hurting from epidemic related economic setbacks, Russia and
China are economies that are moving forward. And nobody in the Middle East can afford to
ignore it.
I agree with you with the exception of Russia being weak. One day the US which has never
seen any thing in advance will push Russia one time to many and find the Russian Army in
Poland and Romania. That is if China doesn't take out some thing precious to the US in the
mean time like a U2, aircraft carrier etc.
There are two things at play here. The first is the US leadership wants ether country to
take a shot at some thing US. Then then can scream and stomp their feet that no one on
earth is allowed to trade with ether country and the US can block all trade with ether
country.
The other thing at play is Americans love it when their leaders act like gangsters. That's why leaders do it. Nothing will get you votes faster in the US than saying your going
to kill people. I see US citizens try that non-sense about it's all Washington we don't
want that. But you keep voting for people that are going to give you the next war fix. When
you stop they will stop.
I agree with your assessment except Russia will not put troops into any country without
the express request from the legitimate government.
They are not going into Poland and especially not Romania (Transnistria maybe) why would
they? The countries do not have any resources that Russia wants.
The only reason to put troops into Belarus is to maintain a distance between Poland and the
borders.
Russia needs nothing from the rest of the world except trade. Un-coerced, free trade. This
drives the US corporations crazy as no one will trade with the US anymore without
coercion.
PS the same goes for China with the proviso that Taiwan is part of China and needs to be
reabsorbed into the mainstream. It will take +20 years but China just keeps the pressure on
until there will be no viable alternative.
It has never meant to serve American interests. Ever. Once you put it in perspective, it
makes sense.
But if people are convinced that Russia is a weak state -- then it is easier to approve
adventures abroad -- including ringing Russia.
The problem for never satiated Zealots is the following -- regional powers in the Middle
East are hitching their wagons to Eurasian economic engine. That is definitely true of
Turkey, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia.
The tales of Moslem Brotherhood are here to interpret something today from the iconography
from the past. And to explain today what an entirely different set of leaders did -- be
that few years ago or one hundred years ago. Same goes for iconography of Al-Qaeda, ISIS,
Communism, Socialism, authoritarianism, and other ISMS.
Those icons serve the same purpose as icons in religion or in cyber-space. You look at
them, or you click -- and the story and explanation is ready made for your consumption. Time to watch actions -- not media iconography to tell us what is going on.
If we're being purely ideological here those with an overtly internationalist
disposition (barring leftists) are those who want to be involved overseas, hardly ones to
go on about national interest or pride. Its been a common stance associated with American
Nationalism and Paleoconservatives to be anti-intervention, these people (of which I
consider myself a part) can hardly be bashed for holding unpatriotic views.)
Russia has a declining population, and an economy smaller than that of Spain. Its hardly
a threat and our involvement in Eastern Europe was relatively limited pre-2014 and even so
the overall international balance of power hasn't shifted after Russian annexation of
Crimea, and the Ukrainians proved quite capable of defending their nation (though not so
capable as to end retake separatist strongholds.
Please explain to me, a Russian person, what kind of anti-American policy Russia is
spreading in countries? If we exclude acts of counteraction against American expansion and
aggression against Russia? What ideological foundations does Russia have after 1991? Isn't
Russia's actions a guerrilla war on the communications of the self-proclaimed "Empire of
Good", which is pursuing a tough offensive policy? And is it not because the Russians
support a significant part of Putin's initiatives (despite a number of Putin's obvious
shortcomings) precisely because they have experience of cooperation with the "Empire of
Good" in the 90s: give loans, corrupt officials and deputies, put Russian firms under
control big American companies, and then just give orders from the White House.
PS. I beg your pardon my google english
Another Zealot in Patriot garb. The only people that are destroying Americans are within our borders, wielding power to
fulfill their mission -- enrich themselves, keep the borders open, and our military all
over the globe.
It would be interesting to read the minds of the US pilots engaged in these activities.
My guess is that the cognitive dissonance energy in those heads is equivalent to the
biggest nuclear bomb ever exploded...
Hmmm... I think there is a third option besides escalation and deescalation -
exhaustion. Projecting power across the globe is expensive, it is a slow but steady drain on US
resources, which are needed elsewhere (for example to quell the riots in major US cities).
In a major crisis this could lead to a breaking point. What if some US adversary decides to
double down and attack (directly or by proxy) US troops and the US will not be able to
respond? A humiliating defeat combined with an exhausted public decidedly set against
military adventures abroad could cause a rapid retrenchment and global withdrawal.
I see it as exhaustion by corruption. The US military is increasingly bureaucratic,
political and ineffectual. Our weapons are gold-plated, hyper-tech focused and require
highly-skilled people to maintain them, which means we can't quickly train new people up.
The weapons themselves are so complex and expensive that there is no way to manufacture
them at scale quickly.
The DOD today is only about personal political position, and grubbing tax-payer dollars
for self-aggrandizement. In any real war with a real adversary, we wouldn't stand a
chance.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic regarding US military capabilities and I'm neither a US
citizen or a fan of US global hegemony.
The US armed forces are made up of professionals. There are some universal advantages
and disadvantages of such forces. A professional army is good at fighting wars but bad at
controlling territory because of its limited size and higher costs-per-soldier. In order to
control territory you need "boots on the ground" in great numbers, standing at checkpoints
and patrolling the countryside. They didn't have to be trained to the level of Navy SEALS,
for them it is enough if they can shoot straight and won't be scared from some fireworks
and the US lacks such forces.
So how is one going to get the millions of manpower to fulfill these tasks? Pauperize
the masses so that joining the army becomes the only viable solution? Introduce the Draft?
Provide a pathway for US citizenship for any foreigner that joins, establishing a US
Foreign Legion?
And then, how you'll have enough boots on the ground to pacify Russia or China. It took
more than a month to establish and secure the beach heads in Bretagne in France in 1944.
How do you think you can even get those boots to land in Russia or China, when you know
that the ICBMs are going to start flying towards the continental US if something like this
will ever happen?
So how is one going to get the millions of manpower to fulfill these tasks? Pauperize
the masses so that joining the army becomes the only viable solution? Introduce the
Draft?
It is no longer possible to introduce the draft in the US - even mentioning it would
lead to social unrests.
Read Jean Lartegy's "The Centurions." That is the direction where the tactically
brilliant, but strategically incompetent US military leadership is headed.
In addition, those gold-plated weapon systems often do not work as advertised. Look how
the multi-billion IADS of the Saudis couldn't protect their refinery complex from a cruise
missile attack from Yemen. Look at the embarrassing failures of the LCS and Zumwalt ship
classes, and the endless problems with the Ford CVN. The F35 is proving a ginormous
boondoggle that will massively enrich LM shareholders but will do squat for US military
capabilities.
He already did and the Military ignored him.
He backtracked with endless excuses and conditionals.
https://www.nbcnews.com/new...
**
Bill Clinton once reportedly told senior White House reporter Sarah McClendon, "Sarah,
there's a government inside the government, and I don't control it."
**
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of
the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid
of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so
watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their
breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
– Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)
**
Do you really think that the adults with so much to lose would allow an idiot like Trump
(or Clinton or Obama or Bush) to actually run things?
Stop focusing on what Trump says and look at what his administration does. Troops in Poland and Eastern Europe, Nord Stream 2, intrusive US reconnaissance flights
along Russia's borders, support of Ukraine, interference with Russian patrols in Syria, the
continuing attempt to destabilize Assad in Syria, the destruction of JCPOA, global
sanctions campaign on Russia among others, withdrawal from arms control treaties,
accusation that Russia was cheating on INF treaty, hiring dozens of anti-Russia hardliners,
etc, etc.
I'll repeat: Focus on what Trump does, not what he says, and then total up the
pro-Russia and anti-Russia actions of this administration and see what that reveals.
A danger with this "new Cold War" is the assumption it will end like the first one
– peacefully. If this is the thinking among policy-makers we are in a very perilous
situation. History shows that fatal miscalculations contributed to the First World War, and
as a consequence the second. Today there is no room for miscalculation, which will set off
unstoppable escalation into a third.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...
Russians deliberately repeatedly ram an American vehicle, but I'm sure it's all our fault. Shouldn't have worn that skirt
I guess.
Before y'all armchair Putin experts say all your loving things: you have nothing to contribute unless you speak fluent
Russian. I watched the video taken and published by the Russians and it was pretty clear what they were doing.
Something critical is being missed entirely. The United States has invaded Syria without
a mandate from the UN. Its' president has explicitly stated that it is the intention of the
US to take Syria's oil. Both are violations of international law. Any hostile action taken
against the illegal US presence in Syria is justifiable as self defense. While the US
presence in Syria is illegal, Russia's presence is not. Russia was invited into Syria by
the UN recognized Syrian government to assist it in defending against the US regime change
by Al Qaeda proxy operation..
establish a major naval and air presence in the Gulf of Mexico, operating out of
bases in such allied countries as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
What would happen if China or Russia established bases in the Caribbean and Latin
America? Trump joked about selling Puerto Rico, what if the Chinese bought it?
If the Israeli's have a problem with Russia being in Syria then Israel should deal with
it. Its not our problem and Russia is not our enemy. Infact India is bringing closer
relations between Russia and Japan. Which do you want? Russian antagonism because Israel
doesn't want Russians in Syria or Russian partnership with India, Japan, Australia and the
US dealing with China? Remember....you could spend 1000 years in the middle east and not
make a dent in the animosities between peoples there...so one is a futile endeaver...while
the other has great benefit.
Note that Russian soldiers are in Syria at the request of its government to help fend
off foreign invaders. The American troops are there illegally, with no UN or even
Congressional authorization.
Also note the USA risks another Cuban missile crisis by withdrawing from the INF treaty
after illegally building missile launch complexes in Romania and Poland that can hit Russia
with nuclear cruise missiles.
The USA did much more than "meddle" in Ukraine. The Obama/Biden team openly organized a
coup to overthrow its elected President because he didn't want to join NATO and the EU.
Is that guy in the middle of the left seated Vlad Klitschko? I great boxer no doubt, but
also known for his stunning stupidity. Is he part of the new Ukrainian political elite?
Poor Ukraine.
A Russian vehicle sideswipes an American vehicle, injuring two US soldiers, and that's
an American provocation? An American spy plane claims to be in international waters, and
you tack in a "supposedly" in that sentence? "Violating" a tacit promise, really?
Russia aggression against Georgia and Crimea is OK because Sphere of Influence? This
article is loaded with Blame America First crap usually associated with the Left
(much to this liberal's disgust). Never expected to find it here.
Yes, the expansion of NATO east must have looked to Russia like something coming at
their borders entirely too fast. I thought it was a terrible idea at the time, and wrote it
off to the wheels of a fifty-year-old bureaucracy not knowing how to slow down. Your
eye-straining gaze at the tea-leaves for Deeper State motives is unpersuasive, even without
your odious prejudices.
Maybe some play of Rashomon would be in order here. That is your perspective.
Now your honor, what I have seen is that Georgia attacked first and hoped to occupy a
certain area that Russian Federation was protecting, As a side comment, I have to point to
an Orwellian use of the word "aggressive" and "attack". It seems that anything that the US
cannot wantonly control or bomb is inherently aggressive and attacking either directly or
indirectly the "rules based order".
Crimea had Russian assets that became endangered. Crimea was part of Russia until 1954,
when was donated in an unsanctioned manner to Ukraine. The majority Russian population in
Crimea has been persecuted by the Ukrainian state since at least 1994. The Euromaidan would
have exacerbated that. A referendum was carried on and just considering ethnic lines,
Russians won in their desire to re-unite with the Russian Federation. There aren't many
legal arguments against that referendum and that process, if one looks for them...
So the above perspectives have nothing to do with just "sphere of influence" but with
direct core interests of the Russian state and its core security...
The deep state is a tool that is trying to fulfill one objective: integration of Russian
economy under the control of US and its Oligarchy. Otherwise it will always be a threat. A
Nationalist, democratic (but not oligarchic) and sovereign Russia will always be considered
an enemy of the world hegemon...
And the provocation is the actual presence in Syria of US troops. Ramming the US
military vehicle is not a provocation from Russians, it is a simple eviction notification.
End of story!
Isn't it just amazing how this writer gets to turn an incident of provocation by Russian
soldiers into a story of persistent provocation by America. That is remarkable dexterity
even for this paper. I am used to them suggesting that we should leave the people of
Eastern Europe to the tender mercies of the whims and wishes of a dictator in Moscow -
because they are in his backyard. But to be able to switch from that incident to their
regular theme is an achievement one can recognize, though not respect. The people of those
countries should have a choice about who they associate, and they certainly have a right
not to align with people they fear. Calling us for not respecting he rights of other people
to decide their fates is right and proper. I enthusiastically support this paper when they
do. But when they turn right around and castigate us for not respecting Russia's right to
do it - I am flabbergasted.
This piece spends too much time re-hashing everything Russia-US since 1990 and fails to
focus on the key current issues.
The vehicle incidents in Syria are distinct from the European issue -- see below in this
post -- that is generating some of the other tensions the author lists. Syria is really part
of the larger Middle East issue.
His brief summary of the latest Syria mishap is inadequate to convey what actually
happened.
If you actually look at the video, it does NOT appear to be the case that a Russian
vehicle simply "sideswiped" a US vehicle. It appears that the US was maintaining a
checkpoint on a road that in effect blocked Russian passage. Given the terrain, the
Russians could of course bypass such a checkpoint, which is what they appear to have done.
Then, however, other US vehicles left the checkpoint and attempted to block and turn back
the Russian bypass movement, and this led to the collision. So the incident is part of a
larger US policy to impede Russian operations in NE Syria.
Almost two years ago, Trump ordered US forces out of Syria, and Russia, in agreement
with that plan, sent patrols to the NE to ensure that provisions of an stability agreement
with Turkey and the Kurds were maintained. But then Trump was almost immediately
convinced--by whom is not clear, but ultimately Israel in all probability--to do a 180 and
keep US forces in NE Syria, the superficial rationale being to take control of oil, the
kind of pirate operation that Trump likes. In fact, the goal of those who influence Trump
is to keep Syria weak and unable to rebuild with the expectation that Assad can still be
overthrown at some future point. This is the desire of Israel and its operatives in the
US.
Trump's zag after the zig of planned withdrawal left the US-Russian understanding in
chaos. Now both the US AND the Russians were operating in NE Syria. And over time the US
has become more and more aggressive about impeding Russian operations. The Russians
claim--credibly--that we are demanding that they, in moving their patrols up to the area of
the Syria-Turkey border area not use the M4 highway, the main and direct route and instead
follow a secondary route that circuitously follows the border. The Russians don't accept
that demand. And the vehicle incidents that we are seeing are the outcome of that
disagreement. The Russians are driving up Highway 4 and when they get to the US checkpoint
are bypassing and then continuing up the highway. We are aggressively trying to deter them
from that route choice.
Not sure why this article does not go into detail on this issue in order to clarify
it.
Much of the other stuff the author is talking about here--intrusive air ops in the Black
Sea, etc--is really a separate, European issue. The US is highly concerned about the
economic interactions between Russia and Europe--especially the big economies of Western
Europe and most especially Germany. We are worried that over time Russian-European economic
integration will erode our strategic control and dominance over Europe in general.
Hence, we are making common cause with the anti-Russian elements in "the New Europe,"
i.e., Eastern Europe to try, in essence, to place a barrier between Russia and Western
Europe, playing off Poland, the Baltics and Romania, among others, against Russia, Germany,
France et al. Moving more US forces into Poland and the so-called "Black Sea Region";
impeding Nord Stream 2 and other Russian pipeline initiatives; indulging in recurrent
anti-German propaganda for not maintaining a more robust anti-Russian military posture;
fomenting (behind the scenes) the recent disturbances in Belarus; and promotion of the
so-called "Three Seas Initiative" intended to weld Eastern and Central Europe together into
a reliable tool of US policy are all part of this plan to retain US strategic control of
Europe over the long term.
That's what the heightened tensions in Europe are about.
As I said, the Syria issue, part of the larger Middle East struggle, is separate from
the parallel struggle for mastery in Europe.
It's all an important topic, but this article doesn't really capture the salient
points.
And you're playing word games. Syria's oil is effectively under US control. Yes, we are
deriving strategic benefit from it in that we are denying it to the Syrian government in
order to further destabilize it. It's not a good policy, but the policy does benefit from
denying Syria its oil.
The problem is that most of the oil is on Arab land, not Kurdish land, and the Arabs of
the Northeast are now realigning themselves with Assad, so holding on to the oil is likely
to get more difficult in the future.
I have no idea what you mean by "slander." Guess that means truths you find
inconvenient. Sorry--not in the business of coddling the faint of heart. Trump likes the
idea of taking resources which he imagines to be payment for services we have
rendered--like leaving the country in a state of ruin. He talked about Iraqi oil that way
too, but taking that would be much harder.
Time for you to stop dismissing every reality you don't like as unpatriotic.
The "Assad regime" is the UN recognized government of Syria. That is the only entity
entitled to the country's resources. How is it "the property of the Syrian nation" if the
Syrian government and its people no longer have access to it? To whom is the oil being
sold? Who is receiving the proceeds of the oil sales?
Here are some of Trump's own words with respect to Syria's oil. "I like oil. We are
keeping the oil." 4/11/2019. "The US is in Syria solely for the oil." "We are keeping the
oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for oil." "The US
military is in Syria only for oil." What part of Trump's public assertion that "We are
keeping the oil" are you having difficulty in understanding? How can you say the US "did
not take possession of the oil" when Trump could not have been more explicit in saying
precisely the opposite? Do you not comprehend that the US presence in Syria has no mandate
either from the UN or from the US Congress. Do you not understand that the US presence in
Syria is illegal under international law? Do you not understand that "Keeping the oil" is a
violation of international law? Your post is one of the most ridiculous I have even
read.
1. It's quite clear from the video that the US had set up a checkpoint on the road at
left in the video. (Indeed, we are open about the fact that we are doing so in general in
NE Syria.) And it's equally clear that Russian vehicles are seen bypassing those
checkpoints. The encounter between US and Russian vehicles takes place off the road. There
is only one logical interpretation of what happened. What is your alternative
explanation?
2. "No one reading this can believe that Eastern Europeans have genuine cause to fear
Russia, or that these countries continually request more military and political involvement
than we are willing to provide or that we are not inducing them to do anything or
manipulating them."
First of all, there are no current indications of any Russian intent to do anything in
regard to Eastern Europe. Yes, one can understand the history, which is why there is
anti-Russian sentiment in Eastern Europe, but aside perhaps from the Baltic states in their
unique geographic position, there is no country that has any basis in reality to worry
about Russian aggression in the present.
Of course, this does not stop the Poles from doing exactly that. And perhaps the
Romanians to a much lesser extent. So yes, there is fear in a few key countries based on
past history, Poland being the keystone of the whole thing, and yes, we are indeed
manipulating that fear in an attempt to block/undermine any economic integration between
Germany and Russia. We are also trying to use the "Three Seas Initiative" to block Chinese
commercial and tech penetration of Eastern Europe--5G and their plan to rebuild the port of
Trieste to service Central and NE Europe.
Do you actually believe Russia, which has lately been cutting its defense budget, is
actually going to invade Europe? That really is a fantasy. The only military operations
they will take are to prevent further expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Belarus. The real
game today is commercial and tech competition. Putin knows it would be disastrous for
Russia to start a war with NATO. Not sure why that's hard for you to see.
Your notion of the Russian threat--as it exists today--is wildly exaggerated.
Once President Putin remarked that there are forces in the United States trying to use
Russia for internal political struggle. He added that we will nevertheless try not to be
drawn into these confrontations.
A scene from a Hollywood action movie rises before my eyes, when two heroes of the film are
fighting and a circular saw is spinning nearby, and each of the heroes is trying to shove a
part of the enemy's body under this saw.
The relationship between Russian and American servicemen, I would compare with two hockey
teams, when the tough behavior of the players on the ice does not mean that the players of
one team would be happy with the death of the entire opposing team, say in some kind of
plane crash, since the presence of a strong opponent is a necessary condition for getting a
good salary.
Still, I would not completely deny the possibility of a "hot war".
Since the times of the Roman Empire, the West of Europe has been trying to take control of
the territory of Europe, Eurasia, and Eurasia, in turn, dreams of mastering the
technologies of the West.
The defeat of the 3rd Reich provided the Soviet Union with a breakthrough in the nuclear
industry and space...
It's hard to imagine that Russia is capable of defeating NATO, but I can imagine that in
the current situation, President Putin can offer China to build military bases in western
Russia for a million Chinese servicemen, for 100 thousand on the Chukchi Peninsula, for 500
thousand on Sakhalin...
The extra money for renting military bases in a coronavirus crisis will not hurt
anyone.
Of all the things about Hillary Clinton to despise, her selfish attempt to explain her
loss, and to attack the President (to whom she never conceded the election!) by blaming
Russia, is at the top of the list. To generate a completely unnecessary conflict with a
nuclear super-power that could burn this country to ashes in minutes, out of personal
vindictiveness, ... is lower than it can get.
I don't think US-Russian cooperation is doable at this point--or any time soon. Given
how erratic US policy is--yawing violently from one direction to another--Russia has no
reason to accept the damage to its relationship with China that shifting to a strategic
arrangement with the US would entail. The risk is too high and the potential rewards too
uncertain.
We have pretty much alienated the Russian state under Putin, and now we're trying to
wait him out, with the expectation that there is no one of his capabilities to maintain the
strategic autonomy of the Russian state in the longer term and that once he exits the
scene, some Yeltsin-like stooge will present himself.
We thought we were dealing with the main threats to our global hegemony
sequentially--Russia "defeated" in the Cold War, and then on to a defeat of "militant
Islam" in the Greater Middle East and finally to a showdown with China. But now, the
sequencing has fallen apart, and we're trying to prosecute all three simultaneously.
You have inverted the facts. The video evidence shows the Americans side-swiped the
Russian vehicle and claimed "American soldiers had 'concussions'". A concussion requires
loss of consciousness or significant changes in mental function. In football, you have your
"Bell rung". You can't add 2+2 correctly. There is no evidence to support that.
Everyone is focusing on Russia because of the Russia hoax. Dems started a new cold war
based on an irrational fear that Russia was threatening our democracy.
Along with Dems, I also blame Putin; he bribed Hillary millions for uranium -- that
doesn't lend to good relations.
The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep
this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position
depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael
McFaul.
The foreign policy elite dislikes Russia, always has, and will do anything to keep
this "adversary" front and center because their prospects for prestige, power and position
depend upon the presence of an enemy. As an example see Strobe Talbot and Michael
McFaul.
Notable quotes:
"... Ben Cardin agreed to be the cosponsor of a Magnitsky Act in the Senate. He sought a Republican cosponsor, John McCain, a Russophobic senator who never met a war he didn't like. ..."
"... It wasn't the first time McCain helped a fraudster. McCain was one of the corrupt "Keating Five" senators who improperly intervened in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., corrupt chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which collapsed in 1989 at a cost of $3.4 billion to the federal government (and thus taxpayers). Many investors lost their life savings. ..."
"... To get to McCain and others, Browder hired lobbyist Juleanna Glover, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney's press secretary and then Attorney General John Ashcroft's senior policy adviser. She went with Ashcroft when he left government to run the Washington office of his law firm, the Ashcroft Group. ..."
"... She got Browder a meeting with McCain who agreed to sponsor the Magnitsky Act. It fit with his Russophobia and friendship with fraudsters. ..."
"... On September 29, 2010, Senators Ben Cardin, John McCain, Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi) and Joe Lieberman (Democrat of Connecticut) introduced the bill in the Senate. Anyone involved in the false arrest, torture or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or the crimes he uncovered, would be publicly named, banned from entering the United States, and have their U.S. assets frozen. ..."
"... Remember again that a few months later Browder would tell the San Diego law school he didn't know how Magnitsky died. ..."
"... How the Browder-Magnitsky hoax law got passed in a trade deal ..."
"... Browder got Senator Joe Lieberman, conservative Democrat from Connecticut, to agree to block Jackson-Vanik repeal unless the administration stopped blocking his Magnitsky Act. ..."
"... Lieberman and the other cosponsors of the Magnitsky Act sent a letter to Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The letter said, "In the absence of the passage of the Magnitsky legislation, we will strongly oppose the lifting of Jackson-Vanik." ..."
"... The final count December 6, 2012 was 92-4. Levin and three other Democrats – Bernie Sanders as well as Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, both of Rhode Island – were the only Senators to vote against it. Elizabeth Warren was not yet in the Senate. ..."
"... It was signed by Obama a week later. Read Title IV of the law to see how it is based on the fake claims the chief sponsors would not, could not prove. Including "he was beaten by 8 guards with rubber batons on the last day of his life" based on zero evidence, just Browder's lies. (I also wrote to Cardin's office and got no reply.) ..."
As the Democratic Convention is in progress, it is fitting to look at how Democrats in Congress and the White House, with Republican
collaboration, were responsible for the
Magnitsky Act , the law that protects tax fraudster William Browder and his henchman Mikhail Khodorkovsky by erecting a wall
against their having to face justice for their financial crimes. And ramps up hostility against Russia.
The fraudster William Browder .
This is a half-hour interview about this I did today on this subject
for Fault Lines . And a 15-minute
interview for The Critical
Hour . Here is an expanded version of what I said.
William Browder in the mid-1990s became manager of the Hermitage Fund, set up with $25 million from Lebanese-Brazilian banker
Edmond Safra and Israeli mining investor Beny Steinmez to buy shares in Russian companies.
He says he started the fund, but that is a lie. He was brought in to manage other people's money. But after some years, when the
two investors either died or confronted major financial problems, Browder gained control.
Browder doesn't like paying taxes.
Browder was an American who traded his citizenship for a UK passport in 1998 so he could avoid paying U.S. taxes on his stock
profits. ( CBS called
him a tax expatriate.)
He didn't like paying Russian taxes either. In an early rip-off, he and his partners billionaire Kenneth Dart of Dart cups and
New York investor Francis Baker bought a majority of Avisma, a titanium company, that produces material used in airplanes.
They cheated
minority investors and the Russian tax collector of profits by using transfer pricing.
You sell your production to a fake company at a low price, then your fake company sells it at the world price. You book lower
dividends to cheat minority shareholders, report lower taxes to cheat the Russian people.
Browder and partners bought Avisma from infamous oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the basis of continuing his transfer
pricing scam. It was revealed by documents in a lawsuit when Browder and partners sued another infamous guy, Peter Bond, the Isle
of man crook handling the rake-offs for not passing on the full amount of the skim. (No honor among thieves!) The legal documents
where Browder admits to the scam are linked in this
story
.
Browder cheats bigtime on Russia taxes
Browder's next corruption was to
cheat the Russians of taxes from his stock buys in Russia, to the tune of about $100million. That included claiming as deductions
disabled workers who didn't work for him, local investments he never made, profits from stock buys of Gazprom the Russian energy
conglomerate that non-Russians were not allowed to buy in Russia.
Investigations started in the early 2000s for $40 mil in evaded takes and led to legal judgments in 2004. When he refused to pay,
in November 2005 he was denied a Russian visa and in 2006 he moved all his assets out of Russia. But the Russian tax evasion investigations
continued.
Browder's accountant Sergei Magnitsky was arrested for investigation of the tax evasion in 2008, and the European Commission on
Human Rights
ruled last year that was correct because of the evidence and because he was a flight risk. Browder's fake narrative was that
Magnitsky, who he lied was his lawyer , had been arrested because he blew the whistle on a scheme by Russian officials to
embezzle money from the Russian Treasury. In his own U.S. federal
court deposition
, Browder admits Magnitsky didn't go to law school or have a law license. See his brief
video on
that.
Browder gives speeches that he didn't know how Magnitsky died
Then Magnitsky died of heart failure exacerbated by stomach disease which forensic reports say was not properly treated. Browder
first said (in talks at the British foreign policy association
Chatham House , London, a month after he died, and San Diego Law School
-- video at minute 6:20 -- a year later) he didn't know how Magnitsky died, but after a few years he invented a story that he
had been beaten to death.
Jonathan Winer, who helped Browder with his scam.
That story was developed by Jonathan Winer, a former assistant to Senator John Kerry and then a State Department official. Winer
was working for APCO, an international public relations company one of whose major clients was the same Mikhail Khodorkovsky. They
correctly assumed the western media would do no research. Or at least would not be allowed to report it. And the mainstream media
never did, except much later
Der Spiegel in Germany, which the rest of the western press ignored.
The plan was to get a U.S. law that would in effect block the Russians from going after certain Americans who had cheated on taxes.
They would be Browder and Khodorkovsky, who is actually named in the law.
Khodorkovsky would spend several hundred thousand dollars to buy Congressional support for the Magnitsky Act, clearly money
well spent. He duly reported it as lobbying expenses.
Here is how the Democrats and Republicans colluded in the Browder Magnitsky hoax. Much of this comes from Browder's own writings
in his mostly fake book "Red Notice." Note the corruption of both parties.
Magnitsky died in November 2009. Only four months later in March 2010, Browder was plotting his Magnitsky hoax, attacking Russians
he would claim were responsible for Magnitsky's death. But the bizarre part of the story is that he continued throughout 2010 to
say he didn't know how Magnitsky died, including in a videoed Dec 2010
San Diego law school talk. He obviously assumed U.S. media and politicians would not notice or care about the contradictions.
Ben Cardin, senator who signed on to Browder hoax.
Browder got Maryland Democratic Senator Ben Cardin to send a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in March 2010 urging
her to ban visas for 60 people Browder had listed (without evidence) as complicit in Magnitsky's death. (Remember 9 months later
in a videoed talk at San Diego Law School Browder says he didn't know how Magnitsky died.)
The letter to Hillary Clinton, written (Browder says in his book) by Browder acolyte Kyle Parker, a staffer at the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said, I "urge you to immediately cancel and permanently withdraw the U.S. visa privileges of all those involved
in this crime, along with their dependents and family members." Immediately? No due process, not even for children and grandparents?
Cousins?
Attached to the letter was the list of the sixty officials Browder accused, without evidence, of involvement in Magnitsky's death
and a tax fraud against the Treasury.
Browder's fake tax refund fraud
The tax refund fraud was a scheme in which shell companies were set up to sue Browder's Hermitage companies claiming contract
violations and damages of $1billion. The Hermitage companies immediately agreed to pay (no evidence of actual bank transfers), then
demanded the Treasury pay a tax refund of $230million because they now had zero profits.
Viktor Markelov, tried and jailed for the scam,
said he worked with a Sergei Leonidovich, which is Magnitsky's name and patronymic. Other evidence, including an inexplicable
delay of months between Browder learning about the his companies being re-registered in other names and him reporting that as
"theft," indicates he was part of the scam too.
Note this: Hermitage trustee HSBC filed a financial document in July 2007 saying it was putting aside $7 million for legal
costs that might be required to get back the companies. This was five months before the tax refund fraud occurred. Albert
Dabbah, chief financial controller for HSBC, confirmed the
document's authenticity in U.S.
federal court. But Browder and Magnitsky (in his
testimony
) said they didn't learn about the "theft" till October 2007.
Theft of his companies? The best defense is a good offense. Accuse others of the crime you committed.
Senator Cardin was requesting that all sixty of Browder's accused have their U.S. travel privileges permanently revoked.
But Hillary didn't buy it. Then House staffer Parker arranged for Browder to
testify about the Magnitsky case May 6 th at the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, not an official House body but
a pressure group set up in the name of a Russophobic former congressman from Hungary.
Congressman Jim McGovern would not send the evidence he promised, because he couldn't. There wasn't any.
The commission chairman was Massachusetts Democratic congressman Jim McGovern, who runs liberal but is a Russophobe who pretends
to be a human rights advocate.
Now what is really interesting is that seven months after this May 6 testimony, on December 6, 2010, Browder was telling the
San Diego law school (video 6:20 in) that "they put him in a straight
jacket, put him in an isolation room and waited outside the door until he died." Nothing about torture or killing. Had Browder forgotten
his dramatic beating story?
McGovern at the Lantos Commission hearing asked for no evidence. He said he would introduce legislation, put the 60 names Browder
cited in it, move it to the committee and make a formal recommendation from Congress, then pass it on the floor.
McGovern lies about sending evidence
Kimberly Stanton, who runs a propaganda operation and refused to provide evidence.
In July 2019, almost a decade later, I saw McGovern when he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations. I asked if he would send
me evidence backing the claim that Magnitsky was tortured and killed. He agreed and introduced me to an aide. The aide referred me
to Kimberly Stanton, director of the Lantos Commission, who refused in an
email
to provide any information. And said evidence against targeted people is not required!
I also wrote McGovern's press secretary Matt Bonaccorsi and legislative director Cindy Buhl. They ignored repeated requests, never
sent me anything. I conclude that Jim McGovern, who pretends to be a liberal civil rights promoter, is a fake and a fraud.
McGovern introduces a Magnitsky bill in the House.
John McCain, he loved fraudsters and wars.
Ben Cardin agreed to be the cosponsor of a Magnitsky Act in the Senate. He sought a Republican cosponsor, John McCain, a Russophobic
senator who never met a war he didn't like.
It wasn't the first time McCain helped a fraudster. McCain was one of the corrupt "Keating Five" senators who improperly intervened
in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., corrupt chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which collapsed in 1989
at a cost of $3.4 billion to the federal government (and thus taxpayers). Many investors lost their life savings.
Keating was the target of a regulatory investigation. With powerful senators like McCain advocating his cause, the regulator
backed off taking action against Lincoln. Though Keating went to jail. McCain was cited only for exercising "poor judgment." Helping
a crook doesn't get you thrown out of the Senate.
To get to McCain and others, Browder hired lobbyist Juleanna Glover, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney's press secretary
and then Attorney General John Ashcroft's senior policy adviser. She went with Ashcroft when he left government to run the Washington
office of his law firm, the Ashcroft Group.
Juleanna Glover, former aide to Dick Cheney. She can buy you a bill .
She got Browder a meeting with McCain who agreed to sponsor the Magnitsky Act. It fit with his Russophobia and friendship
with fraudsters.
On September 29, 2010, Senators Ben Cardin, John McCain, Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi) and Joe Lieberman (Democrat
of Connecticut) introduced the bill in the Senate. Anyone involved in the false arrest, torture or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or
the crimes he uncovered, would be publicly named, banned from entering the United States, and have their U.S. assets frozen.
Remember again that a few months later Browder would tell the San Diego
law school he didn't know how Magnitsky died.
Now here is how the law got passed. The Jackson-Vanick amendment put in place in the mid-1970s imposed trade sanctions on the
Soviet Union to punish it for not allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate. Well, nobody could emigrate. Eventually 1.5 million Jews were
allowed to leave the country.
How the Browder-Magnitsky hoax law got passed in a trade deal
Thirty-seven years later the Soviet Union no longer existed, and everybody could emigrate, but Jackson-Vanik was still on the
books. It blocked American corporations from enjoying the same trade benefits with Russia as the world's other WTO members.
So, the U.S. business community said Jackson-Vanik had to go, and the Obama administration agreed. So did John Kerry, chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They needed an act of Congress.
Meanwhile, Kerry opposed the Magnitsky Act which he considered untoward interference in Russia (is that like saying meddling?)
and had been delaying bringing it to vote in committee.
Browder got Senator Joe Lieberman, conservative Democrat from Connecticut, to agree to block Jackson-Vanik repeal unless the
administration stopped blocking his Magnitsky Act.
Lieberman and the other cosponsors of the Magnitsky Act sent a letter to Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chairman of
the Senate Finance Committee. The letter said, "In the absence of the passage of the Magnitsky legislation, we will strongly oppose
the lifting of Jackson-Vanik."
John Kerry had good instincts, forced to make bad compromise.
So, Kerry stopped his opposition to the Magnitsky Act.
The two bills were combined. First the bill would be brought up at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pass Magnitsky, then
it would go before the Finance Committee to repeal Jackson-Vanik, and then, it would go before the full Senate for a vote.
Kerry called for a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 2012, with the purpose of approving the Magnitsky
Act.
At the hearing, Kerry said that America was not a perfect country, and that the people in that room should be "very mindful of
the need for the United States not to always be pointing fingers and lecturing and to be somewhat introspective as we think about
these things." (Such nuance would obviously not be allowed today.)
He was "worried about the unintended consequences of requiring that kind of detailed reporting that implicates a broader range
of intelligence." He didn't have to worry. Reporting? Intelligence? Actual evidence would never be required! The U.S. was
setting up a kangaroo court and calling it a human rights tribunal!
The bill passed the House 365 to 43 on November 16, 2012. Voting "No" were 37 Democrats and 6 Republicans. Among them Maxine
Waters and Ron Paul. And surprisingly New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler who since then became a Russophobe. Tulsi Gabbard had not
yet been elected.
Kyle Parker told Browder, "There are a number of senators who are insisting on keeping Magnitsky global instead of Russia-only."
One was Cardin, but also Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan – a political giant who spent many years fighting, holding hearings, about
offshore tax evasion and must have known very well how Browder was a poster child for offshore tax-evading crooks. Also Jon Kyl,
Republican from Arizona. Of course, Browder wanted "Russia only," because the purpose of the law was to attack Russia, not to promote
global human rights. Cardin withdrew his objection, and the bill was "Russia only."
The Senate vote
The final count December 6, 2012 was 92-4. Levin and three other Democrats – Bernie Sanders as well as Jack Reed and Sheldon
Whitehouse, both of Rhode Island – were the only Senators to vote against it. Elizabeth Warren was not yet in the Senate.
It was signed by Obama a week later. Read Title IV of
the law to see how it is based on the
fake claims the chief sponsors would not, could not prove. Including "he was beaten by 8 guards with rubber batons on the last
day of his life" based on zero evidence, just Browder's lies. (I also wrote to Cardin's office and got no reply.)
It was the first pillar of Russiagate, where Cold Warrior Democrats joined forces with Cold Warrior Republicans. The result would
be to build a wall against Russia bringing Browder to justice, including getting Interpol to refuse to issue a red notice that would
require other countries to arrest him. He would name his book Red Notice as a jab at the Russians.
And the crooks Browder and Khodorkovsky, protected from the rule of law, laughed all the way to their offshore banks. Here's the
link to Browder's Mossack Fonseca (on Panama Papers fame) bank.
(Speaking of the rule of law, it doesn't apply to offshore banks, with secret owners of companies and accounts. They are largely
run by western banks that make big profits from laundering the money of the world's crooks. Note on any SEC filing where banks have
their subsidiaries: Caymans, Isle of Man, Guernsey, BVI, etc. No local clients, just financial fakery: letterbox companies, tax evasion.
It's okay. When there's corruption, only the little people go to jail. In the offshore system, the corrupt financial oligarchy rules.)
If Johnson doesn't play ball, Christopher Steele will prepare a dossier on him.
aspnaz , 2 hours ago
Only the UK would be dumb enough to keep on paying Steele. Jesus, he is like a muck
spreader: **** in, **** rain out.
Sandmann , 1 hour ago
Steele was disowned by UK in Jan 2017 in handwritten note to White House
Unknown User , 2 hours ago
Russians build rockets, jets, missiles, nukes, etc. but can't seem to produce a poison.
Unlike Brits who successfully poisoned lots of Russians, starting with Ivan the "Terrible"
(that's what Brits called Ivan the Fearsome) and his whole family including his son, which
Brits insist was killed by Ivan. And remember Rasputin? The one who was poisoned and then
shot by a British agent.
Yes. Useless Russians can't do it like the Brits.
PJBloggs , 2 hours ago
It is indeed suspicious that Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia have disappeared into
the embrace of the British deep state and not been heard from since. Their family in Russia
got one phone call from a stressed Yulia who they believed couldn't speak freely.
If the Skripals are indeed safe and living willingly & freely in British protection, then
the UK should give them a live interview to express their gratitude and reassure their family
in Russia.
The silence from the Skripals is more suspicious than what ails Navalny.
aspnaz , 2 hours ago
David Kelly is dead: Skripals are dead.
foxenburg , 1 hour ago
Imagine if a US citizen (version of Yulia) were detained in Moscow and the US consular
people wanted to speak with her to check that she was OK....and they were told to buzz off
and she didn't want to speak to them. Diplomatic law, signed by all countries, states that
consular access MUST be allowed to citizens....even if they don't want it...because otherwise
a country has no way of establishing if its citizen has been kidnapped or murdered.
What if the Iranians managed to kidnap Pompeo (Oh, Happy Day!) and when the State Dept
went ballistic and said give him back, the Iranians just released a statement; "Mr Pompeo
says he does not want to speak to any US officials. He has thanked Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for
saving his life. He says please leave him alone. In deference to his security needs, you will
never hear from him again".
Ace006 , 34 minutes ago
Full marks. It's astonishing to have Boris on the Russians' case about yet another
poisoning (YAP) by them when, hopefully, he's holding two alleged victims incommunicado for
over two years. "Oh, THAT, old bean. Bit of a bother. We disappear people in the U.K. all the
time."
headfake , 4 hours ago
Why does the UK and US always try to demonise Russia? Where does this deep rooted hatred
come from? Were they not allies in WW2? I've never understood this. Is it jealousy or
something different? Did they not like the fact the Russians developed their own Nuclear
arsenal and therefore cannot be bossed around? Or was it cos they kicked out the bankers?
Herodotus , 3 hours ago
The UK always allys with others in opposition to the strongest military power in Europe.
That is their foreign policy. They don't want any single power to be able to dominate the
continent. Today, that happens to be Russia. In the past, it was Germany, or France, or
Spain.
Arch_Stanton , 2 hours ago
True, but someone should tell pedo island that the 19th century wants its foreign policy
back.
PJBloggs , 2 hours ago
Russia under Putin exerts its sovereignty from the globalist banking oligarchy based in
London, Wall Street, Israel & Western Eorope. Russia is in the way of the NWO this
planned demic is meant to usher in.
JPHR , 2 hours ago
British Empire lost "Great Game to Russia". That started the downfall of that British
Empire. US intelligence was groomed by British intelligence during WWII. US hegemony as
illustrated by Brzezinsky's "The Grand Chessboard, American Primacy & Its Geostrategic
Imperatives (1997)" still based on the very same McKinder based ideas from the British Empire
defining control over Eurasia as a precondition for maintaining that empire. Adding insult to
injury Putin twarted US and UK banks in their operation to destroy Russia and acquire its
resources.
The malignancy of this ideology is well illustrated in Brzezinski proudly announcing in
the intrduction of aforementioned book how his ideas are shared by both Hitler and
Stalin:
"Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be
played, and that struggle involves geostrategy -- the strategic management of geopolitical
interests. It is noteworthy that as recently as 1940 two aspirants to global power, Adolf
Hitler and Joseph Stalin, agreed explicitly (in the secret negotiations of November of that
year) that America should be excluded from Eurasia. Each realized that the injection of
American power into Eurasia would preclude his ambitions regarding global domination. Each
shared the assumption that Eurasia is the center of the world and that he who controls
Eurasia controls the world. "
Sandmann , 1 hour ago
UK has a natural ally in Europe - it is not France - it is Russia.
Uk is run by interests like Bill Browder who buy influence and set the tenor. UK is a very
Oligarchic country, highly centralised run for the Benefit of The Few
PJBloggs , 2 hours ago
Navalny was an asset to Putin. With a popularity rating around 2% his party couldn't get
seats in the Duma.
Why would you poison him and give The West a propaganda victory at same time The West is
trying a colour revolution in your most valuable military ally?
Just like why would you poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia just before holding a
successful World Cup of football?
The Skripals are probably DEAD.......and that happened on the UK's watch under UK
control.
The Russian poison meme?
Even the the thickest halfwit that reads The Sun, The Mirror, The Star....the comic strips
et al understands that the monkeys in control are actually nothing more than better read
versions of themselves.
Johnstone and Co are certainly not more intelligent.......their nonsense utterances and
actions prove this.
Vladimirovich , 2 hours ago
Dear Readers,
Sadly the British people are every bit a dopey as others in the western world and will
always vote for the worst possible person to 'do the job'. Please be patient.
In the UK Boris Johnson is colloquially known as "The village idiot", and he does his best
to match up to that title.
That being so he will remain in office until his masters decide to make a change.
Wish the UK well......PLEASE !
Roger Casement , 2 hours ago
Gangsters always play dumb. So do all politicians.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what
had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and
from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was
which.
Son of Captain Nemo , 2 hours ago
Reading between the lines of B0J0...
We the U.K. who's "sun never sets", requires a generous purchase of British Pound Sterling
and $USD by the Russian Central Bank effective immediately before his Nation's "sun
sets"!...
And if the Russian Federation should refuse... We shall make up more nasty hasbara stories
that aren't true like Skripal/Navalny to our public that doesn't care about either of
them!...
aspnaz , 2 hours ago
Yep, "Sun never sets", the government really need to hire some better astronomer,
astrologers, maybe witches, to sort this out. I often wonder about this, lying in bed in
Wickham in the dark at midnight.
Ace006 , 1 hour ago
Well, technically the British Empire extends to the English Channel these days so what's
true in Wickham may not necessarily be true in Norwich.
deplorableX , 3 hours ago
Bojo appears to be struggling with alcoholism which would explain his sticking to a saga
which was pretty much fabricated from the get go. Delirium tremens.
bh2 , 3 hours ago
After the absurd plot described by British authorities in the Skripal case, nobody
believes these concocted political dramas.
Until both Skripals can be interviewed in public and without an official UK "keeper"
hovering about, nobody is going to believe them, either.
Moribundus , 3 hours ago
Evaluation of the finding is misinformation, because without medicinal products from the
category, cholinesterase inhibitors, it is not possible to keep the patient in artificial
sleep or to connect to artificial lung ventilation, because cholinesterase inhibitor
preparations are not a poison but a drug such as diazepam used to treat anxiety or
clonazepam, which are used specifically to relax the patient's muscles during artificial lung
ventilation.
Thus, the Germans did not find out what caused the comatic condition of the patient, but
what the patient was treated in Russia,
respectively given to the patient on board the aircraft, during transport to Germany.
When induced coma, hospitals use relaxants in combo with anaesthetic. Typically those are
indeed Choline Sterase inhibitors... So, some of that stuff is in his system the moment they
intubated him in hospital.. at least under normal circumstances (learned al lot about covid
ICU treatment = induced coma).
Nobody - absolutely NOBODY! - can recycle a Silly Schoolboy Script - with a straight face!
-as well as the THICK BRITS... even as the rest of Planet Earth laughs its a$$ off!
"... Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has not seen these levels of concentration of ownership. The Soviet Union did not die because of apparent ideological reasons but due to economic bankruptcy caused by its uncompetitive monopolistic economy. Our verdict is that the US is heading in the same direction. ..."
"... In a future instalment of this report, we will show that the oligarchization of America – the placing it under the rule of the One Percent (or perhaps more accurately the 0.1%, if not 0.01%) - has been a deliberate ideologically driven long-term project to establish absolute economic power over the US and its political system and further extend that to involve an absolute global hegemony (the latter project thankfully thwarted by China and Russia). ..."
"... In present-day United States a few major investors – equity funds or private capital - are as a rule cross-owned by each other, forming investor oligopolies, which in turn own the business oligopolies. ..."
"... A study has shown that among a sample of the 1,500 largest US firms (S&P 1500), the probability of one major shareholder holding significant shares in two competing firms had jumped to 90% in 2014, while having been just 16% in 1999. (*2). ..."
"... Institutional investors like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and JP Morgan, now own 80% of all stock in S&P 500 listed companies. The Big Three investors - BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – alone constitute the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P 500 firms, which roughly correspond to America's 500 largest corporations. (*3). Both BlackRock and Vanguard are among the top five shareholders of almost 70% of America's largest 2,000 publicly traded corporations. (*4). ..."
A close-knit oligarchy controls all major corporations. Monopolization of ownership in US
economy fast approaching Soviet levels
Starting with Ronald Reagan's presidency, the US government willingly decided to ignore the
anti-trust laws so that corporations would have free rein to set up monopolies. With each
successive president the monopolistic concentration of business and shareholding in America has
grown precipitously eventually to reach the monstrous levels of the present day.
Today's level of monopolistic concentration is of such unprecedented levels that we may
without hesitation designate the US economy as a giant oligopoly. From economic power follows
political power, therefore the economic oligopoly translates into a political oligarchy. (It
seems, though, that the transformation has rather gone the other way around, a ferocious set of
oligarchs have consolidated their economic and political power beginning from the turn of the
twentieth century). The conclusion that
the US is an oligarchy finds support in a 2014 by a Princeton University study.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has not seen these levels of concentration
of ownership. The Soviet Union did not die because of apparent ideological reasons but due to
economic bankruptcy caused by its uncompetitive monopolistic economy. Our verdict is that the
US is heading in the same direction.
In a later report, we will demonstrate how all sectors of the US economy have fallen prey to
monopolization and how the corporate oligopoly has been set up across the country. This post
essentially serves as an appendix to that future report by providing the shocking details of
the concentration of corporate ownership.
Apart from illustrating the monopolization at the level of shareholding of the major
investors and corporations, we will in a follow-up post take a somewhat closer look at one
particularly fatal aspect of this phenomenon, namely the
consolidation of media (posted simultaneously with the present one) in the hands of
absurdly few oligarch corporations. In there, we will discuss the monopolies of the tech giants
and their ownership concentration together with the traditional media because they rightfully
belong to the same category directly restricting speech and the distribution of opinions in
society.
In a future instalment of this report, we will show that the oligarchization of America
– the placing it under the rule of the One Percent (or perhaps more accurately the 0.1%,
if not 0.01%) - has been a deliberate ideologically driven long-term project to establish
absolute economic power over the US and its political system and further extend that to involve
an absolute global hegemony (the latter project thankfully thwarted by China and Russia). To
achieve these goals, it has been crucial for the oligarchs to control and direct the narrative
on economy and war, on all public discourse on social affairs. By seizing the media, the
oligarchs have created a monstrous propaganda machine, which controls the opinions of the
majority of the US population.
We use the words 'monopoly,' 'monopolies,' and 'monopolization' in a broad sense and subsume
under these concepts all kinds of market dominance be it by one company or two or a small
number of companies, that is, oligopolies. At the end of the analysis, it is not of great
importance how many corporations share in the market dominance, rather what counts is the death
of competition and the position enabling market abuse, either through absolute dominance,
collusion, or by a de facto extinction of normal market competition. Therefore we use the term
'monopolization' to describe the process of reaching a critical level of non-competition on a
market. Correspondingly, we may denote 'monopoly companies' two corporations of a duopoly or
several of an oligopoly.
Horizontal shareholding – the cementation of the
oligarchy
One especially perfidious aspect of this concentration of ownership is that the same few
institutional investors have acquired undisputable control of the leading corporations in
practically all the most important sectors of industry. The situation when one or several
investors own controlling or significant shares of the top corporations in a given industry
(business sector) is referred to as horizontal shareholding . (*1). In present-day United
States a few major investors – equity funds or private capital - are as a rule
cross-owned by each other, forming investor oligopolies, which in turn own the business
oligopolies.
A study has shown that among a sample of the 1,500 largest US firms (S&P 1500), the
probability of one major shareholder holding significant shares in two competing firms had
jumped to 90% in 2014, while having been just 16% in 1999. (*2).
Institutional investors like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and JP Morgan, now
own 80% of all stock in S&P 500 listed companies. The Big Three investors - BlackRock,
Vanguard and State Street – alone constitute the largest shareholder in 88% of S&P
500 firms, which roughly correspond to America's 500 largest corporations. (*3). Both BlackRock
and Vanguard are among the top five shareholders of almost 70% of America's largest 2,000
publicly traded corporations. (*4).
Blackrock had as of 2016 $6.2 trillion worth of assets under management, Vanguard $5.1
trillion, whereas State Street has dropped to a distant third with only $1 trillion in assets.
This compares with a total market capitalization of US stocks according to Russell
3000 of $30 trillion at end of 2017 (From 2016 to 2017, the Big Three has of course also
put on assets).Blackrock and Vanguard would then alone own more than one-third of all US
publicly listed shares.
From an expanded sample that includes the 3,000 largest publicly listed corporations
(Russell 3000 index), institutions owned (2016) about
78% of the equity .
The speed of concentration the US economy in the hands of institutions has been incredible.
Still back in 1950s, their share of the equity was 10%, by 1980 it was 30% after which the
concentration has rapidly grown to the present day approximately 80%. (*5). Another study puts
the present (2016) stock market capitalization held by institutional investors at 70%. (*6).
(The slight difference can possibly be explained by variations in the samples of companies
included).
As a result of taking into account the common ownership at investor level, it emerges that
the US economy is yet much more monopolized than it was previously thought when the focus had
been on the operational business corporation alone detached from their owners. (*7).
The
Oligarch owners assert their control
Apologists for monopolies have argued that the institutional investors who manage passive
capital are passive in their own conduct as shareholders as well. (*8). Even if that would be
true it would come with vastly detrimental consequences for the economy as that would mean that
in effect there would be no shareholder control at all and the corporate executives would
manage the companies exclusively with their own short-term benefits in mind, inevitably leading
to corruption and the loss of the common benefits businesses on a normally functioning
competitive market would bring.
In fact, there seems to have been a period in the US economy – before the rapid
monopolization of the last decade -when such passive investors had relinquished control to the
executives. (*9). But with the emergence of the Big Three investors and the astonishing
concentration of ownership that does not seem to hold water any longer. (*10). In fact, there
need not be any speculation about the matter as the monopolist owners are quite candid about
their ways. For example, BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink sends out
an annual guiding letter to his subject, practically to all the largest firms of the US and
increasingly also Europe and the rest of the West. In his pastoral, the CEO shares his view of
the global conditions affecting business prospects and calls for companies to adjust their
strategies accordingly.
The investor will eventually review the management's strategic plans for compliance with the
guidelines. Effectively, the BlackRock CEO has in this way assumed the role of a giant central
planner, rather like the Gosplan, the central planning agency of the Soviet command
economy.
The 2019 letter (referenced above) contains this striking passage, which should quell all
doubts about the extent to which BlackRock exercises its powers:
"As we seek to build long-term value for our clients through engagement, our aim is not to
micromanage a company's operations. Instead, our primary focus is to ensure board
accountability for creating long-term value. However, a long-term approach should not be
confused with an infinitely patient one. When BlackRock does not see progress despite ongoing
engagement, or companies are insufficiently responsive to our efforts to protect our clients'
long-term economic interests, we do not hesitate to exercise our right to vote against
incumbent directors or misaligned executive compensation."
Considering the striking facts rendered above, we should bear in mind that the establishment
of this virtually absolute oligarch ownership over all the largest corporations of the United
States is a relatively new phenomenon. We should therefore expect that the centralized control
and centralized planning will rapidly grow in extent as the power is asserted and methods are
refined.
Most of the capital of those institutional investors consists of so-called passive capital,
that is, such cases of investments where the investor has no intention of trying to achieve any
kind of control of the companies it invests in, the only motivation being to achieve as high as
possible a yield. In the overwhelming majority of the cases the funds flow into the major
institutional investors, which invest the money at their will in any corporations. The original
investors do not retain any control of the institutional investors, and do not expect it
either. Technically the institutional investors like BlackRock and Vanguard act as fiduciary
asset managers. But here's the rub, while the people who commit their assets to the funds may
be considered as passive investors, the institutional investors who employ those funds are most
certainly not.
Cross-ownership of oligarch corporations
To make matters yet worse, it must be kept in mind that the oligopolistic investors in turn
are frequently cross-owned by each other. (*11). In fact, there is no transparent way of
discovering who in fact controls the major institutional investors.
One of the major institutional investors, Vanguard is ghost owned insofar as it does not
have any owners at all in the traditional sense of the concept. The company claims that it is
owned by the multiple funds that it has itself set up and which it manages. This is how the
company puts it on
their home page : "At Vanguard, there are no outside owners, and therefore, no conflicting
loyalties. The company is owned by its funds, which in turn are owned by their shareholders --
including you, if you're a Vanguard fund investor." At the end of the analysis, it would then
seem that Vanguard is owned by Vanguard itself, certainly nobody should swallow the charade
that those funds stuffed with passive investor money would exercise any ownership control over
the superstructure Vanguard. We therefore assume that there is some group of people (other than
the company directors) that have retained the actual control of Vanguard behind the scenes
(perhaps through one or a few of the funds). In fact, we believe that all three (BlackRock,
State Street and Vanguard) are tightly controlled by a group of US oligarchs (or more widely
transatlantic oligarchs), who prefer not to brandish their power. It is beyond the scope of
this study and our means to investigate this hypothesis, but whatever, it is bad enough that as
a proven fact these three investor corporations wield this control over most of the American
economy. We also know that the three act in concert wherever they hold shares.
(*12).
Now, let's see who are the formal owners of these institutional investors
In considering these ownership charts, please, bear in mind that we have not consistently
examined to what degree the real control of one or another company has been arranged through a
scheme of issuing different classes of shares, where a special class of shares give vastly more
voting rights than the ordinary shares. One source asserts
that 355 of the companies in the Russell index consisting of the 3000 largest corporations
employ such a dual voting-class structure, or 11.8% of all major corporations.
We have mostly relied on www.stockzoa.com for the shareholder data. However, this and
other sources tend to list only the so-called institutional investors while omitting corporate
insiders and other individuals. (We have no idea why such strange practice is employed
IMO NATO should have ended with the fall of the USSR. It now "confronts" a largely
imaginary threat, concocted for the purpose of maintaining the status quo in US government
expenditures for defense and supporting the imperial dreams of the neocons.
Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics? Really?
Isn't the western alliance for all intents & purposes already dead?
It is a shame as it could work together to counter the totalitarian CCP. But Mama Merkel
it seems would rather get a few yuan from the communists and turn a blind eye to CCP
authoritarianism until it becomes obvious that the CCP are ruthless and will be competing
with Germany around the world for machine tools and autos by undercutting them on price and
heavily subsidizing their companies until German industry is destroyed.
I have heard of these elusive creatures called "Europeans", but have yet to meet one, so
am not able to comment on their alleged "smug superiority". How many divisions do they
have?
If anything drives the US and Europe apart, it will be trade, not security. Germany is
clearly chafing under the US bit, which sacrifices European industry to US interests --
sanctions on Nordstream 2, trade with Russia, trade with Iran, and China and Huawei. The US
clearly prioritizes it's own LNG , finance, technology and arms industries over European
prosperity. It amazes me that it has taken Europe so long to wake up.
Biden will do nothing to change that dynamic, since he is beholden to the same interests
as Trump.
Does anyone really think Russia is going to invade the Baltics? The Baltics and most
likely the Poles do with past history in mind. I would like to see them and the Ukrainians
transition into something like the Finns who acknowledge Russian power but maintain their
independence. Right now they are looking at NATO as their guarantee of independence in the
future. Who can blame them when looking at history.
The Trump admin's (and for that matter, Trump's own instincts) are and have continuously
been quite correct with regards to EU's defense expenditures agenda. The European 'humanists'
take advantage of the American defense umbrella inside their own countries so they can afford
to NOT spend on defense and instead spend more on domestic and economic development. So while
America continues to pay for the EU's defense it cannot afford to invest in its own domestic
programs (infrastructure, etc.) adequately. These Europeans then with the collaboration of
their Atlanticist fellows on the other side of the pond do nation-building and
democratization projects (call it endless wars) abroad, such as in Afghanistan. Just don't
ask them about their track record in this department.
However, the thing is when their immediate interests are in danger they forget about
America in a heartbeat. Examples, Germany's Nordstream pipeline with Russia, 5G
infrastructure and development, trade with China, Paris climate accord, etc.
I tend to believe that EU knows best how to make an existential threat out of Russia.
Anyone still remembers the novichok incident back in 2018? The thing with Russia is that from
the POV of EU, they view their Eastern neighbor as a solid and stable illiberal system that
is not within the ideological orbit of the western liberal democracy and thus they feel
threatened by that ideologically, NOT a scenario in which from Tallinn to Toulouse is invaded
and captured by Putin. In this endeavor they also have found willing partners in
'anti-authoritarian' hawks such as Bob Kagan, Hilary, Sam Power et.al that tow the same line
and advocate for NATO expansion and other similar projects.
The EU in definitely terrified of a scenario in which the U.S. (under a nationalist
conservative administration) starts de-funding NATO or withdraws its troops from Europe. In
this case they need to cut public spending and allocate more on defense which has a clear
impact on the 'democratic spirit' of EU's over-hyped social democracy.
In the past few years we have seen the rise of right-wing populsit nationalist parties in
pretty much every single major EU country. I believe there are strong tendencies in the Trump
admin-if DJT manages to stay in power for another 4 years- to do a little *something
something* about EU's decades-long nefarious free-riding of U.S. defense umbrella and I don't
think the effeminate EU leaders will gonna like it very much.
Barbara Ann - You say "I have heard of these elusive creatures called "Europeans", but
have yet to meet one, so am not able to comment on their alleged "smug superiority". How many
divisions do they have?"
The term "European" has become disputed territory. As an Englishman I regard myself fully
as "European" as any German or Frenchman but for many the term now seems to mean exclusively
"Member of the European Union". Tricky, that one.
Me, I prefer the term "Westerner". It takes in the so-called "Anglosphere" as well and
therefore covers all the ground without going into the fact that some parts have become
considerably less powerful over the last century and others considerably more. Also
accommodates without fuss the fact that the cultural centre of gravity, at some indeterminate
time in that last century, moved across from Paris, Vienna and Berlin to New York and parts
west.
Not always to your advantage, to you as an American that is, because a fair chunk of the
Frankfurt mob moved over your way with it. You caught from Old Europe the destructive and
vacuous tenets of "Progressivism" and are now sharing the disease in its full vigour with
us.
I mention that last because the violent TDS you see across the Atlantic isn't specifically
European. It's merely that it's natural for progressives to detest Trump or rather, not the
man himself but the "populist" forces he is taken to represent. It's garlic to the vampire
for the progressive, the Little House on the Prairie or its various European equivalents, and
the allergic reaction will become stronger yet. That "smug superiority" you will therefore
find in the States as readily as you will find it here. America or here we live on sufferance
in occupied territory, if we are not progressives ourselves, and should not the occupiers
always be superior and smug?
I went hunting for the Telegraph article the Colonel discusses above. I didn't like that
article at all. It gets the "freeloading" part right but in the context of a Russophobia
that's seemingly set in stone. And the Telegraph is not so much a progressive newspaper as
one that, while throwing a few token bones to its mainly Conservative readership, buys the
progressive Weltanschauung just as much as the Guardian or New York Times.
"How many divisions do they have?" A few more than the pope but maybe that's not
the point. I recently tried to follow the twists and turns of Mrs May's negotiations with the
EU as they related to defence. I got the impression that in the matter of defence the supply
of divisions could safely be left to the Americans. It was the allocation of defence
contracts that they were all concerned about.
Residing in Europe in the late 1960's at a US joint NATO military attachment in Northern
Italy, we mused were we there to keep our eye on the Russians, or in fact keep our eyes on
the Germans. One still saw in the back rooms, AXIS memorabilia.
As an aside: the only reason Michelle Obama chose as one of her FLOTUS projects - support
of military families -- was so she could get Uncle Sam to jet her around to all those US
military bases still in Europe for tea with the commander's wife and then on to her real
purpose - shopping and having fun with friends and families she was able to drag along. On
our dime.
My last visit to Europe found there are now more Turks, than former "Europeans; except in
France where they were more Algerians, than native French. And of course UK has long been
little more than the entrenched polyglot of their vast far flung Empire.
Indeed, who is a "European" today. Birth rate demographics from the former colonies, boat
people or import of cheap labor has now taken over anything we used to call "European". Can a
resident Turk really serve up a perfect plate of raclette in Switzerland? One word answer:
no. And that is a sad loss. One must instead shift their tastes to shwarma, if one wants
European food today.
In regard to Europeans--and perhaps some Australians whom I've met--I have often felt that
they in some ways did feel a bit superior to Americans.
Their sense of superiority, however, seemed more rooted in a sense of cultural
superiority. Those on the blog who viewed the comic rendition of the Three Little Pigs that
was recently posted here might think of that and its wonderful ending about the house that
was "American made." it was a wonderful ending for that well-known tale and a great defense
of our culture's current limited and plain vocabulary in some groups.
As an English major and English teacher, so much of the great literature that we taught
did come from England. I took three Comps when I earned my Masters: English literature from
Beowulf (which I read in Old English) to Chaucer's Catterbury Tales (which I read in Middle
English) and then to Virginia Woolf.
For my comp in American literature, I read from Washington Irving to the modern American
writers at the time I was in college.
My third comp was in Modern Linguistic Theory.
Of course we taught Shakespeare and Dickens---English writers--to our junior high and high
school classes. We studied mostly American writers in regard to short stories, as short
stories are considered the American genre. Our teaching of poetry covered both English and
American poets. As far as novels go, we taught both English and American novels.
Russian and German novelists were also on our list of reading for our comps. (We read them
in English translation.)
In summary, American culture was often overshadowed by the many longer centureies of
European culture in much of my college career.
What the Europeans can't deny, though they may want to, is that the tehcology and
innovation in things like automobile production, electricity, telephones, and into space
expoloration ---many things like that--is where we can indeed be quite proud.
They can continue to feel culturally superior to us if it makes them feel better. I defy
them, however, to minimize our importance in World War II.
A European was understood, in Iran, to be a Christian. A Turk in Germany or and Algerian
in France is just that, a Turk, an Algerian, i.e. another Muslim.
There are professional and managerial middle class French Muslims in Paris and elsewhere,
but are they French? I do not know how assimilated they are.
" he will follow some Trump-era objectives, because that is what American interests
demand, thus showing that Trump was no extremist on China."
So if Biden and Trump both want something, that shows that it isn't extreme. How does that
work again?
The drive for confrontation with Russia contradicts Europe's desire to do buisness with her.
Hence the end of the Western Alliance.
"The US faces a rapidly escalating political crisis. The losing party in November will
undoubtedly go to the federal courts to claim that their opponents cheated in the
process."
They all went along with electronic voting and postal ballots. Now they're all going to
complain about the consequences.
Of course NATO should have disappeared together with the Berlin Wall, but it is alive,
kicking and ever looking for trouble, Belarus comes to mind.
The problem with propaganda is that the emitter ends up believing it, Europe does not need
any protection, we have the means to protect ourselves.
The US is an occupation force, and on top of it demands payment for it. Pick up your gear and
go home, and by the way, Europe should worry about countries armed to their teeth by the US,
I'm thinking about Morocco for instance, since I live in Spain. The beautiful line of the
Sierra that I contemplate every morning while stretching has been contaminated with a radar
station of the Aegis system, and that means we in our quite and beautiful Andalusian town are
a target for the biggies. Stop believing your propaganda, pick up your gear and let everybody
take care of themselves, the benefits will be for the US population in the first place, and
the world will rejoice.
The reason German military contribution to the "western alliance" is what it is is very
simple.
It is according to the incentives that threats that German leadership perceives.
First: Objective strategic things:
Essentially, noone is going to invade Germany. This removes one major reason to have a large
army. Secondly, Germany is not going to productively (in terms of return of investment)
invade anyone else. This removes the second major reason to have a large army. There is
something to be said to have a cadre army that can be surged into a real army if conditions
change.
Second: Incentives of German political leaders.
While the degree of German vassal stateness concerning the USA is up to a degree of debate,
that the USA has a lot of influence over Germany is in my view not. Schröder got elite
regime changed over his Iraq war opposition (it was amazing that literally all the newspaper
were against him, had a big impact on me growing up during this time).
Essentially, if you are in Nato, at some point, Uncle Sam will invite you to some adventure.
If you say yes to this adventure you commit your armed forces to some confrontation in the
middle east if you are lucky, or against Russia in Eastern Europe if you are unlucky. Your
population is not going to like this, and you may face losing elections over this. It is also
expensive in terms of life and material (although not very expensive compared to actual wars
against competent enemies).
If you say no, Uncle Sam will be displeased with you and will make this known for example by
sicking the entire "Transatlantic leadership networks" on you, which can also make you lose
the next election.
Essentially, if Uncle Sam comes asking, you lose the next election if you say yes, and you
also lose if you say no. Saying no is on balance cheaper, because you dont incurr the
financial and human costs of joing a random US adventure on top of the risk of losing the
next election.
The winning play is to get your army in such a state that Uncle Sam will not even ask.
Germany basically did create condition that enabled this.
Its a reasonably happy state for Germany to be in.
We are basically doing Brave Soldier Schweijk on the national level.
Solutions from a US pov:
1: Do less military adventures. If you do less adventures, people will fear being
shanghaied along less. This will decrease the drawbacks associated with having a reasonable
military as a Nato state.
2: Dont soft regime change governments that say no to your foreign adventures. Instead,
maybe listen to them. Had the US listend to French and German criticism regarding the wisdom
of going to war with Iraq, the US and also a lot of others would have been much better
off.
3: Make it clear that particpation in foreign adventures is actually voluntary instead of
"voluntary", make also clear that participation in defensive operations is not voluntary and
is what Nato was created for and that you expect a considerable contribution towards this.
Also, do some actual exercises. For example, if Germany claims that its military expenditure
is sufficient, stress test this premise by having a realistic exercise in which a German
divisions goes up against an American one. Yes, do some division size exercizes pretty
please. Heck, after ensuring that this exercize wont be a failfest, have some Indian be the
referee.
Now we are getting to the heart of the matter. My jest about never having met a European
was of course designed to illustrate that "Europe" is a secondary construct. Never has a
person, upon meeting me, introduced themselves as a "European".
Europe is a moveable feast and even territorial definitions are slippery. "Europeans" I
think, must be characterized by short memories, for was it not less than 25 years ago that
European NATO planes bombed their fellow Europeans in Bosnia? It can't have been an accident
either, as I understand the op. was called "Operation Deliberate Force".
If Europe is synonymous with the EU it has precisely zero divisions and though you
yourself may remain "Western", you are as a consequence of Brexit no longer "European". No, I
think you and Polish Janitor are close by identifying "European" as a progressive/liberal,
democratic (read "globalist") value system. An insufficiency of "European-ness" can thus be
used to justify NATO involvement across various geographies - from Bosnia to Afghanistan
(& shortly Belarus?).
But of course the "European" members of NATO are hardly on the same page. It looks not at
all unlikely that two of its members may go to war in the Eastern Mediterranean.
I agree with you re the Telegraph article btw. "European" smugness is well represented in
that organ.
No. They did NOT all go along with "electronic voting and postal ballots." The 50 states
each run federal elections in any way they please. The US Constitution requires that. There
are a wide variety of voting machines in use and only a few states use mailed in ballots. the
Republican Party particularly opposes mail in voting.
You should be complaining to the politicians you elect. They're the ones requesting US
military protection. Prior to Trump, our governments were quite happy to provide that
protection. He's now asking for some cost sharing.
Be careful though, before you know it Spain could become a vassal of the Chinese
communists as many countries in Africa are finding out now. Hopefully you can continue to
extract euros from the Germans and Dutch while battling the separatists in Catalonia. There's
a thin veneer between stability & strife.
Paco, with a huge cost of lives and treasure the US was twice asked to clean up Europe's
self-inflicted messes in the past century. Promise you won't call on us again, and we can
talk. I know, past is not necessarily prologue but do at least meet us half way. It is only
good manners.
Barbara Ann - Lots of Europes of course. "My" Europe may no longer be on the active list.
Traces here and there. Few green shoots that are visible to me. Many rank growths overlaying
it.
Also many "European Unions". They exist all right, in uneasy company.
So many "EU's". A ramshackle Northern European trading empire - I think that's too
unstable to be long for this world but I could be wrong. A nascent superpower, that denied by
many but for some their central aim.
A bureaucratic growth. A handy market place for all. A Holocaust memorial centre; when the
EU politicians find themselves in a tight spot they can always call on Auschwitz and all fall
back in line. I saw Mrs Merkel pull that trick at the last but one Munich Security Conference
and all there, because Mrs Merkel was at that time in a very tight spot, applauded with
relief.
A Progressive Shangri-La, all the more enticing for never being defined. Those adherents
of that "EU" do actually call themselves "EU citizens" and I see the term is becoming more
common usage. Maybe those are the self proclaimed "European citizens" you have not met.
And the producer of reams of lifeless prescription that seek to force all into the same
mould and tough on the poor devils who can't fit the model. And on their families.
Lots of "EU's". I like none of them. While we wait for that edifice of delusion to
collapse I hope the damage it does to "My" Europe is not irreparable.
@ Diana Croissant: "They can continue to feel culturally superior to us if it makes
them feel better. I defy them, however, to minimize our importance in World War II."
Jack, with all due respect, the politician who committed treason and gave away Spanish
territory for a foreign power to install bases died in 1975, nobody voted for him, general
Franco, an ally of Hitler, someone who sent over 50k troops to the siege of Leningrad, one of
the greatest crimes in the history of mankind, a million casualties, mainly civilians, dead
by hunger and disease, that fascist ally of Hitler we had to endure for 40 years, the price
to close your eyes and your nose not to smell the stench were bases, an occupying force
watching one of the strategic straights in Rota, close to Gibraltar, plus other bases inland.
I could go on, and remind you of 4H bombs dropped over Palomares after a broken arrow
incident, one of them broke and plutonium is still poisoning an area that your government is
not willing to clean. So that is what foreign occupation looks like, if something goes wrong,
well, we are protecting you . they say. History should be taught with a bit more detail in
the USA.
I'm afraid you're reading the dynamics of the European/US relationship quite incorrectly.
Bluntly, you have the facts wrong.
This site, and particularly the Colonel's committee of correspondence, is packed with
experts who have lived in this field and know their way around it. So I don't venture a
comprehensive rebuttal myself - my knowledge is partial and I do not have the background to
be sure of getting it dead right. But here -
"Essentially, if you are in Nato, at some point, Uncle Sam will invite you to some
adventure. If you say yes to this adventure you commit your armed forces to some
confrontation in the middle east if you are lucky, or against Russia in Eastern Europe if you
are unlucky."
That is transparent nonsense.
Obama has stated that it was the Europeans, including the UK, who pushed him into some
middle East interventions. I don't think he was shooting a line. The leaked Blumenthal emails
confirm that and we merely have to look at the thrust of French military actions to
understand that the French in particular push continually for intervention in the ME.
They are still doing so, and not for R2P purposes. They would see the ME and parts of
Africa as part of the EU sphere of influence and their initial reaction to Trump's abortive
attempt to withdraw from Syria shows they would be more than prepared to go it alone there if
they could.
A squalid bunch, and here I must include my own country in that verdict. Reliant on US
logistics and military strength they seek to pursue their own interests and could they but do
so they would do so unassisted. Don't pretend that it's the Americans who force them into
these genocidal adventures.
As for the Ukraine, we see from Sakwa's unflattering study of the EU adventure there that
that was building up well before 2014. The dramatic rejection of the EU deal was the prelude
to the coup. The Ashton tape shows an astonishing degree of EU intervention in Ukrainian
internal affairs before that coup. And from the Nuland tape we get a glimpse of the EU regime
change project that shows it was deeply implicated.
Pushed into the Ukrainian adventure by the US? Rubbish. The EU and its constituent members
were attempting to play their own hand and were not merely following the US lead
submissively.
We hear little of European neocon ventures. But what little has surfaced about them shows
that your picture of peace loving Europeans dragged into these conflicts by an overbearing
"Uncle Sam" is dishonest and misleading.
So I tell my German friends and relatives when they push the same line. They look at me
with disbelief and go off and hunt around the internet themselves. And then come back and do
not disagree. I suggest you do the same. The facts are all there, even for those of us
without inside knowledge or who lack the requisite background.
Hillary is a co-founder of Onward
Together , a Democratic Party front group that is affiliated to other activist
organizations. In a recent e-mail she played the race card in a bid to solidify the black vote
behind the Democratic Party, writing "Friend, George Floyd's life mattered. Ahmaud Arbery and
Breonna Taylor's lives mattered. Black lives matter. Against a backdrop of a pandemic that has
disproportionately ravaged communities of color, we are being painfully reminded right now that
we are long overdue for honest reckoning and meaningful action to dismantle systemic
racism."
It is, of course, a not-so-subtle bid to buy votes using the currently popular code words
"systemic racism" as a pledge that the Democrats will take steps to materially benefit blacks
if the party wins the White House and a majority in the Senate. She ends her e-mail with an odd
commitment, "I promise to keep fighting alongside all of you to make the United States a place
where all men and all women are treated as equals, just as we are and just as we deserve to
be." The comment is odd because she is on one hand promising to promote the interests of one
group based on skin color while also stating that everyone should be "treated as equals."
Someone should tip her off to the fact that employment and educational racial preferences and
reparations are not the hallmarks of a government that treats everyone the same.
But if one really wants to dig into the depths of the Democratic Party soul, or lack
thereof, there is no one who is better than former U.N. Ambassador and Secretary of State under
Bill Clinton, the estimable Madeleine Albright. She too has written an e-mail that recently
went out to Democratic Party supporters, saying:
"I'm deeply concerned. Donald Trump poses an existential threat to our standing in the world
and continues to threaten the decades of diplomatic progress we had made. It is easy to forget
from the comfort of our homes that for many people, America is a beacon of hope and
opportunity. We're known as a country that keeps our promises and upholds justice and
democracy, and that didn't just happen overnight. We've spent decades building our
nation's reputation on the world stage through careful, strategic diplomacy -- but in just
under four years, Trump has done unspeakable damage to those relationships and has insulted
even our closest allies."
Albright, who is perhaps most famous for having stated that she thought that the deaths of
500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. imposed sanctions was "worth it," is living in a fantasy
bubble that many politicians and high government officials seem to inhabit. She embraces the
America the "Essential Nation" concept because it makes her and her former boss Bill Clinton
look like great statesmen. She once enthused
nonsensically that "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the
indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future,
and we see the danger here to all of us."
Madeleine Albright's view that "America is a beacon of hope and opportunity known as a
country that keeps our promises and upholds justice and democracy" is also, of course,
completely delusional, as opinion polls regularly indicate that nearly the entire world
considers the U.S. to be extremely dangerous and virtually a rogue state in its blind pursuit
of narrow self-interest combined with an unwillingness to uphold international law. And that
has been true under both Democratic and Republican recent presidents, including Clinton. It is
not just Trump.
Albright is clearly on a roll and has also submitted to a New York Times
interview , further enlightening that paper's readership on why the Trump administration is
failing in its job of protecting the American people. The questions and answers are singularly,
perhaps deliberately, unexciting and are largely focused on coronavirus and the new world order
that it is shaping. Albright faults Trump for not promoting an international effort to defeat
the virus, which is perhaps a bridge too far for most Americans who are not even very receptive
to a nationally mandated pandemic response, let alone one requiring cooperation with
"foreigners."
Albright's persistence as a go-to media "expert" on international relations is befuddling
given her own history as an integral part of the inept foreign policy promoted by the Clinton
Administration. She and Bill Clinton became cheerleaders for an unnecessary Balkan war that
still resonates and were responsible for what was possibly the greatest foreign policy blunder
(with the possible exception of the Iraq War) since the Second World War. That consisted of
ignoring the commitment to post-Soviet Russia to not take advantage of the 1991 end of
Communism by expanding U.S. or NATO military presence into Eastern Europe. Clinton/Albright
reneged on that understanding and opened the door for many of the former Soviet allied states
to enter NATO, thereby introducing a hostile military presence right up to Russia's border.
Simultaneously, the U.S. enabled the election as Russian president of the hapless drunk
Boris Yeltsin, who, guided by advisers sent by the White House, oversaw the western looting of
his country's natural resources. The bad decision-making under the Clintons led inevitably to
the rise of Vladimir Putin as a corrective, which, exacerbated by Hillary Clinton as Secretary
of State and a maladroit Donald Trump, has in turn produced the poisoned bilateral relationship
between Washington and Moscow that currently prevails.
So, one might reasonably suggest to Joe Biden that if he really wants to get elected in
November it would be a good idea to keep the Clintons, Albright and maybe even Obama carefully
hidden away somewhere. Albright's interview characteristically concludes with her plan for an
"Avengers style dream team" to "fix the world right now." She said that "Well, it certainly
would be a female team. Without naming names, I would really try to look for women who are in
office, both in the executive and legislative branch. I would try to have a female C.E.O., but
also somebody who heads up a nongovernmental organization. You don't want everybody that's
exactly the same. Oh, and I'm about to do a program for the National Democratic Institute with
Angelina Jolie, and she made the most amazing movie about what was going on in Bosnia, so I
would want her on my team."
No men allowed and a Hollywood actress who is regarded as somewhat odd? Right.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest,
a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a
more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
<a://councilforthenationalinterest.org%2C/"
title="https://councilforthenationalinterest.org%2C/"
href="https://councilforthenationalinterest.org%2C/">https://councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is
<a:[email protected]" title="mailto:[email protected]"
href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected].
Hillary and Barack were also complicit in unnecessary wars against Libya and Syria that
have devastated both countries.
Most Americans remain unaware of their destruction of Libya, Africa's most prosperous
nation, which claimed 40,000 black lives. Thousands more were killed as they destroyed
Somalia and Sudan as part of the neocon plan from the Bush era to destroy "seven countries in
five years" as General Wesley Clark told the world. Thousands more died as they attempted to
destroy Syria. Here is a short summary of their destruction of Libya:
Take a close look at the visage of Mad Albright. What do you see beyond the simple ravages
of the aging process on a life misspent? Check out those eyes, unmasked by the rouge. Take a
close look. What do you see? Can you discern the sociopathic evidence, the haunting by the
scores of thousands of Iraqi children who starved to death under the tender mercies of United
$tates of America Corporation's foreign policy on behalf of the agenda of the elite crime
clans of highest international finance.
Maddie is a minion, a minion for genocide and for a total lack of elementary human
empathy. She is an ambulatory exemplar of Kali Yuga, the age of devolution, which in polar
opposition to the Celestial Kingdom which reigned in China as recently as the Ming Dynasty.
During that era where administrative positions were based as much as possible on merit, the
contrast is vivid versus the current reality in our ruptured republic where instead of the
cream, the scum rises to the top.
Remove that pic of know nothing old owl from this site – some children might see
it!
We need updates on Biden's mega corruption in Ukraine investigation. Trump was impeached
for talking to Ukraine president about Biden's corruption and that lifetime taxpayers leech
is Democrats front runner for the highest office – pathetic.
During the days of her power and glory (Yeltsin years) Albright had made nine maps of the
countries that would be created by the dissolution of Russia. Somebody walked in the poker
game room and said "Let's play a different game". Enter the Putin era.
The democrats are just snake skins laying on the asphalt. The new sheriff in town (Syria,
Libya) is laying out a different plan. Good by NWO , halo multipolar world.
Trump declared on many occasions " we are there because we want the oil"; crude? Yes but
honest at least. For those who prefer smooth talkers like the Clintons and the Obamas, I
state that the legacy of those two administrations has done more harm to the foreign
perception of US power In the Middle East and Eastern Europe than any vulgar language
pronounced by Trump who, so far, can be credited with not having started any foreign
wars.
At least Trump tried to withdraw American troops from Syria only to be kept in check by
the reality of the American Deep state power structure. Had he succeeded in his endeavour, US
Russia relations would have better than they are today.
Three months to the election and what is on the main menu? Two old white men, neither fit
to serve the office of the Presidency. The nation is a tired old whore, spent from all those
wars for Zion, and it seems to me the crazy cat lady from the Simpsons is better than Trump
or Biden. Both candidates are loony tune, both are completely unacceptable. We are looking at
Weimar in the mirror. The nation has run it's course, the Republic is dead.
(Weimar Germany, of course, collapsed. Weimar is also the prelude democratic state before
the rise of the authoritarian state. All those who thought Trump was a new Hitler are fools,
Trump is the slavish whore of the Jews, not the opposing force, not the charismatic leader
who restores sanity to the nation wrecked by Jews. What Trump is, is the final wrecking ball,
not the savior.)
Gone are the glory days of imperial dreams, Amerika is not longer fit to wage another big
war in the Middle East for Israel. So what is Bibi to do, Israel is in corona crazy lockdown,
and his influence on Amerikan politics seems to me slipping badly. How much longer will AIPAC
be allowed to influence our politicians if we go into a hyper deflationary crash? It seems to
me the Greater Israel project is about to get the rug pulled out, because if the USA crashes
and burns no one will tolerate one more cent going to that god forsaken shithole.
"If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation.
We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see
the danger here to all of us."
Whom the gods would destroy they first make Madeleine.
The main difference between the reps and dems is their party names. Both represent the
same oligarch interests. Most of the dem objections to trump are psywar manipulations for
public consumption, not serious policy differences. Pretty much all fluff. The reps also do
the same about influencial dems, they endlessly talk nonsense about inconsequential things
about them.
The drama queenery is to manipulate the public into thinking their votes for either party
actually matter in some way. As of late, that psywar has been failing since most people don't
see much difference between the two and believe both parties don't represent them and are
lying scum. Trying to neutralize this view by the people is part of the reason the psywar
critters have ramped up the hysterics.
Barack's mother, Madeleine's father and Chelsea's husband all have one thing in common and
that something is without which sleepy Joe can't be elected so the author's advice to keep
Obamas, Clintons and Albright at bay is moot at best!
Her statement about Iraqi children should not come as a surprise to any. She was is from
that part of Europe which is famous for being racist.
I came across with an interesting story during Balkan "peace" negotiations in a Paris in
90s. The Bosnian and Serbian delegates were negotiating in Paris hotel where American
delegate was staying. One time, at 4 O'clock in the morning out curiosity sMadeline went and
knocked on the negotiators door. One of them opened the door and failed to recognize her and
thought her to be the cleaning lady. Told her to come back later.
That role suits her perfectly.
Set everything else aside and consider the relationship of each POTUS to the
sovereign.
The terminology I use is that they fall somewhere on the spectrum from figurehead to real
POTUS.
Obama and Trump are opposites in this respect. Obama took office having gifted the
national security state a globally appealing front-man. While he had campaigned and started
his presidency looking like he wanted to use his power to move the needle in the right
direction, he was quickly snapped like a butter bean, retreating into the presidential safe
space offered, at least up until that point, to a POTUS that accepted the constrained role to
which the American presidency had been consigned in the modern era.
There were signs almost immediately with Obama. After decisively winning election and
becoming our first black president, he was house-trained early on over a single comment
defending his Harvard professor friend after a silly arrest.
Does anyone other than me even remember this incident? Or how it completely emasculated
the new POTUS, with him retreating behind a teleprompter for everything other than occasional
unscripted remarks that, if unwittingly notable or problematic, were quickly corrected by
some handler.
Now consider Trump. Both as candidate and POTUS he's Obama's opposite. Where Obama had the
establishment wind at his back, writ large those same forces tried to destroy Trump's
candidacy and presidency.
Rather than belabor any particulars I'll just note that the psychological driver for the
ruling and governing classes, regardless of their ideological and programmatic preferences,
is boundless resentment toward him.
After all, it isn't an overstatement to note that more than any other president, Trump got
there on his own, with a near complete array of establishment forces, domestic and foreign,
against him, including his own party.
Who would have thought such a thing possible before Trump did it?
Little has changed since 2016. We're in our current moment because destroying Trump
remains as close to a dues ex machina as any of us have or will see in our lifetimes. There
are real, monumental interests at stake but when you get right down to it most personalities
in the ruling and governing classes -- who to a one grew up with mama telling them they
should be POTUS someday, need him gone so they can go back to feeling better about
themselves.
@RoatanBill pointees he has to placate some truly awful people, such as Mitt Romney. Some
personnel selections that appear to be made by the President are actually part of package
deals where key Senators get to pick their names. That is why certain parts of the
administration are out of touch with Trump's agenda.
Trump has been 100% successful preventing NeoConDemocrats from starting new wars.
Unwinding the messes he inherited from prior administrations is much more complicated.
Hopefully Trump's now inevitable second term will include a friendlier Senate. That will
help him get more done than his first term which was impeded by the ObamaGate deception.
I don't care about all the political backstabbing and massaging. If he had any balls he'd
use the same New York English I grew up with and tell the entire Congress, the Supreme Court
and the intel agencies to go F themselves and do so on national TV. The silent majority in
the country would back up his play.
But he doesn't do that because he's a bought and paid for politico just like the rest of
them. The deep state probably has dirt on him like everyone else in the District of Criminals
and they tell him how to behave. He backs off and allows more deaths to occur to save his
sorry ass from some exposure.
@RoatanBill asking the wrong question . Let me Fix That For You.
As Impeachment Jury, the Senate has final say on whether Trump stays in
office.
Is that true or isn't it? Yes or no?
Are you leading a movement to:
-- Jettison the Constitution
-- Dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court
-- Proclaim Trump as God Emperor of the Golden Throne
When you finish this task, I will back your position that Trump can act unilaterally with
regard to foreign troop deployments.
Until then, I strongly recommend a more realistic and nuanced view on what a President can
accomplish.
complicit in unnecessary wars against Libya and Syria
That's putting it in polite terms. In reality it's massive war criminality, wars of
aggression that killed, maimed and uprooted millions of people in other countries. Not that
it caused as much of a stir domestically as the death of Floyd but there you have it, the
order of priorities of the American people and their supposed leaders. During the Vietnam war
a common chant was "Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids you kill today?". This is true for the
Clintons, Obama, Albright and all the rest of them yet somehow they still have their fans.
They're past their expiration dates yet are still kicking around since the Dem party is
sclerotic with no new blood, no new ideas, just the same old parasites. Their presidential
candidate is way past retirement age and has been obviously faltering in public. This is
their champion, a lifelong mediocrity who is entering senility? US no longer has any wind in
its sails.
O think out move in the Balkans was essentially correct. Even Russia scolded their allies
for their behavior as over the top in brutality. If Russia your closest ally says you are
over the top -- then there's a good chance the genocide claim has merit.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
But I see no reason for Dr. Giraldo to be tepid here. somalia is the a complete
embarssment. The admin took a feed and water operation and turned into a "warloard" hunt
without any clue began interfering into the internal affairs of a complex former colonized
region left bankrupt to reconfigure itself and began a failed bid to set aright -- ohhh that
should sound familiar.
1. They turned a mess into a "warlord" victory for the leader they thought most
dangerous(and I hate that word and its connotations -- a civil conflict) and then to top it
off
2. ran away with their tail between their legs -- it was in my mind the second sign of US
vulnerability to asymmetric warefare
counter balance that against not intervening in the genocide in Africa's Rwanda. The deep
level hypocrisy here or complete bankrupt moral efficacy -- intervening in Bosnia-Herzegovina
but completely ignoring the a worse case in Africa.
All of which occurred under the foreign policy headship of Mrs Albright. Ahhh they are
women hear them roar . . . Let's get it straight.
Women wanted us in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, they want to intervene . . . in the name
of humanity for any host of issues, in a bid to appear tough they will on occasion say the
incedulous -- but the bottom lie
female leadership has demonstrated to be no more effective, astute, or beneficial than
that of the men.
And allow me to get this out of the way before it starts though start it will,
In fact, it appears that not even white skin is not road to effective political leadership
or governance as all of the key players have been predominately and by that I mean near all
white. But here the test cases about femininity alone being a key qualifier just does not pan
out. And no personal offense Dr. Giraldi neither is an elite education.
@A123 ght as the dollar keeps declining in importance and the whole world is sick of the
sanctions and bullying.
So, Yes, I'm in favor of ending the Constitution as it has shown to be a useless piece of
paper except to deceive those that think it's worth something. Yes, I'm in favor of getting
rid of the criminals in DC including the asshat president, all of congress and the absolutely
useless supreme court. I'm in favor of 50 new countries once the empire expires offering 50
experiments on how to govern and let the best idea win.
Your more nuanced approach is exactly what Trump is doing – exactly nothing. He's
the most do nothing president in decades.
If a primary principle, supposedly justifying the Nuremburg Trials, that initiating wars
of aggression is a criminal act against humanity, then the Clintons, Bush II, Albright,
essentially all the USA's senior foreign policy and military bureaucrats over the last thirty
years, and all the Zionist/neocons urging them on and aiding and abetting their criminal
acts, would end their lives in Spandau Prison or dangling at the end of a rope.
In the following years I've been shocked again and again to observe Trump's ignorance of
government and politics and, even more disturbing, his apparent unwillingness to recover and
learn from his mistakes. I'm not sure whether this is due to stupidity, laziness, or
sociopathic levels of grandiosity. Whatever the cause, the result has been an inability on
the part of Trump to fill many campaign promises. (A less sympathetic interpretation of
events might be that Trump's campaign promises were deliberate lies.)
@A123 ng out of the country. The Chinese were eager to comply to get access to the
processes involved. The Chinese didn't have to steal anything, as the US corporations
voluntarily gave them the tech as part of the deal to be in China. The reason to move out of
the US is due to the high labor rate and regulations costs. Those costs are high because the
Fed Gov that you apparently like is sucking the life out of the population with high taxes,
an oversize and out of control military and intelligence services, a financial sector that
repeatedly rapes the country and gets away with it, etc, etc, etc.
@A123 a rel="nofollow"
href="https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Law_of_conservation_of_energy">
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Law_of_conservation_of_energy
In other words, the Democrats and their Allied Media's malefactions against Trump
forestalled them suffering what Republicans did post-Watergate in the House and Senate
midterms in 1974, but all of that negative energy didn't go away.
Either they will get their comeuppance in 2020, or it will remain and grow, biting them in
ass soon enough.
We Americans are kinda attached to our constitutional republic thingie, including our
right to choose the POTUS.
It really is stunning that the dimo crats have learned nothing from their decades of
disaster after disaster after disaster!
From regime change to financial debacles to the looting of the break up of the Soviet
Union: the cretins are now once again being trotted out as part of the biden farcial
"campaign."
A case in point is the odious Larry Summers: This article goes far in summarizing this
pending disaster with the prominent placement of summers:
@Joe Levantine could be behind the lines calling the shots) and the other, representing
the Marianas Trench of the Deep $tate (CIA) and also the Rushdoony loonies of the
Dispensationalist "Great Rupture" Christian-Zionist ambulatory oxymorons are THEIR reeking
heinies.
Trump is merely a girlie-lusting ram compared with those two prowling lobos, sporting
images of blood in their eyes and hatred in their hearts. Suburban soccer-moms detest the
Dumpster, mainly because he exacerbates their emotional radar-screens. They totally overlook
the deep danger lurking beneath the surface in the likes of Bolton and Pomposity, because
they are adroit at masking their totally psychopathic sociopathy.
No men allowed and a Hollywood actress who is regarded as somewhat odd? Right.
Almost 40 years ago my late aunt (in her mid 70s) opined that more women leaders were
needed to stop all of the wars. I asked her if she thought Golda Meir, Sirimavo Bandaranaike,
and Margaret Thatcher were really women, and if so, how were they any different than the
men?
In a Foreword to Christopher Bollyn's book, "The War on Terror; The Plot to Rule the
Middle East," USMC vet, Alan Sabrosky wrote:
"The book provides a way for even informed readers to better appreciate the origins,
evolution, and extent to which Israel has driven a process by which the United States and
other countries have systematically destroyed Israel's enemies, at no cost to itself. As we
have torn up or assailed a long list of countries -- only Iran has not yet been openly
attacked."
A less known fact is how the US is undergoing systematic Israel attack, and I suggest that
the best outcome is our being "Balkanized," as described by vagabond, Linh Dinh, who now
describes the resilient life in Serbia.
The Process continues even if Trumpstein does or does not consent to leave the Blue &
White House.
Thank you, Friends.
The Cato article in May on her "new book" gives her the right treatment. Even if you are a
long way from libertarian, well worth a read. The first paragraph:
"Madeleine Albright is back with a new book to sell. Interviewed in by the New York
Times magazine, she reminds us how she continues to live in the past. Unfortunately, that's
what made her advice as UN ambassador and secretary of state so uniformly bad."
@BL culate faceman which the shotcallers running the Deep $tate tend to prefer as their
podium images.
The failure of the Wicked Witch of the West to achieve her 2017 coronation was a total
shock to the system for the DNC, FBI, CIA, Chew Pork Slymes and other major institutional
minions for the ruling plutocratic oligarchy. Even before Trump's Inauguration, they set out
to destroy his presidency. After all, it had been decreed from on high that our ruptured
republic would be blessed by our first female (more or less) chief executive and that she
would be totally on-message and not some small (d) Democrat the likes of Tulsi
Gabbard–an irrepressible anti-imperialist.
President issues executive order at 4 PM. Liberals electronically file for a court order
at 5 PM. 8AM next day some judge, county, state or federal, issues an injunction forbidding
carrying out the executive order. The executive order is tied up in the courts for
months.
Last President to successfully defy the courts was Lincoln. The judiciary overturns laws
passed by legislators and referendums. The judiciary's orders create new laws.
@Ray Caruso who looks cross eyed at terrorist states Israel or Saudi Arabia , it takes
some pretty rancid balls to call those defending their nations from an illegal
aggressor, 'terrorists'.
What, if not massive and collective terror, is the murder by drone of villagers and
leaders? When their children look at the sky, they don't see wonder and beauty, but terror of
an arbitrary death.
The only thing we Americans should be feeling these days, is an excruciating shame for the
mass-murder and nation destructions our government has perpetrated in our name.
'The exceptional people'. If only we understood just how true that is.
Dr. Phil is sound on this issue. Democrat nomenklatura must impute some cultic authority
to the quivering rhytides of their living-dead mummies.
A gerontocracy is the appropriate government for this degenerate state. The interview
excerpt is priceless with Albright's senile brain fart: "let's hire Angelina Jolie, she made
an amazing movie!" about how those crispies fucked the Balkans up for shits & grins. You
can just see her masticating bon-bons in her slow-motion catapult chair, watching the
genocide she caused like it's Star Wars, feeling transient stirrings in her crepey loins at
the more romantic rape scenes. Just give that rank old downer cow the bolt gun.
One cavil on the rhetorical devices of the piece: even in jest it makes no sense to
suggest ideas to Vegetable-in-Chief Joe Biden. CIA is going to hook him up to a teleprompter
or some brain electrodes or whatever and make him talk and nod and gesture like
audio-animatronic Lincoln at Disneyland. He's gonna say we have to blow shit up. And MBNA
needs privatized debtors' prisons. It's pointless to offer friendly advice to the captive
parties of this failed state. It's like telling NAMBLA they should fuck adults. Wipe out this
roach motel of a party. The Greens have signed on to BAP's demilitarization pledge. Or write
in your Grammy's moldering corpse. Or that big wet floater dump you took this morning. Fuck
the USA and its fake democracy.
OK, now to be serious. This article and most of the responses to it thus far, however
erudite and with good intention seem to have fallen into a trap before they realized it was a
trap namely that everything depends on the result of Dems vs Repubs version 2020. Will Mr.
Giraldi write an article to show how it makes even in the slightest way a difference who is
the President at this late stage ( or any stage) of decay in the US? I know he knows better
to especially on this site. So has he really shed his roots?
I have recently entered into cash bets with almost all of my friends of all dispositions
and mental acuity on the prospect of Trump being re-elected. They think that I am crazy. I
may be but not on this topic. They are all infected with a mental disease called "normiesm".
It is immensely frustrating for me to put any kind of 'out of the box' thinking into
conversations regarding Trump because they react like women going through hormonal flushes.
All verbal reactions seemingly in lockstep.
So with the monetary challenges shoved in their faces they all seemed to pause briefly to
wonder if it was decent to take money from a fool such as I. After a few profanities and
insults as to their inter-cranial pressure from me they gladly accepted to a one and some
doubled down.
Taking their money, as I will, is the only way that they can be brought to bear to hear me
out about my logic. Funny, but it always seems to come down to money.
Now lookie here. What have we had since the Trump inauguration? Four years of 24/7/365
vilification, right versus left, grabbing P ***** , Putin, Stormy Daniels, impeachment (a 24
hour respite when he sent 77 missiles into Syria) and then back to 24/7 of Trump foibles.
Do you see what is/was happening? TDS was the precursor of Covid. And like a charm it
worked and still works. Divide and conquer, bread and circuses rolled onto one tasty bagel.
Look around you. Would you recognize main-street 4 months ago? I would not. Why would the PTB
want to remove Trump? He is a major cog in their satanic wheel whether he knows it or
not.
So with the powerful combination of TDS, COVID, BLM and antifa backed by MSM effectively
scaring the normies from even uttering a peep , I would say that things are going swimmingly
in some power's interests.
Mr Giraldi, "New Dummies, Same Ventriloquist" should be your next article for the sake of
your own credibility not digging up another corpse (living or not) like that of of Madeleine
Halfbright.
Your use of the ad hominem 'hopium addict' slur shows your frustration. You can't come up
with an actual retort, so you lash out.
I notice that you intentionally came out against me personally, because you are unable to
defeat my ideas. Your sad & pathetic attempt to paint you submission to Biden as a virtue
has failed. And, your personal attacks are simply shameless.
@Alden ferson's administration. But as Leo the Lip Durocher insisted, "nice guys finish
last."
Jefferson should have had his fellow Virginian arrested and imprisoned for overstepping
his constitutional powers. Didn't happen. Marshall (the darling of the Kavanaugh-cloned
Federalist Society of statist lawyers) had set a bad precedent, much to the dismay of the
president and all freedom-loving elements of WE THE PEOPLE. The very root concept of small
(r) republicanism, that of popular sovereignty ,was promptly derailed by that closet
monarchist.
Well, at least his fellow Federalist (and London bankster tool) Alexander Hamilton got his
just desserts.
Simultaneously, the U.S. enabled the election as Russian president of the hapless drunk
Boris Yeltsin, who, guided by advisers sent by the White House, oversaw the western looting
of his country's natural resources.
False. But Giraldi knows most readers won't know the truth. It wasn't "western looting,"
it was looting by a group inside Russia, "the oligarchs". Eight out of the twelve were Jews,
among them the top oligarch, Berezovsky.
Philip Giraldi also doesn't mention that Madeleine Albright is a Jew. It's as if her lust
for war springs from being pro-American to a fault. Right? Except it's all about destroying
Israel's targets, the few Middle Eastern and Central Asian nations that support the
Palestinians. And Russia, for giving some support to pro-Palestinian Iran and Syria. The
Israeli Lobby always gets what it wants.
Both in Russia and in the Middle East it's about race, not "the West". Of course, ask a
communist like "Eric Striker" who writes for Unz Review, and he'll do everything he can to
make you believe it's "the Right," "capitalists," "the West" who are behind it all, while
conveniently forgetting the Left's domination of media, universities and politics. The lies
flow freely.
'Steal of the Century' (Part 2), filmed in occupied #Palestine is now out! (The first part
is being censored on Youtube.) Find out what Donald Trump's plan has paved the way for and
what's happening right now in Palestine. •Premiered Aug 2, 2020
'Steal Of The Century': Trump's Palestine-Israel Catastrophe (Documentary) | Episode
2/2
"... Furthermore, it is pretty obvious to the Russians that while Crimea and MH17 were the pretexts for western sanctions against Russia, they were not the real cause. The real cause of the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot be conquered, subdued, subverted or destroyed. They've been at it for close to 1,000 years and they still are at it. In fact, each time they fail to crush Russia, their russophobia increases to even higher levels (phobia both in the sense of "fear" and in the sense of "hatred"). ..."
"... I would argue that since at least Russia and the AngloZionist Empire have been at war since at least 2013, when Russia foiled the US plan to attack Syria under the pretext that it was "highly likely" that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against civilians (in reality, a textbook case of a false flag organized by the Brits), This means that Russia and the Empire have been at [Cold] war since at least 2013, for no less than seven years (something which Russian 6th columnists and Neo-Marxists try very hard to ignore). ..."
"... True, at least until now, this was has been 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5% kinetic, but this is a real existential war of survival for both sides: only one side will walk away from this struggle. The other one will simply disappear (not as a nation or a people, but as a polity; a regime). The Kremlin fully understood that and it embarked on a huge reform and modernization of the Russian armed forces in three distinct ways: ..."
"... While some US politicians understood what was going on (I think of Ron Paul, see here ), most did not. They were so brainwashed by the US propaganda that they were sure that no matter what, "USA! USA! USA!". Alas for them, the reality was quite different. ..."
Truth be told, most Russian politicians (with the notable exception of the official Kremlin
court jester, Zhirinovskii) and analysts never saw Trump as a potential ally or friend. The
Kremlin was especially cautious, which leads me to believe that the Russian intelligence
analysts did a very good job evaluating Trump's psyche and they quickly figured out that he was
no better than any other US politician.
Right now, I know of no Russian analyst who would predict that relations between the US and
Russia will improve in the foreseeable future. If anything, most are clearly saying that "guys,
we better get used to this" (accusations, sanctions, accusations, sanctions, etc. etc.
etc.).
Furthermore, it is pretty obvious to the Russians that while Crimea and MH17 were the
pretexts for western sanctions against Russia, they were not the real cause. The real cause of
the West's hatred for Russia is as simple as it is old: Russia cannot be conquered, subdued,
subverted or destroyed. They've been at it for close to 1,000 years and they still are at it.
In fact, each time they fail to crush Russia, their russophobia increases to even higher levels
(phobia both in the sense of "fear" and in the sense of "hatred").
Simply put -- there is nothing which Russia can expect from the upcoming election. Nothing
at all. Still, that does not mean that things are not better than 4 or 8 years ago. Let's look
at what changed.
I would argue that since at least Russia and the AngloZionist Empire have been at war
since at least 2013, when Russia foiled the US plan to attack Syria under the pretext that it
was "highly likely" that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against civilians (in
reality, a textbook case of a false flag organized by the Brits), This means that Russia and
the Empire have been at [Cold] war since at least 2013, for no less than seven years (something
which Russian 6th columnists and Neo-Marxists try very hard to ignore).
True, at least until now, this was has been 80% informational, 15% economic and only 5%
kinetic, but this is a real existential war of survival for both sides: only one side will walk
away from this struggle. The other one will simply disappear (not as a nation or a people, but
as a polity; a regime). The Kremlin fully understood that and it embarked on a huge reform and
modernization of the Russian armed forces in three distinct ways:
A "general" reform of
the Russian armed forces which had to be modernized by about 80%. This part of the reform is
now practically complete. A specific reform to prepare the western and southern military
districts for a major conventional war against the united West (as always in Russian history)
which would involve the First Guards Tank Army and the Russian Airborne Forces. The development
of bleeding-edge weapons systems with no equivalent in the West and which cannot be countered
or defeated; these weapons have had an especially dramatic impact upon First Strike Stability
and upon naval operations.
While some US politicians understood what was going on (I think of Ron Paul, see
here ), most did
not. They were so brainwashed by the US propaganda that they were sure that no matter what,
"USA! USA! USA!". Alas for them, the reality was quite different.
Russian officials, by the way,
have confirmed that Russia was preparing for war . Heck, the reforms were so profound
and far reaching, that it would have been impossible for the Russians to hide what they were
doing (see here for details; also
please see Andrei Martyanov's excellent primer on the new Russian Navy here ).
While no country is ever truly prepared for war, I would argue that by 2020 the Russians had
reached their goals and that now Russia is fully prepared to handle any conflict the West might
throw at her, ranging from a small border incident somewhere in Central Asia to a full-scaled
war against the US/NATO in Europe .
Folks in the West are now slowly waking up to this new reality (I mentioned some of that
here
), but it is too late. In purely military terms, Russia has now created such a qualitative gap
with the West that the still existing quantitative gap is not sufficient to guarantee a US/NATO
victory. Now some western politicians are starting to seriously freak out (see this lady ,
for example), but most Europeans are coming to terms with two truly horrible
realities:
Russia is much stronger than Europe and, even much worse, Russia will never
attack first (which is a major cause of frustration for western russophobes)
As for the obvious solution to this problem, having friendly relations with Russia is simply
unthinkable for those who made their entire careers peddling the Soviet (and now Russian)
threat to the world.
But Russia is changing, albeit maybe too slowly (at least for my taste). As I mentioned last
week, a number of Polish, Ukrainian and Baltic politicians have declared that the Zapad2020
military maneuvers which are supposed to take place in southern Russia and the Caucasus could
be used to prepare an attack on the West (see here
for a rather typical example of this nonsense). In the past, the Kremlin would only have made a
public statement ridiculing this nonsense, but this time around Putin did something different.
Right after he saw the reaction of these politicians, Putin ordered a major and UNSCHEDULED
military readiness exercise which involved no less than 150,000 troops, 400 aircraft
& 100 ships ! The message here was clear:
Yes, we are much more powerful than
you are and No, we are not apologizing for our strength anymore
And, just to make sure that the message is clear, the Russians also tested the readiness of
the Russian Airborne Forces units near the city of Riazan, see for yourself:
This response is, I think, the correct one. Frankly, nobody in the West is listening to what
the Kremlin has to say, so what is the point of making more statements which in the future will
be ignored equally as they have been in the past.
If anything, the slow realization that Russia is more powerful than NATO would be most
helpful in gently prodding EU politicians to change their tune and return back to reality.
Check out this recent video of Sarah Wagenknecht, a leading politician of the German Left and
see for yourself:
https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x7uu5fk
The example of Sahra Wagenknecht is interesting, because she is from Germany, one of the
countries of northern Europe; traditionally, northern European powers have been much more
anti-Russian than southern Europeans, so it is encouraging to see that the anti-Putin and
anti-Russia hysteria is not always being endorsed by everybody.
But if things are very slowly getting better in the EU, in the bad old US of A things are
only getting worse. Even the Republicans are now fully on board the Russia-hating float (right
behind a "gay pride" one I suppose) and they are now contributing their own insanity to the
cause, as this article entitled "
Congressional Republicans: Russia should be designated state sponsor of terror " shows
(designating Russia as a terrorist state is an old idea of the Dems, by the way).
Russian options for the Fall
In truth, Russia does not have any particularly good options towards the US. Both parties
are now fully united in their rabid hatred of Russia (and China too, of course). Furthermore,
while there are many well-funded and virulently anti-Russian organizations in the US (Neo-cons,
Papists, Poles, Masons, Ukrainians, Balts, Ashkenazi Jews, etc.), Russian organizations in the
US like this one , have
very little influence or even relevance.
Banderites marching in the US
However, as the chaos continues to worsen inside the US and as US politicians continue to
alienate pretty much the entire planet, Russia does have a perfect opportunity to weaken the US
grip on Europe. The beauty in the current dynamic is that Russia does not have to do anything
at all (nevermind anything covert or illegal) to help the anti-EU and anti-US forces in Europe:
All she needs to do is to continuously hammer in the following simple message: "the US is
sinking -- do you really want to go down with it?".
There are many opportunities to deliver that message. The current US/Polish efforts to
prevent the EU from enjoying cheap Russian gas might well be the best example of what we could
call "European suicide politics", but there are many, many more.
Truth be told, neither the US nor the EU are a top priority for Russia, at least not in
economic terms. The moral credibility of the West in general can certainly be described as dead
and long gone. As for the West military might, it is only a concern to the degree that western
politicians might be tempted to believe their own propaganda about their military forces being
the best in the history of the galaxy. This is why Russia regularly engages in large surprise
exercises: to prove to the West that the Russian military is fully ready for anything the West
might try. As for the constant move of more and more US/NATO forces closer to the borders of
Russia, they are offensive in political terms, but in military terms, getting closer to Russia
only means that Russia will have more options to destroy you. "Forward deployment" is really a
thing of the past, at least against Russia.
With time, however, and as the US federal center loses even more of its control of the
country, the Kremlin might be well-advised to try to open some venues for "popular diplomacy",
especially with less hostile US states. The weakening of the Executive Branch has already
resulted in US governors playing an increasingly important international role and while this is
not, strictly speaking, legal (only the federal government has the right to engage in foreign
policy), the fact is that this has been going on for years already. Another possible partner
inside the US for Russian firms would be US corporations (especially now that they are hurting
badly). Finally, I think that the Kremlin ought to try to open channels of communication with
the various small political forces in the US which are clearly not buying into the official
propaganda: libertarians, (true) liberals and progressives, paleo-conservatives.
What we are witnessing before our eyes is the collapse of the US federal center. This is a
dangerous and highly unstable moment in our history. But from this crisis opportunities will
arise. The best thing Russia can do now is to simply remain very careful and vigilant and wait
for new forces to appear on the US political scene.
I really agree with you that the “blame Russia” and “blame China”
thing has gotten out of hand in US politics. Whether it will turn into a shooting war seems
doubtful to me, as the government is still full of people who are looking out for their own
interests and know that a full-sized war with Russia, China, Iran or whoever will not advance
their interests.
But who would have guessed, a few years ago, that “Russian asset” would become
the all-purpose insult for Democrats to use, not just against Republicans, but against other
Democrats?
With Republicans I think that “blame China” is stronger. China makes a good
scapegoat for the economic situation in the United States. But convincing the working class
that China is the source of their problems (and that Mr. MAGA is going to solve those
problems by standing up to China) requires ignorance of the crucial facts about the trade
relationship between those two countries.
Namely, that the trade deficit exists only because the Federal Reserve chooses to
create huge amounts of new dollars each year for export to other countries, and it’s
only possible for US exports to fall behind imports so badly (and thus put so many American
laborers out of work) because the Fed is making up the difference by exporting dollars.
Granted, it isn’t a policy that the US can change without harming the interests of its
own upper classes; at the same time, it isn’t a policy that China could force on the US
without the people in charge of the United States wanting it.
This is a topic I’ve dealt with a few times on my own blog.
"... The U.S. has spent a century or more trying to install a U.S.-friendly government in Moscow. Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the U.S. sent neoliberal economists to loot the country as the Clinton administration, and later the Obama administration, placed NATO troops and armaments on the Russian border after a negotiated agreement not to do so . Subsequent claims of realpolitik are cover for a reckless disregard for geopolitical consequences. ..."
"... The paradox of American liberalism, articulated when feminist icon and CIA asset Gloria Steinem described the CIA as ' liberal, nonviolent and honorable ,' is that educated, well-dressed, bourgeois functionaries have used the (largely manufactured) threat of foreign subversion to install right-wing nationalists subservient to American business interests at every opportunity. ..."
"... To the point made by Christopher Simpson , the CIA could have achieved better results had it not employed former Nazi officers, begging the question of why it chose to do so? ..."
"... Russiagate is the nationalist party line in the American fight against communism, without the communism. Charges of treason have been lodged every time that military budgets have come under attack since 1945. In 1958 the senior leadership of the Air Force was charging the other branches of the military with treason for doubting its utterly fantastical (and later disproven) estimate of Soviet ICBMs. Treason is good for business. ..."
"... Shortly after WWII ended, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi military officers, including former Gestapo and SS officers responsible for murdering tens and hundreds of thousands of human beings , to run a spy operation known as the Gehlen Organization from Berlin, Germany. Given its central role in assessing the military intentions and capabilities of the Soviet Union, the Gehlen Organization was more likely than not responsible for the CIA's overstatement of Soviet nuclear capabilities in the 1950s used to support the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Former Nazis were also integrated into CIA efforts to install right wing governments around the world. ..."
"... Under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act passed by Congress in 1998, the CIA was made to partially disclose its affiliation with, and employment of, former Nazis. In contrast to the ' Operation Paperclip ' thesis that it was Nazi scientists who were brought to the U.S. to labor as scientists, the Gehlen Organization and CIC employed known war criminals in political roles. Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyon,' was employed by the CIC, and claims to have played a role in the murder of Che Guevara . Wernher von Braun, one of the Operation Paperclip 'scientists,' worked in a Nazi concentration camp as tens of thousands of human beings were murdered. ..."
"... To understand the political space that military production came to occupy, from 1948 onward the U.S. military became a well-funded bureaucracy where charges of treason were regularly traded between the branches. Internecine battles for funding and strategic dominance were (and are) regularly fought. The tactic that this bureaucracy -- the 'military industrial complex,' adopted was to exaggerate foreign threats in a contest for bureaucratic dominance. The nuclear arms race was made a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the U.S. produced world-ending weapons non-stop for decades on end, the Soviets responded in kind. ..."
"... Long story short, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi officers who had the ideological predisposition and economic incentive to mis-perceive Soviet intentions and misstate Soviet capabilities to fuel the Cold War. ..."
"... the U.S. had indicated its intention to use nuclear weapons in a first strike -- and had demonstrated the intention by placing Jupiter missiles in Italy, nothing that the U.S. offered during the Missile Crisis could be taken in good faith. ..."
"... Following the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the Cold War entered a new phase. Cold War logic was repurposed to support the oxymoronic 'humanitarian wars' -- liberating people by bombing them. In 1995 'Russian meddling' meant the Clinton administration rigging the election of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian presidential election. Mr. Clinton then unilaterally reneged on the American agreement to keep NATO from Russia's border when former Baltic states were brought under NATO's control . ..."
"... The Obama administration's 2014 incitement in Ukraine , by way of fostering and supporting the Maidan uprising and the ousting of Ukraine's democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, ties to the U.S. strategy of containing and overthrowing the Soviet (Russian) government that was first codified by the National Security Council (NSC) in 1945. The NSC's directives can be found here and here . The economic and military annexation of Ukraine by the U.S. (NATO didn't exist in 1945) comes under NSC10/2 . The alliance between the CIA and Ukrainian fascists ties to directive NSC20 , the plan to sponsor Ukrainian-affiliated former Nazis in order to install them in the Kremlin to replace the Soviet government. This was part of the CIA's rationale for putting Ukrainian-affiliated former Nazis on its payroll in 1948. ..."
"... That Russiagate is the continuation of a scheme launched in 1945 by the National Security Council, to be engineered by the CIA with help from former Nazi officers in its employ, speaks volumes about the Cold War frame from which it emerges ..."
"... Its near instantaneous adoption by bourgeois liberals demonstrates the class basis of the right-wing nationalism it supports. That liberals appear to perceive themselves as defenders 'democracy' within a trajectory laid out by unelected military leaders more than seven decades earlier is testament to the power of historical ignorance tied to nationalist fervor. Were the former Gestapo and SS officers employed by the CIA 'our Nazis?' ..."
"... Furthermore, are liberals really comfortable bringing fascists with direct historical ties to the Third Reich to power in Ukraine? And while there are no good choices in the upcoming U.S. election, the guy who liberals want to bring to power is lead architect of this move. ..."
The political success of Russiagate lies in the vanishing of American history in favor of a
façade of liberal virtue. Posed as a response to the election of Donald Trump, a
straight line can be drawn from efforts to undermine the decommissioning of the American war
economy in 1946 to the CIA's alliance with Ukrainian fascists in 2014. In 1945 the NSC
(National Security Council) issued a series of directives that gave logic and direction to the
CIA's actions during the Cold War. That these persist despite the 'fall of communism' suggests
that it was always just a placeholder in the pursuit of other objectives.
The first Cold War was an imperial business enterprise to keep the Generals, bureaucrats,
and war materiel suppliers in power and their bank accounts flush after WWII. Likewise, the
American side of the nuclear arms race left former
Gestapo and SS officers employed by the CIA to put their paranoid fantasies forward as
assessments of Russian military capabilities. Why, of all people, would former Nazi officers be
put in charge military intelligence if accurate assessments were the goal? The Nazis hated the
Soviets more than the Americans did.
The ideological binaries of Russiagate -- for or against Donald Trump, for or against
neoliberal, petrostate Russia, define the boundaries of acceptable discourse to the benefit of
deeply nefarious interests. The U.S. has spent a century or more
trying to install a U.S.-friendly government in Moscow. Following the dissolution of the USSR
in 1991, the U.S. sent neoliberal economists to
loot the country as the Clinton administration, and later the Obama administration, placed
NATO troops and armaments on the Russian border after a
negotiated agreement not to do so . Subsequent claims of realpolitik are cover for a
reckless disregard for geopolitical consequences.
The paradox of American liberalism, articulated when feminist icon and CIA asset Gloria
Steinem described the CIA as ' liberal,
nonviolent and honorable ,' is that educated, well-dressed, bourgeois functionaries have
used the (largely manufactured) threat of foreign subversion to install right-wing nationalists
subservient to American business interests at every opportunity. Furthermore, Steinem's
aggressive ignorance of the actual history of the CIA illustrates the liberal propensity to
conflate bourgeois dress and attitude with an imagined
gentility . To the
point made by Christopher Simpson , the CIA could have achieved better results had it not
employed former Nazi officers, begging the question of why it chose to do so?
On the American left, Russiagate is treated as a case of bad reporting, of official outlets
for government propaganda serially reporting facts and events that were subsequently disproved.
However, some fair portion of the American bourgeois, the PMC that acts in supporting roles for
capital, believes every word of it. Russiagate is the nationalist party line in the American
fight against communism, without the communism. Charges of treason have been lodged every time
that military budgets have come under attack since 1945. In 1958 the senior leadership of the
Air Force was charging the other branches of the military with treason for doubting its utterly
fantastical (and later disproven) estimate of Soviet ICBMs. Treason is good for business.
Shortly after WWII ended, the CIA employed hundreds of former Nazi military officers,
including former
Gestapo and SS officers responsible for murdering tens and hundreds of thousands of human
beings , to run a spy operation known as the Gehlen Organization from Berlin,
Germany. Given its central role in assessing the military intentions and capabilities of the
Soviet Union, the Gehlen Organization was more likely than not responsible for the CIA's
overstatement of Soviet nuclear capabilities in the 1950s used to support the U.S. nuclear
weapons program. Former Nazis were also integrated
into CIA efforts to install right wing governments around the world.
By the time that (Senator) John F. Kennedy claimed a U.S. 'missile gap' with the Soviets in
1958, the CIA was providing estimates of Soviet ICBMs (Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles),
that were
wildly inflated -- most likely provided to it by the Gehlen Organization. Once satellite
and U2 reconnaissance estimates became available, the CIA lowered its own to 120 Soviet ICBMs
when the actual number
was four . On the one hand, the Soviets really did have a nuclear weapons program. On the
other, it was a tiny fraction of what was being claimed. Bad reporting, unerringly on the side
of larger military budgets, appears to be the constant.
Under the
Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act passed by Congress in 1998, the CIA was made to partially
disclose its affiliation with, and employment of, former Nazis. In contrast to the '
Operation Paperclip ' thesis that it was Nazi scientists who were brought to the U.S. to
labor as scientists, the Gehlen Organization and CIC employed known war criminals in
political roles. Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyon,' was employed by the CIC, and claims to
have played a role in the murder of Che
Guevara . Wernher von Braun, one of the Operation Paperclip 'scientists,' worked in a Nazi
concentration camp as tens of thousands of human beings were murdered.
The historical sequence in the U.S. was WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, to an economy that
was heavily dependent on war production. The threatened decommissioning of the war economy in
1946 was first met with an
honest assessment of Soviet intentions -- the Soviets were moving infrastructure back into
Soviet territory as quickly as was practicable, then to the military budget-friendly claim that
they were putting resources in place to invade Europe. The result of the shift was that the
American Generals kept their power and the war industry kept producing materiel and weapons. By
1948 these weapons had come to include atomic bombs.
To understand the political space that military production came to occupy, from 1948 onward
the U.S. military became a well-funded bureaucracy where charges of treason were regularly
traded between the branches. Internecine battles for funding and strategic dominance were (and
are) regularly fought. The tactic that this bureaucracy -- the 'military industrial complex,'
adopted was to exaggerate foreign threats in a contest for bureaucratic dominance. The nuclear
arms race was made a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the U.S. produced world-ending weapons
non-stop for decades on end, the Soviets responded in kind.
What ties the Gehlen Organization to CIA estimates of Soviet nuclear weapons from 1948
– 1958 is 1) the Gehlen Organization was central to the CIA's intelligence operations
vis-à-vis the Soviets, 2) the CIA had limited alternatives to gather information on the
Soviets outside of the Gehlen Organization and 3) the senior leadership of the U.S. military
had
long demonstrated that it approved of exaggerating foreign threats when doing so enhanced
their power and added to their budgets. Long story short, the CIA employed hundreds of former
Nazi officers who had the ideological predisposition and economic incentive to mis-perceive
Soviet intentions and misstate Soviet capabilities to fuel the Cold War.
Where this gets interesting is that American whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was working for the Rand
Corporation in the late 1950s and early 1960s when estimates of Soviet ICBMs were being put
forward. JFK had run (in 1960) on a platform that included closing the Soviet – U.S. '
missile
gap .' The USAF (U.S. Air Force), charged with delivering nuclear missiles to their
targets, was estimating that the Soviets had 1,000 ICBMs. Mr. Ellsberg, who had limited
security clearance through his employment at Rand, was leaked the known number of Soviet ICBMs.
The Air Force was saying 1,000 Soviet ICBMs when the number confirmed by reconnaissance
satellites was four.
By 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA had shifted nominal control of the
Gehlen Organization to the BND, for whom Gehlen continued to work. Based on ongoing satellite
reconnaissance data, the CIA was busy lowering its estimates of Soviet nuclear capabilities.
Benjamin Schwarz, writing
for The Atlantic in 2013, provided an account, apparently informed by the CIA's lowered
estimates, where he placed the whole of the Soviet nuclear weapons program (in 1962) at roughly
one-ninth the size of the U.S. effort. However, given Ellsberg's known count of four Soviet
ICBMs at the time of the missile crisis, even Schwarz's ratio of 1:9 seems to overstate Soviet
capabilities.
Further per Schwarz's reporting, the Jupiter nuclear missiles that the U.S. had placed in
Italy prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis only made sense as first-strike weapons. This
interpretation is corroborated by Daniel Ellsberg , who argues
that the American plan was always to initiate the use of nuclear weapons (first strike). This
made JFK's posture of equally matched contestants in a geopolitical game of nuclear chicken
utterly unhinged. Should this be less than clear, because the U.S. had indicated its intention
to use nuclear weapons in a first strike -- and had demonstrated the intention by placing
Jupiter missiles in Italy, nothing that the U.S. offered during the Missile Crisis could be
taken in good faith.
The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 was met with a promised reduction in U.S. military
spending and an end to the Cold War, neither of which ultimately materialized. Following the
election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the Cold War entered a new phase. Cold War logic was
repurposed to support the oxymoronic 'humanitarian wars' -- liberating people by bombing them.
In 1995 'Russian meddling' meant the Clinton administration rigging
the election of Boris Yeltsin in the Russian presidential election. Mr. Clinton then
unilaterally reneged on the American agreement to keep NATO from Russia's border when former
Baltic
states were brought under NATO's control .
The Obama administration's 2014 incitement in Ukraine , by way of
fostering and supporting the Maidan uprising and the ousting of Ukraine's democratically
elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, ties to the U.S. strategy of containing and overthrowing
the Soviet (Russian) government that was first codified by the National Security Council (NSC)
in 1945. The NSC's directives can be found here and here .
The economic and military
annexation of Ukraine by the U.S. (NATO didn't exist in 1945) comes under NSC10/2
. The alliance between the CIA and Ukrainian fascists ties to directive NSC20 , the plan
to sponsor Ukrainian-affiliated former Nazis in order to install them in the Kremlin to replace
the Soviet government. This was part of the CIA's rationale for putting Ukrainian-affiliated
former Nazis on its payroll in 1948.
That Russiagate is the continuation of a scheme launched in 1945 by the National Security
Council, to be engineered by the CIA with help from former Nazi officers in its employ, speaks
volumes about the Cold War frame from which it emerges.
Its near instantaneous adoption by
bourgeois liberals demonstrates the class basis of the right-wing nationalism it supports. That
liberals appear to perceive themselves as defenders 'democracy' within a trajectory laid out by
unelected military leaders more than seven decades earlier is testament to the power of
historical ignorance tied to nationalist fervor. Were the former Gestapo and SS officers
employed by the CIA 'our Nazis?'
The Nazi War
Crimes Disclosure Act came about in part because Nazi hunters kept coming across Nazi war
criminals living in the U.S. who told them they had been brought here and given employment by
the CIA, CIC, or some other division of the Federal government. If the people in these agencies
thought that doing so was justified, why the secrecy? And if it wasn't justified, why was it
done? Furthermore, are liberals really comfortable bringing fascists with direct historical
ties to the Third Reich to power in Ukraine? And while there are no good choices in the
upcoming U.S. election, the guy who liberals want to bring to power is lead architect of this
move.Cue the Sex
Pistols .
Executed Turkish general exposed misuse of Qatari funds for Syria extremists: Report Semih Terzi, a general within the Turkish army, was executed on the night of the 2016
Turkish coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (Photo via the
stockholmcf) Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English Friday 31 July 2020 Text size A A A
The Turkish army executed a senior general within its ranks after he had discovered the
embezzlement of illicit Qatari funding for extremists in Syria by public officials, according
to a 2019 court testimony unveiled in a report by the Nordic Monitor.
Semih Terzi, a general within the Turkish army, was executed on the night of the 2016
Turkish coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The new allegations unveiled in court testimonies from a hearing March 20, 2019at Ankara
17th High Criminal Court were made by Col. Fırat Alakuş, an army officer working
within Turkey's Special Forces Command's intelligence section.
According to the Nordic Monitor, Terzi is said to have been executed after discovering that
Lt. Gen. Zekai Aksakallı, in charge of the Special Forces Command at the time, was working
covertly with Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) "in running illegal and
clandestine operations in Syria for personal gain while dragging Turkey deeper into the Syrian
civil war."
"[Terzi] knew how much of the funding delivered [to Turkey] by Qatar for the purpose of
purchasing weapons and ammunition for the opposition was actually used for that and how much of
it was actually used by public officials, how much was embezzled," Col. Alakuş was quoted
as saying by the Nordic Monitor via his court testimony.
The Nordic Monitor said in its report published on Friday that Alakuş testified that
Aksakallı had run a gang outside of the chain of command within the Turkish intelligence
that was involved in illicit activities.
The report further alleged that Terzi was aware of public officials involved in
oil-smuggling operations with ISIS from Syria.
"[Terzi] was aware of who in the government was involved in an oil-smuggling operation from
Syria, how the profits were shared, and what activities they were involved in," Alakuş
said in his testimony.
On July 21 st , Ukrainian businessman and politician David Zhvania revealed some
open secrets of the Ukrainian politics, including crimes that former Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko had carried out. The irony of the situation is that Zhvania was, at one point, the
leader of Poroshenko's campaign headquarters.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/JChtKpaulOs
He said that Euromaidan was ruled by criminal groups led by the people who were leading the
parties that came into power following the coup – the BPP (Bloc of Petro Poroshenko) and
the National Front.
He also said that he had participated in giving multimillion-dollar bribes to European
officials in exchange for their support to Poroshenko's election as president.
The former member of Ukrainian parliament, in his video message, said that Ukraine is
threatened with a new coming to power of Poroshenko.
"A creeping revenge is taking place in the country – Zelensky's rating falls, and
Poroshenko and his entourage are again striving for power. I cannot look at it calmly, so I
decided to give this press conference. Warn the citizens of Ukraine not to make a mistake. Tell
everyone. who is Poroshenko and his entourage.
This is a criminal group that from the very beginning participated in the Maidan solely for
the sake of seizing power and personal enrichment," Zhvania said.
He said that following the 2014 Maidan, an organized criminal group took power in Ukraine,
and he admitted that he was part of it.
According to Zhvania, it was this criminal group that financed the protests and thwarted any
options for agreements with the authorities (the Yanukovich government), which were designed to
avoid escalation.
"I was also a member of the organized criminal group, which seized power in 2014 on the wave
of popular protests. We financed the Maidan, we fueled protest moods in the media, thwarted the
government's peace initiatives, conducted separate negotiations with deputies of the Party of
Regions, and negotiated with foreign embassies.
The organized criminal group included Martynenko, Poroshenko, Turchynov, Yatsenyuk,
Klitschko. Each of whom has attached its own group. Turchinov, for example, brought Pashinsky
and Parubiy," Zhvania said and added that he was ready to testify on this matter.
After the coup victory, Zhvania's group engaged in political corruption to secure the
presidency for Poroshenko.
"I and Klimkin (note: Klimkin later became the foreign minister) directly participated in
the transfer of 5 million euros through the Ukrainian Embassy in Germany for one high-ranking
European official at that time in order to ensure support for Poroshenko as a candidate for the
presidency of Ukraine from the EU. I am ready to provide the circumstances of this to the
investigating authorities," Zhvania claimed.
In his opinion, Poroshenko became president as a result of the consensus of the oligarchs.
And he took on certain obligations to them, which in most cases he carried out.
According to Zhvania, during his tenure as president, Poroshenko acquired approximately $3.4
billion in bribes.
The former politician hoped that President Zelensky "will have enough political will to
bring the case of Poroshenko and his entourage to an end."
"Poroshenko today, on the eve of local elections, may try to run for mayor. Before Maidan,
it was his dream – he humiliatingly begged Yanukovych for the right to run for mayor of
Kiev, was ready to give a bribe for this. Yanukovych did not allow, and Poroshenko did not dare
to disobey," Zhvania said and promised to reveal more in the following weeks.
The Euromaidan in 2014 was not a spontaneous protest, but was financed by political
circles to overthrow Yanukovych.
Any peace initiatives were thwarted by a group that included Martynenko, Poroshenko,
Turchynov, Yatsenyuk and Klitschko.
Zhvania and Klimkin gave 5 million euros in bribes to a European official to lobby for
Poroshenko's interests as a presidential candidate in 2014.
David Zhvania is a well-known Ukrainian businessman from Georgia. Long-term business partner
of the deputy of several iterations of Parliament Nikolay Martynenko.
Zhvania was also a member in four different Ukrainian parliament configurations. In 2004, he
was an ally of Yushchenko, was a member of the Our Ukraine bloc, and took part in the Orange
Revolution. In 2005, he served as Minister of Emergency Situations in the government of Yulia
Tymoshenko.
In 2006 he went to the Verkhovna Rada from "Our Ukraine" and Yushchenko, but he had a
falling out with him.
In 2010, he became friends with the Yanukovych team.
In the 2012 elections, he entered parliament as a self-nominated and non-partisan candidate
in 140 constituencies. He was a member of the Party of Regions faction, but left it in 2013
when the Revolution of Dignity began.
In the 2014 elections, he was one of the heads of the electoral headquarters of the Petro
Poroshenko Bloc. People's Deputy Aleksandr Onishchenko stated that he transferred money to
Zhvania for a seat in the parliament of the 8th convocation.
Move comes as Libya gov't and Turkey demand an end of foreign intervention in support of
commander Khalifa Haftar.
####
I suspect In'Sultin Erd O'Grand is a mole of the garden kind. He goes about digging
one hole for himself after another. If he keeps this up, all the holes will merge in to
one and he will disappear! It would give the West a chance to have someone running Turkey
with a more reliably western perspective though I think it is clear that whatever comes next,
Turkey will not allow itself to be treated as a western annex and pawn.
There is something rotten in the state .. of England.
This Skripal thing smelled to high heaven from day 1. My opinion is that Sergei Skripal was
involved (to what degree is open to speculation) with the Steele dossier. He was getting
homesick (perhaps his mother getting older is part of this) for Russia and he thought that to
get back to Russia he needed something big to get back in Putin's good graces. He would have
needed something really big because Putin really has no use for traitors. Skripal put out some
feelers (perhaps through his daughter though that may be dicey). The two couriers were sent to
seal or move the deal forward. The Brits (and perhaps the CIA) found out about this and decided
to make an example of Sergei. Perhaps because they found out about this late, the deep
state/intelligence people had to move very quickly. The deep state story was was extremely
shaky (to put it mildly) as a result. Or they were just incompetent and full of hubris.
Then they were stuck with the story and bullshit coverup was layered on bullshit coverup. 7
Reply FlorianGeyer Reply to
Marcus April 20, 2019
@ Marcus.
To hope to get away with lies, one must have perfect memory and a superior intellect that
can create a lie with some semblance of reality in real life, as opposed to the digital
'reality' in a Video game. And a rather corny video game at that.
MI5/6 failed on all parts of Lie creation 2 Reply Mistaron April 21, 2019
If Trump was so furious about being conned by Haspel, how come he then went on to promote
her to becoming the head of the CIA? It's quite perplexing.
"... There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, these countries would continue their positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the region has experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same time that Russia's economic engagement with the region expanded significantly. ..."
"... Are these developments coincidental, or has the Kremlin sought deliberately to erode the region's democratic institutions through its influence to 'break the internal coherence of the enemy system'? ..."
"... a false flag operation" involving "an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland". There is little in Sharp's book to suggest that non-violent resistance would have had much effect on a really brutal and determined government. He also has the naïve habit of using "democrat" and "dictator" as if these words were as precisely defined as coconuts and codfish. But any "dictatorship" – for example Stalin's is a very complex affair with many shades of opinion in it. So, in terms of what he was apparently trying to do, one can see it only succeeding against rather mild "dictators" presiding over extremely unpopular polities. With a great deal of outside effort and resources. ..."
"... His "playbook" is useful to outside powers that want to overthrow governments they don't like. Especially those run by "dictators" not brutal enough to shoot the protesters down. ..."
Once I'd seen this mention of The Russian Playbook (aka KGB, Kremlin or Putin's Playbook), I
saw the expression all over the place. Here's an early – perhaps the earliest – use
of the term. In October 2016, the Center for Strategic and International studies (" Ranked #1 ") informed us of the "
Kremlin Playbook "
with this ominous beginning
There was a deeply held assumption that, when the countries of Central and Eastern
Europe joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, these countries would continue their
positive democratic and economic transformation. Yet more than a decade later, the region has
experienced a steady decline in democratic standards and governance practices at the same
time that Russia's economic engagement with the region expanded significantly.
And asks
Are these developments coincidental, or has the Kremlin sought deliberately to erode
the region's democratic institutions through its influence to 'break the internal coherence
of the enemy system'?
Well, to these people, to ask the question is to answer it: can't possibly be disappointment
at the gap between 2004's expectations and 2020's reality, can't be that they don't like the
total Western values package that they have to accept, it must be those crafty Russians
deceiving them. This was the earliest reference to The Playbook that I found, but it certainly
wasn't the last.
Of course, all these people are convinced Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential
election. Somehow. To some effect. Never really specified but the latest outburst of insanity
is this video from the
Lincoln Project . As Anatoly Karlin observes: "I think it's really
cool how we Russians took over America just by shitposting online. How does it feel to be
subhuman?" He has a point: the Lincoln Project, and the others shrieking about Russian
interference, take it for granted that American democracy is so flimsy and Americans so
gullible that a few Facebook ads can bring the whole facade down. A curious mental state
indeed.
What can we know about The Playbook? For a start it must be written in Russian, a language
that those crafty Russians insist on speaking among themselves. Secondly such an important
document would be protected the way that highly classified material is protected. There would
be a very restricted need to know; underlings participating in one of the many plays would not
know how their part fitted into The Playbook; few would ever see The Playbook itself. The
Playbook would be brought to the desk of the few authorised to see it by a courier, signed for,
the courier would watch the reader and take away the copy afterwards. The very few copies in
existence would be securely locked away; each numbered and differing subtly from the others so
that, should a leak occur, the authorities would know which copy read by whom had been leaked.
Printed on paper that could not be photographed or duplicated. As much protection as human
cunning could devise; right up there with
the nuclear codes .
And so on. It's all quite ridiculous: we're supposed to believe that Moscow easily controls
far-away countries but can't keep its neighbours under control.
There is no Russian Playbook, that's just projection. But there is a "playbook" and it's
written in English, it's freely available and it's inexpensive enough that every pundit can
have a personal copy: it's named "
From Dictatorship To Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation " and it's written by
Gene Sharp (1928-2018) .
Whatever Sharp may have thought he was doing, whatever good cause he thought he was assisting,
his book has been used as a guide to create regime changes around the world. Billed as
"democracy" and "freedom", their results are not so benign. Witness Ukraine today. Or Libya. Or
Kosovo whose long-time leader has just been indicted for numerous crimes .
Curiously enough, these efforts always take place in countries that resist Washington's line
but never in countries that don't. Here we do see training, financing, propaganda, discord
being sown, divisions exploited to effect regime change – all the things in the imaginary
"Russian Playbook". So, whatever he may have thought he was helping, Sharp's advice has been
used to produce what only the propagandists could call "
model interventions "; to the "liberated" themselves, the reality is poverty , destruction ,
war and
refugees .
Reading Sharp's book, however, makes one wonder if he was just fooling himself. Has there
ever been a "dictatorship" overthrown by "non-violent" resistance along the lines of what he is
suggesting? He mentions Norwegians who resisted Hitler; but Norway was liberated, along with
the rest of Occupied Europe, by extremely violent warfare. While some Jews escaped, most didn't
and it was the conquest of Berlin that saved the rest: the nazi state was killed . The
USSR went away, together with its satellite governments in Europe but that was a top-down
event. He likes Gandhi but Gandhi wouldn't have lasted a minute under Stalin. Otpor was greatly aided by NATO's war
on Serbia. And, they're only "non-violent" because the Western media doesn't talk much about
the violence ;
"non-violent" is not the first word that comes to mind in this video of Kiev 2014 . "Colour revolutions" are
manufactured from existing grievances, to be sure, but with a great deal of outside assistance,
direction and funding; upon inspection, there's much design behind their "spontaneity". And,
not infrequently, with mysterious sniping at a expedient moment – see Katchanovski's
research on the "Heavenly Hundred" of the Maidan showing pretty convincingly that the
shootings were " a false flag operation" involving "an alliance of the far right
organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as
Fatherland". There is little in Sharp's book to suggest that non-violent resistance would have
had much effect on a really brutal and determined government. He also has the naïve habit
of using "democrat" and "dictator" as if these words were as precisely defined as coconuts and
codfish. But any "dictatorship" – for example Stalin's is a very complex affair with many
shades of opinion in it. So, in terms of what he was apparently trying to do, one can see it
only succeeding against rather mild "dictators" presiding over extremely unpopular polities.
With a great deal of outside effort and resources.
This is all about maintaining the US-centered global neoliberal empire. After empires is created the the USA became the
salve of imperial interests and in a way stopped existing as an independent country. Everything is thrown on the altar of "full
spectrum Dominance". The result is as close to a real political and economic disaster as we can get. Like USSR leadership the US
elite realized now that neoliberalism is not sustainable, but can't do anything as all bets were made for the final victory of
neoliberalism all over the world, much like Soviets hoped for the victory of communism. That did not happened and although the USA
now is in much better position then the USSR in 60th (but with the similar level of deterioration of cognitive abilities of the
politicians as the USSR). In this sense COVID-19 was a powerful catalyst of the crush of the US-centered neoliberal empire
Notable quotes:
"... On the other side are the targets of "inveterate antipathies." This also characterizes US Middle East policy. So hated are Iran and Syria that Washington, DC is making every effort to destroy their economies, ruin their people's livelihoods, wreck their hospitals, and starve their population. The respective governments are bad, to be sure, but do not threaten the US Yet, as the nation's first president explained to Americans, "Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy." ..."
"... Consider how close the US has come to foolish, unnecessary wars against both nations. There were manifold demands that the US enter the Syrian civil war, in which Americans have no stake. Short of combat the Obama administration indirectly aided the local affiliate of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group which staged 9/11 and supposedly was America's enemy. Moreover, there was constant pressure on America to attack Iran, targeted by the US since 1953, when the CIA helped replace Tehran's democracy with a brutal tyrant, whose rule was highlighted by corruption, torture, and a nuclear program – which then was taken over by Iran's Islamic revolutionaries, to America's horror. ..."
"... The US now is pushing toward a Cold War redux with Russia, after successive administrations treated Moscow as if it was of no account, lying about plans to expand NATO and acting in other ways that the US would never tolerate. Imagine the Soviet Union helping to overthrow an elected, pro-American government in Mexico City, seeking to redirect all commerce to Soviet allies in South America, and proposing that Mexico join the Warsaw Pact. US policymakers would be threatening war. ..."
"... In different ways many US policies illustrate the problem caused by "passionate attachments" – the almost routine and sometimes substantial sacrifice of US economic and security interests to benefit other governments. For instance, hysteria swept Washington at the president's recent proposal to simply reduce troop levels in Germany, which along with so many other European nations sees little reason to do much to defend itself. There are even those who demand American subservience to the Philippines, a semi-failed state of no significant security importance to the US Saudi Arabia is a rare case where the attachment is mostly cash and lobbyists. In most instances cultural, ethnic, religious, and historical ties provide a firmer foundation for foreign political influence and manipulation. ..."
Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, unkindly characterized the
foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C., as "the Blob." Although policymakers
sometimes disagree on peripheral subjects, membership requires an absolute commitment to U.S.
"leadership," which means a determination to micro-manage the world.
Reliance on persuasion is not enough. Vital is the willingness to bomb, invade, and, if
necessary, occupy other nations to impose the Blob's dictates on other peoples. If foreigners
die, as they often do, remember the saying about eggs and omelets oft repeated by communism's
apologists. "Stuff happens" with the best-intentioned policies.
One might be inclined to forgive Blob members if their misguided activism actually benefited
the American people. However, all too often the Blob's policies instead aid other governments
and interests. Washington is overrun by the representatives of and lobbyists for other nations,
which constantly seek to take control of US policy for their own advantage. The result are
foreign interventions in which Americans do the paying and, all too often, the dying for
others.
The problem is primarily one of power. Other governments don't spend a lot of time
attempting to take over Montenegro's foreign policy because, well, who cares? Exactly what
would you do after taking over Fiji's foreign ministry other than enjoy a permanent vacation?
Seize control of international relations in Barbados and you might gain a great tax
shelter.
Subvert American democracy and manipulate US foreign policy, and you can loot America's
treasury, turn the US military into your personal bodyguard, and gain Washington's support for
reckless war-mongering. And given the natural inclination of key American policymakers to
intervene promiscuously abroad for the most frivolous reasons, it's surprisingly easy for
foreign interests to convince Uncle Sam that their causes are somehow "vital" and therefore
require America's attention. Indeed, it is usually easier to persuade Americans than foreign
peoples in their home countries to back one or another international misadventure.
The culprits are not just autocratic regimes. Friendly democratic governments are equally
ready to conspiratorially whisper in Uncle Sam's ear. Even nominally classical liberal
officials, who believe in limiting their own governments, argue that Americans are obligated to
sacrifice wealth and life for everyone else. The mantra seems to be liberty, prosperity, and
peace for all – except those living in the superpower tasked by heaven with protecting
everyone else's liberty, prosperity, and peace.
Although the problem has burgeoned in modern times, it is not new. Two centuries ago fans of
Greek independence wanted Americans to challenge the Ottoman Empire, a fantastic bit of
foolishness. Exactly how to effect an international Balkans rescue was not clear, since the
president then commanded no aircraft carriers, air wings, or nuclear-tipped missiles. Still,
the issue divided Americans and influenced John Quincy Adams' famous 1821 Independence Day
address.
Warned Adams:
"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there
will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of
monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the
champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance
of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting
under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would
involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of
individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of
freedom."
"The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force . She
might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit .
[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a
spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has
been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of
mankind would permit, her practice."
Powerful words, yet Adams was merely following in the footsteps of another great American,
George Washington. Obviously, the latter was flawed as a person, general, and president.
Nevertheless, his willingness to set a critical precedent by walking away from power left an
extraordinary legacy. As did his insistence that the Constitution tasked Congress with deciding
when America would go to war. And his warning against turning US policy over to foreign
influences.
Concern over obsequious subservience to other governments and interests pervaded his famous
1796 Farewell Address. Applied today, his message indicts most of the policy currently made in
the city ironically named after him. He would be appalled by what presidents and Congresses
today do, supposedly for America.
Obviously, the US was very different 224 years ago. The new country was fragile, sharing the
Western hemisphere with its old colonial master, which still ruled Canada and much of the
Caribbean, as well as Spain and France. When later dragged into the maritime fringes of the
Napoleonic wars the US could huff and puff but do no more than inconvenience France and
Britain. The vastness of the American continent, not overweening national power, again
frustrated London when it sought to subjugate its former colonists.
Indeed, when George Washington spoke the disparate states were not yet firmly knit into a
nation. Only after the Civil War, when the national government waged four years of brutal
combat, which ravaged much of the country and killed upwards of 750,000 people in the name of
"union," did people uniformly say the United States "is" rather than "are." However, the
transformation was much more than rhetorical. The federal system that originally emerged in the
name of individual liberty spawned a high tax centralized government that employed one of the
world's largest militaries to kill on a mass scale to enforce the regime's dictates. The modern
American "republic" was born. It acted overseas only inconsistently until World War II, after
which imperial America was a constant, adding resonance to George Washington's message.
Today Washington, D.C.'s elites have almost uniformly decided that Russia is an enemy,
irrespective of American behavior that contributed to Moscow's hostility. And that Ukraine, a
country never important for American security, is a de facto military ally, appropriately armed
by the US for combat against a nuclear-armed rival. A reelection-minded president seems
determined to turn China into a new Cold War adversary, an enemy for all things perhaps for all
time. America remains ever entangled in the Middle East, with successive administrations in
permanent thrall of Israel and Saudi Arabia, allowing foreign leaders to set US Mideast policy.
Indeed, both states have avidly pressed the administration to make their enemy, Iran, America'
enemy. The resulting fixation caused the Trump administration to launch economic war against
the rest of the world to essentially prevent everyone on earth from having any commercial
dealing of any kind with anyone in Tehran.
Under Democrats and Republicans alike the federal government views nations that resist its
dictates as adversaries at best, appropriate targets of criticism, always, sanctions, often,
and even bombs and invasions, occasionally. No wonder foreign governments lobby hard to be
designated as allies, partners, and special relationships. Many of these ties have become
essentially permanent, unshakeable even when supposed friends act like enemies and supposed
enemies are incapable of hurting America. US foreign policy increasingly has been captured and
manipulated for the benefit of other governments and interests.
George Washington recognized the problem even in his day, after revolutionary France sought
to win America's support against Great Britain. He warned: "nothing is more essential than that
permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for
others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all
should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual
fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either
of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."
Is there a better description of US foreign policy today? Even when a favored nation is
clearly, ostentatiously, murderously on the wrong side – consider Saudi Arabia's
unprovoked aggression against Yemen – many American policymakers refuse to allow a single
word of criticism to escape their lips. The US has indeed become "a slave," as George
Washington warned.
The consequences for the US and the world are highly negative. He observed that "likewise, a
passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the
favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no
real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the
former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement
or justification."
This is an almost perfect description of the current US approach. American colonists
revolted against what they believed had become ever more "foreign" control, yet the US backs
Israel's occupation and mistreatment of millions of Palestinians. American policymakers parade
the globe spouting the rhetoric of freedom yet subsidize Egypt as it imprisons tens of
thousands and oppresses millions of people. Washington decries Chinese aggressiveness, yet
provides planes, munitions, and intelligence to aid Riyadh in the slaughter of Yemeni civilians
and destruction of Yemeni homes, businesses, and hospitals. In such cases, policymakers have
betrayed America "into a participation in the quarrels and wars without adequate inducement or
justification."
On the other side are the targets of "inveterate antipathies." This also characterizes US
Middle East policy. So hated are Iran and Syria that Washington, DC is making every effort to
destroy their economies, ruin their people's livelihoods, wreck their hospitals, and starve
their population. The respective governments are bad, to be sure, but do not threaten the US
Yet, as the nation's first president explained to Americans, "Antipathy in one nation against
another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of
umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute
occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation,
prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the
best calculations of policy."
Consider how close the US has come to foolish, unnecessary wars against both nations. There
were manifold demands that the US enter the Syrian civil war, in which Americans have no stake.
Short of combat the Obama administration indirectly aided the local affiliate of al-Qaeda, the
terrorist group which staged 9/11 and supposedly was America's enemy. Moreover, there was
constant pressure on America to attack Iran, targeted by the US since 1953, when the CIA helped
replace Tehran's democracy with a brutal tyrant, whose rule was highlighted by corruption,
torture, and a nuclear program – which then was taken over by Iran's Islamic
revolutionaries, to America's horror.
Read George Washington and you would think he had gained a supernatural glimpse into today's
policy debates. He worried about the result when the national government "adopts through
passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation
subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and
pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the
victim."
What better describes US policy toward China and Russia? To be sure, these are nasty
regimes. Yet that has rarely bothered Uncle Sam's relations with other states. Saudi Arabia, a
corrupt and totalitarian theocracy, has been sheltered, protected, and reassured by the US even
after invading its poor neighbor. Among Washington's other best friends: Bahrain, Turkey,
Egypt, and United Arab Emirates, tyrannies all.
The US now is pushing toward a Cold War redux with Russia, after successive administrations
treated Moscow as if it was of no account, lying about plans to expand NATO and acting in other
ways that the US would never tolerate. Imagine the Soviet Union helping to overthrow an
elected, pro-American government in Mexico City, seeking to redirect all commerce to Soviet
allies in South America, and proposing that Mexico join the Warsaw Pact. US policymakers would
be threatening war.
Washington, DC also is treating China as a near-enemy, claiming the right to control China
along its own borders – essentially attempting to apply America's Monroe Doctrine to
Asia. This is something Americans would never allow another nation, especially China, to do to
the US Imagine the response if Beijing sent its navy up the East Coast, told the US how to
treat Cuba, and constantly talked of the possibility of war. America's consistently hostile,
aggressive policy is the result of "projects of pride, ambition, and other sinister and
pernicious motives."
This kind of foreign policy also corrupts the American political system. It encourages
officials and people to put foreign interests before that of America. As George Washington
observed, this mindset: "gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote
themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own
country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; guiding, with the appearances of a
virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal
for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation."
For instance, Woodrow Wilson and America's Anglophile establishment backed Great Britain
over the interests of the American people, dragging the US into World War I, a mindless
imperial slugfest that this nation should have avoided. After the Cold War's end Americans with
ties to Central and Eastern Europe pushed to expand NATO to their ancestral homes, which
created new defense obligations for America while inflaming Russian hostility. Ethnic Greeks
and Turks constantly battle over policy toward their ethnic homelands. Taiwan has developed
enduring ties with congressional Republicans, especially, ensuring US government support
against Beijing. Many evangelical Christians, especially those who hold a particularly bizarre
eschatology (basically, Jews must gather together in their national homeland to be slaughtered
before Jesus can return), back Israel in whatever it does to assist the apparently helpless God
of creation finish his job. The policies that result from such campaigns inevitably are shaped
to benefit foreign interests, not Americans.
Regarding the impact of such a system on the political system George Washington also was
prescient: "As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are
particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities
do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead
public opinion, to influence or awe the public council. Such an attachment of a small or weak
towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter."
In different ways many US policies illustrate the problem caused by "passionate attachments"
– the almost routine and sometimes substantial sacrifice of US economic and security
interests to benefit other governments. For instance, hysteria swept Washington at the
president's recent proposal to simply reduce troop levels in Germany, which along with so many
other European nations sees little reason to do much to defend itself. There are even those who
demand American subservience to the Philippines, a semi-failed state of no significant security
importance to the US Saudi Arabia is a rare case where the attachment is mostly cash and
lobbyists. In most instances cultural, ethnic, religious, and historical ties provide a firmer
foundation for foreign political influence and manipulation.
What to do about such a long-standing problem? George Washington was neither naïf nor
isolationist. He believed in what passed for globalism in those days: a commercial republic
should trade widely. He didn't oppose alliances, for limited purposes and durations. After all,
support from France was necessary for the colonies to win independence.
He proposed a practical policy tied to ongoing realities. The authorities should "steer
clear of permanent alliances," have with other states "as little political connection as
possible," and not "entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils" of other nations'
"ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice." Most important, the object of US foreign
policy was to serve the interests of the American people. In practice it was a matter of
prudence, to be adapted to circumstance and interest. He would not necessarily foreclose
defense of Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Germany, but would insist that such proposals reflect a
serious analysis of current realities and be decided based on what is best for Americans. He
would recognize that what might have been true a few decades ago likely isn't true today. In
reality, little of current US foreign policy would have survived his critical review.
George Washington was an eminently practical man who managed to speak through the ages.
America's recently disastrous experience of playing officious, obnoxious hegemon highlights his
good judgment. The US, he argued, should "observe good faith and justice towards all nations;
cultivate peace and harmony with all."
America may still formally be a republic, but its foreign policy long ago became imperial.
As John Quincy Adams warned, the US is "no longer the ruler of her own spirit." Americans have
learned at great cost that international affairs are too important to be left to the Blob and
foreign policy professionals, handed off to international relations scholars, or, worst of all,
subcontracted to other nations and their lobbyists. The American people should insist on their
nation's return to a true republican foreign policy.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute . A former Special Assistant to President Ronald
Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire .
So they dusted of McFaul to provide the support for bounty provocation. I wonder whether
McFaul one one of Epstein guests, or what ?
So who was the clone of Ciaramella this time? People want to know the hero
Notable quotes:
"... Not to doubt McFaul's ulterior motives; one must assume him to be an "honest man" -- however misguided, in my opinion. He seems to be a disciple of the James Clapper-Curtis LeMay-Joe McCarthy School of Russian Analysis. ..."
"... Clapper, a graduate summa cum laude , certainly had the Russians pegged! Clapper was allowed to stay as Barack Obama's director of national intelligence for three and a half years after perjuring himself in formal Senate testimony (on NSA's illegal eavesdropping). On May 28, 2017 Clapper told NBC's Chuck Todd about "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." ..."
"... As a finale, in full knowledge of Clapper's proclivities regarding Russia, Obama appointed him to prepare the evidence-impoverished, misnomered "Intelligence Community Assessment" claiming that Putin did all he could, including hacking the DNC, to help Trump get elected -- the most embarrassing such "intelligence assessment" I have seen in half a century . ..."
"... Does no one see the irony today in the Democrats' bashing Trump on Afghanistan, with the full support of the Establishment media? The inevitable defeat there is one of the few demonstrable disasters not attributable directly to Trump, but you would not know that from the media. Are the uncorroborated reports of Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops aimed at making it appear that Trump, unable to stand up to Putin, let the Russians drive the rest of U.S. troops out of Afghanistan? ..."
"... Does the current flap bespeak some kind of "Mutiny on the Bounties," so to speak, by a leaker aping Eric Chiaramella? Recall that the Democrats lionized the CIA official seconded to Trump's national security council as a "whistleblower" and proceeded to impeach Trump after Chiaramella leaked information on Trump's telephone call with the president of Ukraine. Far from being held to account, Chiaramella is probably expecting an influential job if his patron, Joe Biden, is elected president. Has there been another mutiny in Trump's White House? ..."
"... It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the "intelligence" on WMD in Iraq was not "mistaken;" it was fraudulent from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never held to account. ..."
"... Here's an assignment due on Monday. Read McFaul's oped carefully. It appears under the title: "Trump would do anything for Putin. No wonder he's ignoring the Russian bounties: Russia's pattern of hostility matches Trump's pattern of accommodation." ..."
"... Full assignment for Monday: Read carefully through each paragraph of McFaul's text and select which of his claims you would put into one or more of the three categories adduced by Sen. Rockefeller 12 years ago about WMD on Iraq. With particular attention to the evidence behind McFaul's claims, determine which of the claims is (a) "uncorroborated"; which (b) "contradicted"; and which (c) "non-existent;" or (d) all of the above. For extra credit, find one that is supported by plausible evidence. ..."
"... Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt are both long-time members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), flagship of the globalist “liberal world order”. The CFR and its many interlocking affiliates, along with their media assets and frontmen in government, have dominated US policy since WW2. Most of the Fed chairmen and secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense and CIA have been CFR members, including Jerome Powell and Mark Esper. ..."
"... The major finance, energy, defense and media corporations are CFR sponsors, and several of their execs are members. David Rubenstein, billionaire founder of the notorious Carlyle Group, is the current CFR chairman. Laurence Fink, billionaire chairman of BlackRock, is a CFR director. See lists at the CFR website. ..."
"... “It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the “intelligence” on WMD in Iraq was not “mistaken;” it was fraudulent from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never held to account.” ..."
"... They are spoon fed those lies by our “intelligence” agencies. As CNN’s Jeff Zucker said, “We’re not investigators, we’re journalists”. Replace “journalists” with “toadies” or “shills” for our “intelligence” community and you’ve gotten to the truth of the matter. ..."
"... In the unhealthy society of Clintons, Obamas, Epstein, Mueller, Adelsons, Clapper, and Krystols, human dignity is a sin. ..."
"... Our institutions including journalism are not merely corrupt, they are degenerate. That is, the corruption is not occasional or the exception is is by design, desired and entirely normal. ..."
"... from Counterpunch.org : “Around 15,000 Soviet troops perished in the Afghan War between 1979 and 1989. The US funneled more than $20 billion to the Mujahideen and other anti-Soviet fighters over that same period. This works out to a “bounty” of $1.33 million for each Soviet soldier killed.” ..."
"... Yes, of course it is a well-known ‘fact’ that Putin has nothing better to do than destory American democracy, and I bet he has dreams about it too! But I am minded to think that if anybody has a penchant for destroying American democracy it is the powers that be in the US deep state, intelligence agencies, and zionist cliques controlling the President and Congress. ..."
"... Udo Ulfkotte was a German journalist. He wrote a sensational book about the practices he experienced of the CIA paying German journalists to publish certain stories. The book was a big best seller in Germany. Its English translation was suppressed for years, but I believe is now available. ..."
"... Gekaufte journalisten. Ulfkotte admitted he signed off on numerous articles that were prepared for him during his career. The last year’s of his life he changed his mores and advocated “better die in truth than live with lies”. ..."
Has there been another mutiny in Trump's White House, as Obama's former ambassador to Russia
piles on the nonsense about Trump being in Putin's pocket?
C orporate media are binging on leaked Kool Aid not unlike the WMD concoction they offered
18 years ago to "justify" the U.S.-UK war of aggression on Iraq.
Now Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia under President Obama, has been enlisted by The
Washington Post 's editorial page honcho, Fred Hiatt, to draw on his expertise (read,
incurable Russophobia) to help stick President Donald Trump back into "Putin's pocket." (This
has become increasingly urgent as the canard of "Russiagate" -- including the linchpin claim
that Russia hacked the DNC -- lies gasping for air.)
In an
oped on Thursday McFaul presented a long list of Vladimir Putin's alleged crimes, offering
a more ostensibly sophisticated version of amateur Russian specialist, Rep. Jason Crow's (D-CO)
claim that: "Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure
out how to destroy American democracy."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with McFaul meeting Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, on May 7, 2013. (State Department)
McFaul had -- well, let's call it an undistinguished career in Moscow. He arrived with a
huge chip on his shoulder and proceeded to alienate just about all his hosts, save for the
rabidly anti-Putin folks he openly and proudly cultivated. In a sense, McFaul became the
epitome of what Henry Wooton described as the role of ambassador -- "an honest man sent to lie
abroad for the good of his country." What should not be so readily accepted is an ambassador
who comes back home and just can't stop misleading.
Not to doubt McFaul's ulterior motives; one must assume him to be an "honest man" --
however misguided, in my opinion. He seems to be a disciple of the James Clapper-Curtis
LeMay-Joe McCarthy School of Russian Analysis.
Clapper, a graduate summa cum laude , certainly had the Russians pegged! Clapper
was allowed to stay as Barack Obama's director of national intelligence for three and a half
years after perjuring himself in formal Senate testimony (on NSA's illegal eavesdropping). On
May 28, 2017 Clapper told NBC's Chuck
Todd about "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically
driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian
technique."
As a finale, in full knowledge of Clapper's proclivities regarding Russia, Obama
appointed him to prepare the evidence-impoverished, misnomered "Intelligence Community
Assessment" claiming that Putin did all he could, including hacking the DNC, to help Trump get
elected -- the most embarrassing such "intelligence assessment" I have seen in half a century
.
Obama and the National Security State
I have asked myself if Obama also had earned some kind of degree from the
Clapper/LeMay/McCarthy School, or whether he simply lacked the courage to challenge the
pitiably self-serving "analysis" of the National Security State. Then I re-read "Obama Misses the Afghan
Exit-Ramp" of June 24, 2010 and was reminded of how deferential Obama was to the generals and
the intelligence gurus, and how unconscionable the generals were -- like their predecessors in
Vietnam -- in lying about always seeing light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
Thankfully, now ten years later, this is all
documented in Craig Whitlock's, "The Afghanistan Papers: At War With the Truth." Corporate
media, who played an essential role in that "war with the truth", have not given Whitlock's
damning story the attention it should command (surprise, surprise!). In any case, it strains
credulity to think that Obama was unaware he was being lied to on Afghanistan.
Some Questions
Clark Gable (l.) with Charles Laughton (r.) in Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935.
Does no one see the irony today in the Democrats' bashing Trump on Afghanistan, with the
full support of the Establishment media? The inevitable defeat there is one of the few
demonstrable disasters not attributable directly to Trump, but you would not know that from the
media. Are the uncorroborated reports of Russian bounties to kill U.S. troops aimed at making
it appear that Trump, unable to stand up to Putin, let the Russians drive the rest of U.S.
troops out of Afghanistan?
Does the current flap bespeak some kind of "Mutiny on the Bounties," so to speak, by a
leaker aping Eric Chiaramella? Recall that the Democrats lionized the CIA official seconded to
Trump's national security council as a "whistleblower" and proceeded to impeach Trump after
Chiaramella leaked information on Trump's telephone call with the president of Ukraine. Far
from being held to account, Chiaramella is probably expecting an influential job if his patron,
Joe Biden, is elected president. Has there been another mutiny in Trump's White House?
And what does one make of the
spectacle of Crow teaming up with Rep. Liz Cheney (R, WY) to restrict Trump's planned
pull-out of troops from Afghanistan, which The Los Angeles Timesreports
has now been blocked until after the election?
Hiatt & McFaul: Caveat Editor
And who published McFaul's oped? Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial page editor
for the past 20 years, who has a long record of listening to the whispers of anonymous
intelligence sources and submerging/drowning the subjunctive mood with flat fact. This was the
case with the (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S.-UK attack.
Readers of the Post were sure there were tons of WMD in Iraq. That Hiatt has invited
McFaul on stage should come as no surprise.
To be fair, Hiatt belatedly acknowledged that the Post should have been more
circumspect in its confident claims about the WMD. "If you look at the editorials we write
running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass
destruction," Hiatt said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review . "If
that's not true, it would have been better not to say it." [CJR, March/April 2004]
At this word of wisdom, Consortium News founder, the late Robert Parry,
offered this comment: "Yes, that is a common principle of journalism, that if something isn't
real, we're not supposed to confidently declare that it is." That Hiatt is still in that job
speaks volumes.
'Uncorroborated, Contradicted, or Even Non-Existent'
It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the "intelligence" on WMD in Iraq was
not "mistaken;" it was fraudulent from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never
held to account.
Announcing on June 5, 2008, the bipartisan conclusions from a five-year study by the Senate
Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller ( D-WV)
said the attack on Iraq was launched "under false pretenses." He described the intelligence
conjured up to "justify" war on Iraq as "uncorroborated, contradicted, or even
non-existent."
Homework
Yogi Berra in 1956. (Wikipedia)
Here's an assignment due on Monday. Read McFaul's
oped carefully. It appears under the title: "Trump would do anything for Putin. No wonder
he's ignoring the Russian bounties: Russia's pattern of hostility matches Trump's pattern of
accommodation."
And to give you a further taste, here is the first paragraph:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have paid Taliban rebels in Afghanistan to
kill U.S. soldiers. Having resulted in at least one American death, and maybe more, these
Russian bounties reportedly produced the desired outcome. While deeply disturbing, this
effort by Putin is not surprising: It follows a clear pattern of ignoring international
norms, rules and laws -- and daring the United States to do anything about it."
Full assignment for Monday: Read carefully through each paragraph of McFaul's text and
select which of his claims you would put into one or more of the three categories adduced by
Sen. Rockefeller 12 years ago about WMD on Iraq. With particular attention to the evidence
behind McFaul's claims, determine which of the claims is (a) "uncorroborated"; which (b)
"contradicted"; and which (c) "non-existent;" or (d) all of the above. For extra credit, find
one that is supported by plausible evidence.
Yogi Berra might be surprised to hear us keep quoting him with "Deja vu, all over again."
Sorry, Yogi, that's what it is; you coined it.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and
briefed The President's Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. He is
co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of
Consortium News.
Tarus77 , July 6, 2020 at 14:25
Gad, one wonders if it can ever get much lower in the press and the answer is yes, it can
and will go lower, i.e. the mcfaul/hiatt tag team. They are still plumbing for the lows.
The question becomes just how stupid these two are or how stupid do they believe the
readership is to read and believe this garbage.
Voice from Europe , July 6, 2020 at 11:58
By now the Russia did it ! is in effect a joke in Russia. Economically, politically, geo
strategically China and Asia and Africa have become more important and reliable partners of
Russia than the USA. And Europe is also dropping fast on the trustworthy partners
list…..
John , July 5, 2020 at 12:55
Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt are both long-time members of the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), flagship of the globalist “liberal world order”. The CFR and its
many interlocking affiliates, along with their media assets and frontmen in government, have
dominated US policy since WW2. Most of the Fed chairmen and secretaries of State, Treasury,
Defense and CIA have been CFR members, including Jerome Powell and Mark Esper.
The major finance, energy, defense and media corporations are CFR sponsors, and several of
their execs are members. David Rubenstein, billionaire founder of the notorious Carlyle
Group, is the current CFR chairman. Laurence Fink, billionaire chairman of BlackRock, is a
CFR director. See lists at the CFR website.
Anna , July 6, 2020 at 09:38
Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt are both very active promoters of hate crimes. Neither has
any decency hence decency is allergic to war profiteers and opportunistic liars.
The poor USA; to descend to such a deep moral hole that both Michael McFaul and Fred Hiatt
are still alive and prospering. Shamelessness and presstituting are paid well in the US.
Dems and Reps are already mad. You cannot destroy what does not exist; like Democracy in
these United States. Nor God or Putin could. This has always being a fallacy. This is not a
democracy; same thing with ”communist" China or the USSR .Those two were never
socialist. There has never being a real Socialist or Communist country.
Guy , July 4, 2020 at 12:26
“It is sad to have to remind folks 18 years later that the
“intelligence” on WMD in Iraq was not “mistaken;” it was fraudulent
from the get-go. The culprits were finally exposed but never held to account.”
That statement goes to the crux of the matter.Why should journalists care about what is true
or a lie in their reports ,they know they will never be held to account .They should be held
to account through the court system . A lie by any journalist should be actionable by any
court of law . The fear of jail time would sort out the scam journalists we presently have to
endure .
As it is they have perverted the profession of journalism and it is the law of the
jungle .No true democracy should put up with this. We are surrounded with lies that are
generated by the very establishment that should protect it’s citizens from same .
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 15:36
They are spoon fed those lies by our “intelligence” agencies. As CNN’s
Jeff Zucker said, “We’re not investigators, we’re journalists”.
Replace “journalists” with “toadies” or “shills” for our
“intelligence” community and you’ve gotten to the truth of the matter.
Anna , July 6, 2020 at 09:50
The ‘journalists’ observe how things have been going on for Cheney the Traitor
and Bush the lesser — nothing happened to the mega criminals. The hate-bursting and
war-profiteering Cheney’s daughter has even squeezed into US Congress.
In a healthy society where human dignity is cherished, the Cheney family will be ostracized
and the family name became a synonym for the word ‘traitor.’ In the unhealthy society of Clintons, Obamas, Epstein, Mueller, Adelsons, Clapper, and Krystols, human dignity
is a sin.
Ricard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 11:42
Our institutions including journalism are not merely corrupt, they are degenerate. That
is, the corruption is not occasional or the exception is is by design, desired and entirely
normal.
Stan W. , July 4, 2020 at 12:10
I’m still confident that Durham’s investigation will expose and successfully
prosecute the maggots that infest our government.
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 15:29
What is the basis for this confidence?
John Puma , July 4, 2020 at 12:03
Re: whether Obumma “had earned some kind of degree from the Clapper/LeMay/McCarthy
School” of Russia Analytics.
It would be a worthy addition to his degree collection featuring that earned from the
Neville Chamberlain Night School of Critical Political Negotiation.
Jeff Harrison , July 4, 2020 at 11:16
Hmmm. Lessee. The US attacks Afghanistan with about the same legitimacy that we had when
we attacked Iraq and the Taliban are in charge. We oust the Taliban from power and put our
own puppets in place. What idiot thinks that the Taliban are going to need a bounty to kill
Americans?
Jeff Harrison, I like your logic. Plus, I understand that far fewer Americans are being
killed in Afghanistan than were under Obama’s administration.
AnneR , July 4, 2020 at 10:27
Frankly, I am sick to death of the unwarranted, indeed bestial Russophobia that is
megaphoned minute by minute on NPR and the BBC World Service (only radio here since my
husband died). If it isn’t this latest trumped up (ho ho) charge, there are repeated
mentions, in passing, of course, of the Russiagate, hacking, Kremlin control of the Strumpet
to back up the latest bunch of lies.
Doesn’t matter at *all* that Russiagate was
debunked, that even Mueller couldn’t actually demonstrably pull the DNC/ruling elites
rabbit out of the hat, that the impeachment of the Strumpet went nowhere. And it clearly
– by its total absence on the above radio broadcasts – doesn’t matter one
iota that the Pentagonal hasn’t gone along, that gaping holes in the confabulation are
(and were) obvious to those who cared to think with half a mind awake and reflecting on past
US ruling elite lies, untruths, obfuscations. Nope. Just repeat, repeat, repeat. Orwell would
clap his hands (not because he agreed with the atrocious politics but the lesson is
learnt).
Added to the whipped up anti-Russia, decidedly anti-Putin crapola – is of course the
Russian peoples’ vote, decision making on their own country’s changes to the
Basic Law (a form of Constitution). When the radio broadcasts the usual sickening
anti-Russian/Putin propaganda regarding this vote immediately prior they would state that the
changes would install Putin for many more years: no mention that he would have to be elected,
i.e. voted by the populace into the presidency. (This was repeated ad infinitum without any
elaboration.) No other proposed changes were mentioned – certainly not that the Duma
would gain greater control over the governance of the country and over the president’s
cabinet. I.e. that the popularly elected (ain’t that what we call democracy??)
representatives in the Duma (parliament) would essentially have more power than the
president.
But most significantly, to my mind, no one has (well of course not – this is Russia)
raised the issue of the fact that it was the Russian people, the vox populi/hoi polloi, who
have had some say in how they are to be governed, how their government will work for them.
HOW much say have we had/do we have in how our government functions, works – let alone
for us, the hoi polloi? When did we the citizenry last have a voting say on ANY sentence in
the Constitution that governs us??? Ummm I do believe it was the creation of the wealthy
British descended slave holding, real estate ethnic-cleansing lot who wrote and ratified the
original document and the hardly dissimilar Congressional and state types who have over the
years written and voted on various amendments. And it is the members of the upper classes in
the Supreme Court who adjudicate on its application to various problems.
BUT We the hoi polloi have never, ever had a direct opportunity to individually vote for
or against any single part of the Constitution which is supposed to be the
“democratic” superstructure which governs us. Unlike the Russians a couple of
days ago.
Richard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 15:48
“HOW much say have we had/do we have in how our government functions,
works…” See, that’s your mistake right there. WE don’t have a
government. We need one, but we ain’t got one. THEY have a government which they let us
go through the motions of electing. ‘Member back when Bernie was talking about a
Political Revolution?
Here’s a little fact for you. The five most populous states have a total of
123,000,000 people. That’s 10 Senators. The five least populated states have a total of
3.5 million. That’s also 10 Senators. Democracy anyone?
vinnieoh , July 4, 2020 at 09:37
There have been three coup d’état within the US within the lifetimes of most
that read these pages. The first was explained to us by Eisenhower only as he was exiting his
time from the national stage; the MIC had co-opted our government. The second happened in
2000, with the putsch in Florida and then the adoption by the neocon cabal of Bush /Chaney of
the PNAC blueprint “Strategies for Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (Defenses
– hahahaha – shit!). The third happened late last year and early this year when
the bottom-up grass-roots movement of progressivism was crushed by the DNC and the
cold-warrior hack Biden was inserted as the champion of “the opposition
party.”
And, make no mistake that Kamala Harris WILL be his running mate. It was always going to
be Harris. It was to be Harris at the TOP of the ticket as the primaries began, but she
wasn’t even placing in the top tier in any of the contests. However, the poohbahs and
strategists of the DNC are nothing if not determined and consistent. If Biden should win, we
should all start practicing now saying “President Harris” because that is what
the future holds. For the DNC, she looks the part, she sounds the part, but more importantly
she is the very definition of the status quo, corporate ass-kisser, MIC tool.
The professional political class have fully colluded to fatally cripple this democratic
republic. “Democracy” is just a word they say like, “Where’s my
kickback?” (excuse me – my “motivation”.) This bounty scam and the
rehabilitation of GW Bush are nothing but a full blitzkrieg flanking of Trump on the right.
And Trump of course is so far out of his depth that he actually believes that Israel is his
friend. (A hint Donny: Israel is NO-ONE’S friend.)
What is most infuriating? hope-crushing? plain f$%&*#g scary? is that the majority of
Americans from all quarters do not want any of what the professional political class keeps
dumping on us. The very attempt at performing this upcoming election will finally and forever
lay completely bare the collapse of a functioning government. It’s going to be very
ugly, and it may very well be the end. Dog help us all.
Richard Coleman , July 6, 2020 at 15:51
Don’t you think that the assassination of JFK counts as a coup d’etat?
Zhu , July 7, 2020 at 02:10
Apres moi, le Deluge.
John Drake , July 7, 2020 at 11:25
Oh gosh how can you forget the Kennedy Assassination. Most people don’t realize he
was had ordered the removal of a thousand advisors from Vietnam starting the process of
completely cutting bait there, as he had in Laos and Cambodia. All of which made the generals
apoplectic. The great secret about Vietnam-which Ellsberg discovered much latter, and
mentioned in his book Secrets, another good read- was that every president had been warned it
was likely futile. Kennedy was the only one who took that intelligence seriously-like it was
actually intelligent intelligence.
Enter stage right Allen Dulles (fired CIA chief), the anti Castro Cubans, the Mafia and
most important the MIC; exit Jack Kennedy.
Douglas, JFK why he died and why it matters is the best work on the subject. And no Oswald
did not do it; it was a sniper team from different angles, but read the book it gets
complicated.
Roger , July 4, 2020 at 09:11
from Counterpunch.org : “Around 15,000 Soviet troops perished in the Afghan War
between 1979 and 1989. The US funneled more than $20 billion to the Mujahideen and other
anti-Soviet fighters over that same period. This works out to a “bounty” of $1.33
million for each Soviet soldier killed.”
Skip Scott , July 4, 2020 at 08:35
I am wondering how Cheney and Crow can block Trump from withdrawing the troops from
Afghanistan. Is Trump Commander in Chief, or not? How can two senators stop the Commander in
Chief from commanding troop movements? I realize they control the budget, but aren’t
they crossing into illegality by restricting Trump’s ability to
“command”?
Toad Sprocket , July 4, 2020 at 16:49
Yeah, I imagine it’s illegal. Didn’t Lindsay Graham threaten the same thing
when Trump was thinking of pulling troops/”advisers” from Syria? And other
congress warmongers joined in though I don’t think any legislation was passed. They
can’t be bothered to authorize the starts of wars but want to step in when someone
tries to end them.
Oh, and Schumer on South Korea troops, I think that one did pass. Almost certainly illegal
if it came down to it, but our government is of course lawless. And our courts full of judges
who are bought off or moronic or both.
dean 1000 , July 4, 2020 at 06:52
The soft coup attempt continues Ray. More lies and bullshit. It may continue until
election day. Will the media fess-up to its lies after the fact again?
Francis Lee , July 4, 2020 at 04:49
“Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure
out how to destroy American democracy.”
Yes, of course it is a well-known ‘fact’ that Putin has nothing better to do
than destory American democracy, and I bet he has dreams about it too! But I am minded to
think that if anybody has a penchant for destroying American democracy it is the powers that
be in the US deep state, intelligence agencies, and zionist cliques controlling the President
and Congress.
”Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
The American establishment seems to be suffering from a bad case of
‘projection’ as psychiatrists call it. That is to say accusing others of what
they are themselves actually doing.
The whole idiotic circus would be hilarious if it were not so serious.
Antonia Young , July 4, 2020 at 12:20
Putin’s (and by extension the Russian Federation’s) primary objective is
international stability. “Destroying America, dividing Americans is the last thing he
wants.) Putin learned many lessons during the break-up of the U.S.S.R. observing the carpet
baggers/oligarchs/vultures who descended on the weak nation, absconding with it’s
wealth and resources at mere fractions of their real value. The deep state’s worst fear
is the co-operation btwn Putin and President Trump to make the world more peaceful, stable,
co-operative and prosperous.
rosemerry , July 4, 2020 at 16:10
The whole conceited and arrogant “belief” that
The USA has any resemblance to a democracy and
Pres. Putin has nothing else to do but think how he could do a better job of showing the
destructive and irresponsible behavior of the USA than its own leaders” and media can
do with no help
has no basis in reality.
If anything, Putin is such a stickler for international law, negotiations, avoidance of
conflict that he is regarded by many as too Christian for this modern, individualistic,
LBGTQ, ”nobody matters but me” worldview of the USA!
Steve Naidamast , July 5, 2020 at 19:54
“If the enemy is self destructing, let them continue to do so…”
Napoleon
Zhu , July 7, 2020 at 02:17
“zionist cliques”: Christian Zionist fighting Fundies, eager for the End of
the World, the Second Coming of Jesus.
delia ruhe , July 4, 2020 at 01:09
Yup, we got a Bountygate. Since my early morning visit to the Foreign Policy site, the
place has exploded with breathless articles on the dastardly Putin and the cowardly Trump,
who has so far failed to hold Putin to account. Reminded me of a similar explosion there when
Russiagate finally got the attention the Dems thought it deserved.
(Anyone think that the intel community pays a fee to each of the FP columnists whenever
one of their a propaganda narratives needs a push to get it off the ground?)
Udo Ulfkotte was a German journalist. He wrote a sensational book about the practices he experienced of the CIA paying German
journalists to publish certain stories. The book was a big best seller in Germany. Its English translation was suppressed for years, but I believe is now available.
Susan Siens , July 5, 2020 at 16:30
Reply to John Chuckman: I’d love to read this book but it wasn’t available a
few years ago when I looked. I’ll look again!
Voice from Europe , July 6, 2020 at 11:52
Gekaufte journalisten.
Ulfkotte admitted he signed off on numerous articles that were prepared for him during his
career. The last year’s of his life he changed his mores and advocated “better
die in truth than live with lies”.
Richard A. , July 4, 2020 at 00:59
I remember the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour from decades ago. Real experts on Russia like
Dimitri Simes and Stephen Cohen were the ones to appear on that NewsHour. The NewsHour of
today rarely has experts on Russia, just experts on Russia bashing–like Michael McFaul.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
Antonia Young , July 3, 2020 at 23:35
Thank you, Ray for your clarion voice in the midst of WMD-seventeen-point-oh. Will the
American people have the wisdom to notice how many times we’re being fooled? And
finally wake up and stop supporting these questionable news outlets? With appreciation for
your excellent analysis, as usual. ~Tonia Young (Formerly with the Topanga Peace
Alliance)
The majority of Americans have a lot more to worry about than the latest nonsense about
Russia. I think most people just tune it out.
The ones being fooled are the fools who have been lapping this crap up from the get go. The
supposed educated class who think themselves superior and well informed because they read and
listen to the propaganda of PBS, NPR, NYT etc.
They don’t seem to realize the ship is sinking while they’re playing these
ridiculous games.
Susan Siens , July 5, 2020 at 16:34
The supposedly educated class, yes! It can be stunning how people believe anything they
hear on PBS or NPR, and then they make fun of people who believe anything they hear on Fox
News. What’s the difference? Both are propaganda tools.
And, yes, watch us go down in flames while so-called progressives boo-hoo about Trump
thinking he’s above the law (like every other president before him). Our local
“peace and justice” group sent me an email asking me to sign a petition
supporting Robert Mueller. I was gobsmacked, and then I realized our local “peace and
justice” group had been taken over by Democratic Party “resisters.”
Jeezums, why is every word hijacked?
There is not much "real" left in the the USA. Usually what we see is just different flavors
of far right and right.
Money quote: "Ah, for the good old days when lefties could be treated as a deluded minority rather than a vanguard party of
globalist imperialists. pl"
Notable quotes:
"... As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of waging wars for humanitarian ends. A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and Christopher Hitchens, would make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the process throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine’s Just War theory on the trash heap and paving the way for what was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II, Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a “targeted” assassination program." ..."
"... In other words we are seeing the tight squeezing of the New Democrats (Wall-Street, Tech, humanitarian intervention) by the radical left (Green New Deal, UBI) and by the angry Trumpists. ..."
"... Samantha Power is Irish bred and London born. She was schooled in Dublin till her mother emigrated to the US. Christiane Amanpour is British-Iranian. As far as I can determine she never has had US citizenship. ..."
"... WTF were they smoking when they decided to promote war to secure human rights??? So why did we let these halfwits in the country? ..."
"... Kerry seems is the perfect example of Democrats’ hypocritical ‘opposition’ to pointless and futile wars. Not that anybody remembers, but it was the liberal Bill Clinton who went to war in Yugoslavia and defanged the anti-war wing of the party. After Clinton Democrats only raised their voices against Republican wars and now have taken to criticizing Trump for not being belligerent enough!!! ..."
"... The same white men who stood three years ago Charlottesville to prevent the toppling of statues could be the backbone of a new anti-war movement ..."
"... The New York Times is not revolutionary, not by a very long shot. Neither are all the big corporations and foundations who've donated generously to the cause of BLM. ..."
"... America is not in the middle of a revolution — it is a reactionary putsch. About four years ago, the sort of people who had acquired position and influence as a result of globalisation were turfed out of power for the first time in decades. They watched in horror as voters across the world chose Brexit, Donald Trump and other populist and conservative-nationalist options. ..."
"... The essential idea is that neither the non Trump wing of the American establishment (more properly Global establishment still anchored tenuously in DC) nor the Trump wing want the voters to discuss the economy - it's too hot a subject. ..."
"... Way too hot since the financial crisis of 2007-08 followed the working class jobs overseas and south of the border in the 90s and inequality exceeded that of the gilded age. No. But they will discuss racism (and gender). It divides the country further than ever, deflects focus on wealth disparity (the establishment has no intention of ever equalizing wealth even a bit) and presto - gives corporate America and media a new policing tool in the form of mandatory workshops and summary job dismissals even more unsubstantiated than many of those with #MeToo. It enhances the academic totalitarians of political correctness with corporate / employer totalitarianism of "learn your inclusivity lessons reeducation camp" or else. Unions disappeared long ago and now this. ..."
"... Yes the stupidity is ominous. They act as though there is no potential for repurcussion. It's very peculiar. ..."
As Johnstone recounts, after the Cold War liberals became bewitched by the prospect of waging wars for humanitarian ends.
A generation of journalists and foreign policy experts including Samantha Power, Christiane Amanpour, Jamie Rubin, and
Christopher Hitchens, would make the Balkans a proving ground for their liberal theories of preventative war, in the process
throwing the ancient and venerable tradition of St. Augustine’s Just War theory on the trash heap and paving the way for what
was to follow in the coming decades, including Iraq II, Libya, Syria and a global drone war and a “targeted” assassination
program."
This is a serious article addressing a serious problem. If the "left" sells out on war
issues as they have done the last 20 years or so, there is no pushback against the permanent
war system. Those one-time leftists who have sold out are no longer really leftists,
especially once they are relying on the corrupt permanent spy state for their information and
support.
Interesting and correct observation. Allow me to throw in my own two cents with regards to
the rise of what is defined as the "anti-Anti War left". I should note that there are eerily
similar parallels between the rise of the New Left in the 60s that was the mix of socialist
democrats, sexual revolutionaries, flower-power hippies, anti-imperialist/anti-war activists,
and identitarianists (Huey Netwon, Cesar Chavez, MLK) etc. and today's BLM, Antifa, 'woke'
types, third-gen feminists, broke millennials.
While the former's rise in the Democratic
Party led to the exodus of Neoconservatives (former Trotskyists, Socialist and Marxists) to
the Conservative movement, the latter is also moving the New Democrats to the Right, but the
problem is that the current Political Right is mostly controlled by the Trumpists so these
New Democrat types (Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, Menendez, Biden etc.) are stuck between a hard
place and a rock.
In other words we are seeing the tight squeezing of the New Democrats
(Wall-Street, Tech, humanitarian intervention) by the radical left (Green New Deal, UBI) and
by the angry Trumpists.
Just to give you one example, last week a prototype New Democrat and long time congressman
(since 89) Elliot Engel of NY who fits well into this definition was defeated handily in the
NY-16 primaries by the Democratic Socialists of America endorsed candidate, Jamal Bowman. Mr.
Bowman, an African American is ideologically very similar to AOC, Tlaib, and Omar.
He won on
a platform of foreign policy endorsed by the left-zionists (ex-labor zionists) against the
likudnik right-wing zionist of Engles' which is very interesting since, Engel has been known
for his hawkish views on foreign policy and extremely pro-Israel and chaired the House
Foreign Affairs Committee recently.
Recently Sanders and the Democratic Socialists expressed their opposition to Bibi's
planned annexation of West-bank and adjacent Palestinian enclaves and threatened to to
cut-off the military aid to Israel if Bibi moved on with his plan.
Domestically, there are several seats up for re-election and especially two in Georgia and
Arizona Senate whose ppointed Republican candidates are in very shaky grounds versus their
democratic challengers. What is clear is that the New Democrat platforms are no longer
popular by the Democratic base and given recent events, it can be safely said that either the
most law and order and Trumpian candidates will win or the Democratic socialists endorsed
ones. So another problem for the New Dems.
Judging by my observation, the current trend is the alliance between the NeverTrumpers
(The Lincoln project, The Right Pac) like Bill Kristol and the
Reagan-to-Bush-43-neoconservatives (most of whom were Reagan Democrats in the late 70s and
80s themselves so nothing new for them) to push Trump out of office in their view before the
RNC in Aug and to make room for the New Democrats and also to restore their previous 20+
years of reigning over the Republican Party. If their plan becomes successful, in the post
2020 election we will see a political configuration resembling the 90s and early 2000s with
one major difference which is the introduction of several, in my opinion less that 10 seats
in the House reserved for the far-Left socialist Democrats.
And in terms of Foreign policy, everyone will get happy and the Blob/Borg think tank class
in D.C. will see business as usual as the Democratic Socialists will be "persuaded" to team
up with the New Democrats with regards to sending Troops to conduct humanitarian intervention
abroad (i.e. the Powell Doctrine) in exchange for domestic welfare programs, the
NeverTrumpers and the Republican hawks (Cotton, Graham, Rubio, Cruz, etc.) will have war
plans already written for them at AEI, Hudson and Heritage that focuses on China with the
help of the New Democrats and probably the Far-left.
Samantha Power is Irish bred and London born. She was schooled in Dublin till her mother
emigrated to the US. Christiane Amanpour is British-Iranian. As far as I can determine she
never has had US citizenship. Christopher Hitchens is English born, never visited America
unti he was 32. And even then kept his British citizenship for another 26 years, only
becoming a US citizen in 2007. Probably to take advantage of favorable US income tax on his
book earnings.
WTF were they smoking when they decided to promote war to secure human rights??? So why
did we let these halfwits in the country?
Seems to me we are better off by letting in a few more Sikh farmers from India or more
wannabee restaurant owners from Ethiopia. Or maybe even more wannabee bodega empresarios from
south of our border.
Anyone remember John Kerry, who criticized the anti-war movement and enlisted and served
in Vietnam, only to opportunistically turn against the war. As long as the winds blew
anti-war, he continued to posture that way. Then he reversed course, maybe sensing an SOS
opportunity, and voted for the War in Iraq, meanwhile posturing against it on the grounds
that it wasn’t being fought right!
Kerry seems is the perfect example of Democrats’ hypocritical
‘opposition’ to pointless and futile wars. Not that anybody remembers, but it was
the liberal Bill Clinton who went to war in Yugoslavia and defanged the anti-war wing of the
party. After Clinton Democrats only raised their voices against Republican wars and now have
taken to criticizing Trump for not being belligerent enough!!!
The "anti-antiwar left" is of course an oxymoron. In reality, they are neo-McCarthyites,
neocons, and Israel-firsters. Nothing new. They were never leftists to begin with and
certainly never will be.
To add onto the comments by Polish Janitor regarding Jamaal Bowman, I have this to say.
Just like AOC, he'll cuck out to Israel. He'll take the money and he'll probably take that
"educational" trip to Israel as well. While he's there, would anyone be surprised if he had a
hot time with some honey pie and they got him on Kodak? They'll only drop hints about the
stick, in the meantime, they'll be stuffing his face with carrots as he comes around to the
Zionist agenda.
The same white men who stood three years ago Charlottesville to prevent the toppling of
statues could be the backbone of a new anti-war movement, if only conservatives weren't
afraid of being called 'racist' by people who hate them anyway.
To better get one's bearings regarding what's going on I highly recommend this Spectator
article to the committee. Although BLM and other nefarious types referred to as Antifa
certainly do pass the anarchist test and Marxist test it's critical the committee understand
that the whole thing is being managed by a wing of the establishment.
The New York Times is
not revolutionary, not by a very long shot. Neither are all the big corporations and
foundations who've donated generously to the cause of BLM.
Editorial talents at NYT
instigated the wholesale rewriting of American history over a year ago with their fraudulent
1619 project which says American history began in that year with the importation of African
slaves.
But it's real thesis is that the revolution of 1776 (an inspiration to people
everywhere), was not undertaken to free the thirteen colonies from the tyranny of King
George - no - it was done for the sole reason of perpetuation of slavery because Washington
and other colonial land owners feared that the institution of slavery would be made illegal
by their then British overlords. I kid you not.
The NY Times. Pure revisionism of the worst
sort. But the ends which this revisionism serve, as do the subsequent BLM riots and mindless
iconoclasms, are revealed in this piece:
(This Revolution isn't What it Looks Like). Here's a brief excerpt - it's a management
device. Matt Taibbi has a treatment nearly as good but too diffuse and witty for these
purposes, under the title "Year Zero" on his blog, but it is behind a paywall. Many
illustrative exames though.
Spectator first few paragraphs..
Bear with this. What they're doing is designed to infuriate and disable critical
understanding as they proceed to carry the day in real time.
QUOTE:
America is not in the middle of a revolution — it is a reactionary putsch. About
four years ago, the sort of people who had acquired position and influence as a result of
globalisation were turfed out of power for the first time in decades. They watched in horror
as voters across the world chose Brexit, Donald Trump and other populist and
conservative-nationalist options.
This deposition explains the storm of unrest battering American cities from coast to coast
and making waves in Europe as well. The storm’s ferocity — the looting, the mobs,
the mass lawlessness, the zealous iconoclasm, the deranged slogans like #DefundPolice —
terrifies ordinary Americans. Many conservatives, especially, believe they are facing a
revolution targeting the very foundations of American order.
But when national institutions bow (or kneel) to the street fighters’ demands, it
should tell us that something else is going on. We aren’t dealing with a Maoist or
Marxist revolt, even if some protagonists spout hard-leftish rhetoric. Rather, what’s
playing out is a counter-revolution of the neoliberal class — academe, media, large
corporations, ‘experts’, Big Tech — against the nationalist revolution
launched in 2016. The supposed insurgents and the elites are marching in the streets
together, taking the knee together.
They do not seek a radically new arrangement, but a return to the pre-Trump, pre-Brexit
status quo ante which was working out very well for them. It was, of course, working out less
well for the working class of all races, who bore the brunt of their preferred policy mix:
open borders, free trade without limits, an aggressive cultural liberalism that corroded
tradition and community, technocratic ‘global governance’ that neutered democracy
and politics as such.
When national institutions bow to the street fighters’ demands, it tells us
something else is going on
...Did you realize that the Black Lives Matter group only has 14 local chapters in America
and 3 in Canada? I don't think there are many actual Antifa members out there either. Now of
course a few determined troublemakers can cause a lot of problems but still I can't see how
the country is in real danger.
Probably the real danger here is that these groups get moral support from nonradical
people for radical actions and policies. Right now there are a lot more people against
getting rid of the police than are for it. Now if that changed I would get worried. I have to
admit that I don't like the fact that we do not know who's funding the radicals and that many
are anonymous but I am not afraid of them. I can't imagine a situation in which they would
win and we would lose over time.
No it doesn't, not that I know of. It was the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones working
since 2015 for the times, who received a 2020 Pulitzer prize for the project which initially
was presented in the Times magazine for the 400th anniversary of 1619 when it is claimed that
enslaved Africans first arrived to the American colonies. However it mushroomed into
something much larger and won the award. It was to investigate the legacy of slavery but with
its claim that the true founding of the United States was in 1619 rather than 1776, it drew
criticism from several historians. The controversy was conducted in Politico and on the pages
of the World Socialist Web Site. See here:
You will find links to several of the articles of the project, including: "America Wasn't
a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One", essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones and "American
Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation", essay by Matthew Desmond.
I prefaced the intro to the Spectator article with mention of the Times award winning
project because it is vital cultural- historical background to what's transpired since George
Floyd incident of May 25.
My purpose was not to focus on that revisionist project though one
may investigate it at leisure, but the reactionary establishment counter coup to the 2016
election of which the events of May 25 et seq are the most recent chapter - chapters one and
two being Russiagate and impeachment.
Taibbi, in his latest which parallels the Spectator
piece, does think to mention it. The essential idea is that neither the non Trump wing of the
American establishment (more properly Global establishment still anchored tenuously in DC)
nor the Trump wing want the voters to discuss the economy - it's too hot a subject.
Way too
hot since the financial crisis of 2007-08 followed the working class jobs overseas and south
of the border in the 90s and inequality exceeded that of the gilded age. No. But they will
discuss racism (and gender). It divides the country further than ever, deflects focus on
wealth disparity (the establishment has no intention of ever equalizing wealth even a bit)
and presto - gives corporate America and media a new policing tool in the form of mandatory
workshops and summary job dismissals even more unsubstantiated than many of those with
#MeToo. It enhances the academic totalitarians of political correctness with corporate /
employer totalitarianism of "learn your inclusivity lessons reeducation camp" or else. Unions
disappeared long ago and now this.
From Taibbi:
It’s the Fourth of July, and revolution is in the air. Only in America would it look
like this: an elite-sponsored Maoist revolt, couched as a Black liberation movement whose
canonical texts are a corporate consultant’s white guilt self-help manual, and a New
York Times series rewriting history to explain an election they called wrong.
Much of America has watched in quizzical silence in recent weeks as crowds declared war on
an increasingly incoherent succession of historical symbols. Maybe you nodded as Confederate
general Albert Pike was toppled or even when Christopher Columbus was beheaded, but it got a
little weird when George Washington was emblazoned with “Fuck Cops” and set on
fire, or when they went after Ulysses S. Grant, abolitionist Colonel Hans Christian Heg,
“Forward,” (a seven-foot-tall female figure meant to symbolize progress), the
Portland, Oregon “Elk statue,” or my personal favorite, the former slave Miguel
de Cervantes, whose cheerful creations Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were apparently mistaken
for reals and had their eyes lashed red in San Francisco.
Was a What the Fuck? too much to ask? It was! In the space of a few weeks the level of
discourse in the news media dropped so low, the fear of being shamed as a deviationist so
high, that most of the weirder incidents went uncovered. Leading press organs engaged in
real-time Soviet-style airbrushing. Here’s how the Washington Post described a movement
that targeted Spanish missionary Junipero Serra, Abraham Lincoln (a “single-handed
symbol of white supremacy,” according to UW-Madison students), an apple cider press
sculpture, abolitionist Mathias Baldwin, and the first all-Black volunteer regiment in the
Civil War, among others:
Across the country, protesters have toppled statues of figures from America’s sordid
past — including Confederate generals — as part of demonstrations against racism
and police violence.
The New York Times, once the dictionary definition of “unprovocative,”
suddenly reads like Pol Pot’s Sayings of Angkar. Heading into the Fourth of July
weekend, the morning read for upscale white Manhattanites was denouncing Mount Rushmore,
urging Black America to arm itself, and re-positioning America alongside more deserving
historical parallels in a feature about caste systems:
For 150 years the US treated its defeated internal enemy with respect in the interest of
re-unification and reconciliation. Now that is gone destroyed by Marxist vanguard
conspiratorial parties like antifa and BLM and the the power hungry Democrat Party pols who
have made a deal with their soul mate extremists. Well, laissez les bon temps roulez!
Yes the stupidity is ominous. They act as though there is no potential for repurcussion.
It's very peculiar. Maybe they think oh well, there's been plenty of riots over the years.
What ever happened? Didn't we get OJ freed? Didn't they pass civil rights legislation back in
the day? And as for right now - aren't all the big people taking the knee - aren't
corporations endorsing us? Isn't Twitter censoring in our favor? The mayor of New York City -
wasn't he all set to paint a black lives matter mural onto 5th avenue opposite Trump tower
before postponing it to paint one in Harlem instead?
Yes, all true. I don't think they've detected how furious people are getting with their
behavior though. The tide is turning - CHAZ is gone, the conventions loom.
Long term I see nothing to be optimistic about. If Trump wins the counter coups will
continue. If Biden, with a female minority VP who may become President -- good luck. Remember
the Tea Party reaction ensuing on the heels of the first African American President? Reaction
will be quite as bad at least with Trump, his family and his base still very much on the
scene and infuriated.
But the oligarchs have seen their assets rise by hundreds of billions of dollars in a few
short months. The surviving owners consolidate. People will be forced to work for peanuts.
Evictions and repossessions are coming soon.
Putin has to stay within neoliberal framework because this is a the dominant social framework in existence. But he is determine
to "tame the markets" when necessary which is definitely anathema to neoliberals. So he is kind of mixture of neoliberal and traditional
New Deal style statist. At the same time he definitely deviates from neoliberalism in some major areas, such as labor market and monopolies.
In fact, much of his economic and social policies have a decidedly neoliberal bent. As Tony Wood argues, Putin has reformed
and consolidated the Yeltsin system. There is not as much of a break with Yeltsin as liberals -- or apparently leftists looking
for any hope -- want to believe.
You have no clue. This is a typical left-wing "Infantile Disorder" point of view based on zero understanding of Russia and neoliberalism
as a social system. Not that I am a big specialist, but your level of ignorance and arrogance is really stunning.
Neoliberalism as a social system means internal colonization of population by financial oligarchy and resulting decline of
the standard of living for lower 80% due to the redistribution of wealth up. It also means subservience to international financial
capital and debt slavery for vassal countries (the group to which Russia in views of Washington belongs) .
The classic example is Ukraine where 80% of population are now live on the edge of abject poverty. Russia, although with great
difficulties, follows a different path. This is indisputable.
The neoliberal resolution which happened under alcoholic Yeltsin was stopped or at least drastically slowed down by Putin.
Some issues were even reversed. For example, the USA interference via NGO ended. Direct interference of the USA into internal
affairs of Russia ( Russia was a USA colony under Yeltsin ) also diminished, although was not completely eliminated (and this
is impossible in view of the USA position in the the hegemon of the neoliberal "International" and owner of the world reserve
currency.)
Those attempts to restore the sovereignty of Russia were clearly anti-neoliberal acts of Putin. After all the slogan of neoliberalism
is "financial oligarchy of all countries unite" -- kind of perversion of Trotskyism (or. more correctly, "Trotskyism for the rich.")
In general, Yeltsin's model of neoliberalism in Russia (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semibankirschina )
experienced serious setbacks under Putin's rule, although some of his measures were distinctly neoliberal.
Recent "Medvedev's" pension reform is one (which was partially a necessity due to the state of Russian finances at the time;
although the form that was chosen -- in your face, without some type of carrot -- was really mediocre, like almost anything coming
from Medvedev ); some botched attempt in privatization of electrical networks with Chubais at the helm is another -- later stopped,
etc.
But in reality, considerable if not dominant political power now belongs to corporations, whether you want it or not. And that
creates strong neoliberal fifth column within the country. That's a huge problem for Putin. The alternative is dictatorship which
usually does not end well. So there is not much space for maneuvering anyway. You need to play the anti-neoliberal game very skillfully
as you always have weak cards in hands, the point which people like VK never understand.
BTW, unlike classic neoliberals, Putin is a consistent proponent of indexation of income of lower strata of the population
to inflation, which he even put in the constitution. Unlike Putin, classic neoliberals preach false narrative that "the rising
tide lifts all boats."
All-in-all whenever possible, Putin often behaves more like a New Deal Capitalism adherent, than like a neoliberal. He sincerely
is trying to provide a decent standard of living for lower 80% of the population. He preserves a large share of state capital
in strategically important companies. Some of them are still state-owned (anathema for any neoliberal.)
But he operates in conditions where neoliberalism is the dominant system and when Russia is under constant, unrelenting pressure,
and he needs to play by the rules.
Like any talented politician, he found some issues were he can safely deviate from neoliberal consensus without too hard sanctions.
In other matters, he needs to give up to survive.
66,319
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English Outsider says: 
J
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carl
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